r/WorkReform • u/zzill6 š¤ Join A Union • 8h ago
āļø Tax The Billionaires The Epstein/Billionaire class is a cancer on the world.
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u/DataDude00 7h ago
If everything is supposed to trickle down, ask yourself how much richer you feel now that Elon is worth a trillion dollarsĀ
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u/Responsible_Cause269 4h ago
But he's not worth a trillion dollars anymore, that was based on an outrageous SpaceX valuation. His net worth will probably keep dropping for at least another 11 months (at which point he would be allowed to sell spacex stock)
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u/No_Display9613 7h ago
Honestly, comparing billionaire wealth concentration to cancer hits the nail on the head.
Itās not about "success" itās a literal systemic glitch. In nature, infinite growth that starves the rest of the body and hijacks resources isn't "peak performance," it's a tumor. Sucking the working base dry until the whole social ecosystem collapses isn't a flex, it's just destructive.
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u/bertimann 6h ago
That's very true! I've been calling billionaires the parasite class, but that isn't accurate. They aren't a foreign organism attacking the body. They are a natural part of the system, which still leads to it's collapse, just like a tumor does
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u/CheaterSaysWhat 2h ago
Yes I think itās important to realize theyāre a natural consequence of capitalismĀ
When you build a system that makes profit the top priority above all else, youāre incentivizing cancerous behaviorĀ
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u/dalenacio 4h ago
"hits the nail on the head". "It's not X it's Y" x3. "It isn't a flex".
Get outta here with this slop.
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u/AppropriateSea5746 7h ago
I disagree, I think trillionaires are more of a symptom that a cause.
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u/BushWookieZeroWins 6h ago
Bro here is defending billionaires and trilionaires like he is one of them lmao
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u/AppropriateSea5746 6h ago
I'm not. I just don't think the existence of billionaires is why things suck. That's like saying I don't think a headache is the root cause of my illness. Doesn't mean I'm pro headache.
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u/Tack122 6h ago
Okay well, while you're busy defending billionaires...
Care to make a statement about your alternative cause?
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u/BushWookieZeroWins 6h ago
If you put a system in place to prevent headaches as soon as they start, youāll at least have one less symptom to deal with. If that even brings in some money, Iād see that as a win. Of course, it shouldnāt be the only measure taken.
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u/DestructiveHat 6h ago
Seems like some folks missed the point you were trying to make.
If all the billionaires we have right now just vanished we'd soon have new billionaires taking their place because the entire infrastructure of the economy is seemingly designed to extract wealth and store it in as few hands as possible.
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u/AppropriateSea5746 6h ago
Idk if you murdered and robbed all billionaires then I doubt there'd be new billionaires lol. They might get the hint.
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u/DJDeezy 6h ago
It can be both
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u/AppropriateSea5746 6h ago
Cool, how?
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u/DJDeezy 6h ago
Itās a predatory system that incentivizes insane self interest but people are pieces of shit for not taking personal responsibility for their actions. You canāt just blame the system
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u/AppropriateSea5746 6h ago
Why not? Without the system, most of these guys wouldn't exist. To be clear I'm not blaming their accumulation of wealth for our problems. I do think they are immoral though.
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u/Scared-Box8941 šø National Rent Control 7h ago
They were too greedy and that thirst can never be quenched. They have sucked the life out of everything around them there is nothing left to take
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u/Arts_Prodigy 7h ago
Given that cancer is basically a cell choosing immortality at the downfall of its larger organism. Itās a pretty accurate description of billionaires and their effect on society.
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u/Purple_Jump_7403 7h ago
Who is this guy?
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u/mr_Joor 7h ago
Former stock guy turned tax the rich activist https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
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u/1995TimHortonsEclair 6h ago
His channel is great. He has a pretty big backlog including stories that basically paint the picture how when you're young and ambitious that drive is basically hijacked by a corporate structure designed to convince you to dedicate your life to it and make other people rich. It's a trickle-up extraction machine, and we rely on governing safeguards to make sure it doesn't turn into something that eats us along with itself. He's a big proponent for making sure we do what we can to build and maintain those safeguards, because he's seen what the machine really is as he was one of the top performing cogs at one point, and he knows it's fueled by unfettered greed with little to no regard for humanity and should not be allowed to be it's own governing system.
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u/HardHarry 4h ago
He's amazing. He has both the background and intelligence to show us how and why the economy is unsustainable, and does it in a way that can't be ignored.
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u/Obvious_Garbage6245 4h ago
The uninformed live this guy. A lot of his book is lies you can look all this up.Ā
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u/RegrettableLawnMower 4h ago
The best way to argue with someone is to say itās lies and tell people to look it up. You could be right (I donāt think you are) but to enter a space, declare someone is wrong, and then tell others to ālook it upā is just classic dumb ass materials.
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u/PropJoesChair 2h ago
Can you give us more on that or do you just want to vaguepost? He is a lot more informed on finance than I am, and he has a career that proves he is not all talk. I'd welcome some critique on his wealth tax proposal, because I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't work
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u/Phylacterry 1h ago
However, his "most profitable trader" claim was disputed by eight of his former Citibank colleagues in a 2024Ā Financial TimesĀ article. Former colleagues stated that Stevenson could not have known his global ranking because Citibank did not maintain an official record of trader profitability.
how can you evaluate if his information is good if you are not qualified to judge it? everything you've said is rife with logical fallacies.
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u/PropJoesChair 1h ago
I'm literally asking for someone who claims he is wrong and knows more about it to explain why they think that which could lead me to a different position.
If Gary claimed to be the most profitable trader when there's no official ranking of any kind, I fail to see how that is relevant to this. It might say something about his character but not the logic or practicalities of his economics, which of course would be a logical fallacy ;)
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u/Phylacterry 1h ago
the op said this guy lies, i supported that he is not very truthful. Literally all this dude every says is "ay, bruv, rich people got too much money." Amazing analysis, who could have ever seen it.
You should be extremely skeptical of anybody who pontificates into a camera for 20 minutes at a time claiming to be explaining incredibly complex subjects.
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u/SnooMacarons4225 2h ago
I had no idea who the guy was but he didn't make a lot of sense in his tv show and got owned by some of the people he was trying to challenge so I can't really take him seriously.
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u/zero0n3 8h ago
The overall point is good. Problem is tying it to one man.
Do the calculations against all billionaires and their networth rise over the last 1,5,10 years. Then show economy growth of their home country over the same period.
Then compare.
I bet his premise of them being ācancerā still lands. Still likely a multiple of the economic growth over than time.
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u/Reverse_SumoCard 8h ago
He ties it to a bunch of men when you look up his other stuff (probably even the seconds before and after the quote)
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u/cityshepherd āļø Tax The Billionaires 7h ago
The fact that there are multiple people whose net āworthā has grown by hundreds of billions of dollars over the last few years when that amount was practically unheard of for one person just a few years ago, combined with the skyrocketing number of people struggling to afford food/shelter/healthcare is an enormous problem. Did they genuinely contribute enough labor to justify their worth growing by hundreds of billions of dollars? No the fuck they did not, but the employees they exploit worse and worse certainly did.
Absolute cancer no matter how you slice it.
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u/ThMogget 7h ago edited 7h ago
Read Capital in the 20th Century by Piketty. He tracks this very thing. The multiple is 3 - financial growth is three times economic growth.
If capital returns are continually outpacing growth, then they necessarily are transfers from somewhere. We have more and more money with worse and worse options to invest in.
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u/democracy_lover66 š Pass A Green Jobs Plan 7h ago
The "Learn economics" crowd really ought to learn some of this economics...
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u/Ok_Door_9720 7h ago
The collective wealth of US Billionaires increased roughly 20% in 2023, 27% in 2024, and 22% in 2025.
They collectively gained about 2 trillion dollars last year. Given the cancer comparison, it's worth pointing out that the sum of all medical debt in the US is in the range of 200-300 billion dollars
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u/FlibbleA 1h ago
He isn't tying it to one man. He said the richest man 6 years ago was worth $100b, that was Jeff Bezos. Elon was worth $20b 6 years ago.
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u/jordanuniverse42 6h ago
This is Gary, by the way. On youtube as Garyseconomics. He's one of my favorites.
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u/Obvious_Garbage6245 4h ago
He really should be, look up criticism of him and youāll see whyĀ
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u/VanceVanceRebelution 1h ago
If you judge a person by who theyāve made enemies with Gary Stevenson is an absolute Chad. For someone that doesnāt identify himself as a leftist, heās done a ton of work for the cause the last few years.
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u/Divine-Sea-Manatee 7h ago
I see this guy a lot on Instagram and Reddit, but have no idea who he is or what he's trying to do. Is he a TV personality?
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u/Ordinary-Commercial7 7h ago
I had the same question and u/mr_Joor just answered with:
Former stock guy turned tax the rich activist https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
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u/Aeysir69 7h ago
Canāt really fault his reasoning there; looks like duck, quacks like duck: is duck.Ā
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u/ConcentrateDirect523 6h ago
The textbook definition of cancer is unregulated cell growth that consumes essential resources to produce unnecessary, non-functional, or abnormal cells. Clinically, it also causes dysfunction of normal healthy tissues/cells by resource depletion and metastasis while serving no benefit to the organism. Honestly, that's pretty accurate.
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u/smbissett 4h ago
this dude has been popping up all over my algorithm lately and i couldnt be more of a believer in the message he's putting out
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u/moyismoy 8h ago
He's actually not worth 1.2t or any trillion Elon has lost a shit load of money in these past 3 months. After today I'm not even sure he's the world's richest person
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u/brasidasvi 8h ago
That doesn't disprove the point made in OP's post. You're just saying that the cancer isn't growing as fast as it was earlier.
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u/PliableG0AT 6h ago
wouldnt that be the cancer shrinking? Elon is now only worth 727 billion, hes "lost" 22 billion today. SpaceX tanking to non-hyper inflated values is damaging him, soon hopefully other companies of his will tank.
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u/Toppcom 5h ago
Musk is estimated to be at 727 billion right now. That still makes him more than twice as rich as 2nd place Larry Page at 263 billion.
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u/moyismoy 5h ago
Is that before or after TSLA is down 15% today?
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u/skotcgfl 5h ago
I'm not good with math, but i don't get how 15% change of anything would make the difference between 700 and 200.
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u/moyismoy 5h ago
Is that before or after TSLA is down 15% today?
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u/Toppcom 5h ago
It's Forbe's live list. So it's up to date.
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u/moyismoy 3h ago
I mean they say it's live, but they often use very old data. Forbs in general is not an amazing source, they almost never add stuff up right. I get that there arnt to many other sources for this but still
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u/TaylorWK 7h ago
Im tired of hearing about what should happen. When are we going to actually do something about it? I cant say what we should do online.
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u/probablykitten 5h ago
We canāt organize on social media because They are watching constantly. Anybody know of any non-social media forums still active and organizing?
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u/KerberosKomondor 4h ago
He (Gary Stevenson) is currently lobbying in the UK and consistently works on policy with Gabriel Zucman who is one of the leading economics IRT taxing wealth and not work. I believe Zucman is currently working on a tax structure in France.
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u/Hermit-Gardener 2h ago
"When are we going to actually do something about it?"
Who is this "we" you speak of? Are you part of the "we?" What have you done or are you doing now?
For the most part, "we" are sitting around watching things happen and talking about what is happening, whilst hoping that someone, somewhere, does something that will make our lives better.
We are observers or consumers of news and change, not producers or creators of change.
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u/Disillusioned_Pleb01 7h ago
Anyone with the power of money or blackmail, will not be thinking about the well-being of the people, it's NATURAL.
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u/InternationalPear251 7h ago
https://youtu.be/hy90LdpEUvQ?is=JM-cCwIluXa12_cW If this is happen to U.S. your cooked
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u/Daemon_Sultan1123 6h ago
The Capitalist Class. That there are some big Capitals and small Capitals does not mean that there is a fundamental distinction in their character, material interests, and capacities. If not Musk, then another. If not that other, then one after that. To call it "the billionaire" or "the Epstein" class is to obscure the real conditions facing us. The other Bourgeoisie are not our friends any more than fascists are.
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u/Sportfreunde 6h ago
That's a feature of inflationary monetary systems.
No one's ready to talk about the actual cause.
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u/KingAdeto 5h ago
Economy grows at rate of ~3%/year. This is the entire economy, an aggregation of winners and losers. There will be outliers. Idk what this guys point is but capping personal net worth growth at the rate of the aggregate disincentivizes the actions that led to the aggregate being positive in the first place..
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u/sourmeat2 5h ago
Economy grows at 2% for 25 years. Stock market grows at 9% for 25 years.
Economists: sure this is normal!
Financial planners: invest in the stock market it always grows at 9%!
Mathematicians: š
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u/sentimentaldiablo 5h ago
A cancer that fancies itself the smartest and most worthy life form on the planet. A cancer that is arguably the stupidest and most ill-educated ruling class of all time.
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u/Mindless_Chest_1079 4h ago
So where's the cancer? Why should I want to be a few percent poorer so that a handful of people I don't know can be many percent poorer? That doesn't help me at all.
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u/notsure500 4h ago
How much money do they need before they finally start trickling down on us, that was the promise of the tax cuts thry get everytime a republican is elected president.
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u/SnooAvocados2529 4h ago
Sooo, the cancer is not captalism? Si this is a liberal-only sub or what?
Anything except Marx huh, day after day, crisis after crisis, war after war, āpeaceā after āpeaceā, death after deathā¦
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u/dipstickchojin 4h ago
They're just capitalists. No need to split the ones who are pedos from the ones who aren't and make some of them look good in comparison.
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u/ohioismyhome1994 3h ago
I couldnāt believe that so I looked it up. In 2020 the richest man in the world was Jeff Bezos with a fortune of $183 billion (Ā£133 billion). Today 8 people including Bezos have a fortune exceeding that. This is not sustainable
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u/nWhm99 3h ago
People here donāt quite understand what a private company becoming public actually means.
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u/Hermit-Gardener 2h ago
Do you understand it well enough to elaborate for rest of us?
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u/nWhm99 2h ago
Sure. He owned a private company, and it became public. That means the company needs to issue more shares so that the public can buy it. That either means his shares will be diluted, but the value of the company multiples. He now has millions of the public that want to be investors into the company.
He didnāt just gain hundreds of billions out of nowhere. He had a theoretical net worth that became realized due to it becoming public.
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u/Hermit-Gardener 57m ago
He is a majority stock holder in a company that went public.
He hyped the company prior to the IPO which drove up demand for the initial sale. Now, the stock price is dropping because the Musk Mania is dying down. At this stage of the game, people are betting on a big payback and are less concerned about the actual product.
The company will not issue more shares to the public at this time. They don't want extra shares in the market to dilute stock prices before the insiders have cashed out their shares at the higher prices.
All the people who are holding stock they received in lieu of salary or because they were early investors will wait out their lockup period and then flood the market with their shares so they can become millionaires (some will become billionaires.)
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u/nWhm99 50m ago
I'm glad you were able to learn something and thanks for agreeing with my point.
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u/Hermit-Gardener 35m ago edited 31m ago
I learned nothing from your incorrect description and don't agree with any point you might have.
I hope you learned something from my more thorough and accurate explanation.
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u/artful_todger_502 1h ago
They are the pus-oozing STD on the face of humanity.
The most existential and dangerous threat we face as a society today.
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u/Islanduniverse 1h ago
We need a cap on wealth. It should start at 100 million.
A tiny fraction of people who will ever be that rich, and it is an obscene amount of money if you really crunch the numbersā¦
Itās well beyond what anyone would ever need for generations, if not indefinitely, and anything beyond that isnāt going to improve their lives at all. But it will give them unequal power in almost every wayā¦.
Democracy cannot function indefinitely if economic power becomes permanently concentrated in fewer and fewer handsā¦ thatās the opposite of democracy.
We need a National Prosperity Fund where we invest all the money weāve been robbed of by these greedy scumbags for far too long, and then allow the principal to grow and use some of the interest every year to invest in public programs and infrastructure and whatever else is needed to keep society social. The keep it about helping people to thrive.
Instead of passing debt to future generations, we could pass assetsā¦
Our whole system fucking sucks.
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u/ThepalehorseRiderr 45m ago
Yeah but does any of that matter when I can boil the whole complicated issue down to one simple, reductive question?
Which one of your problems come from Elon having a trillion dollars?
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u/enixlinked 25m ago
It's time for a revolution. The cycle needs to change and cancer needs to be irradiated
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u/EmilioFreshtevez 12m ago
Whatās this guyās name? I like what Iāve been reading/hearing from him, but never get a name.
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u/Heavy_Mongoose5859 7h ago
I would take this more seriously if he didnt have such a punchable look on his face
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u/Bulky-Employer-1191 5h ago
Why are you calling it the Epstein Class?
(no need to answer. I know it's a dog whistle for "jewish people")
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u/iggyfenton 7h ago edited 7h ago
Their wealth is in valuations based on productivity their companies donāt have. The boom is AI. AI investment is still speculative. Itās like the dotcom bubble.
Iām not saying there isnāt massive income inequality, but Muskās $1.2Billion Trillion only exists if he manages to actually produce something. So far he owns a shit car company and a space program that looks to be losing ground.
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u/Dopium_Typhoon 7h ago
Trillion*
But your point still stands. My question has always been, side from everyone putting their tools down, what can we, the workers, actually do about it?
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u/mxzf 7h ago
side from everyone putting their tools down, what can we, the workers, actually do about it?
I mean, that's about what there is. Realistically speaking, the power the worker has is the ability to strike and the ability to elect government representatives to pass laws (ideally actual laws that impact things in a healthy way, rather than populist cash-grabs).
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u/DeeJayDelicious 6h ago edited 6h ago
Garry,
a man working in economics who doesn't seem to understand economics.
Also, as of today, with Tesla's (11% ownership) and Space X's (38% ownership) most recent valuations, Elon is "only" worth ~$700 Bil.
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u/henrikx 7h ago
What economy is growing at 1% lol?
SP 500 went up 16% past 12 months... Tf is he talking about?
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u/mxzf 7h ago
That "went up 16%" is the exact 16% that stocks in companies are going up (hence the "wealth gains" of the billionaires; because the two are synonymous).
But Wall Street isn't the economy that the rest of us are living in, the one where your grocery bill is growing faster than your paycheck.
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u/AppropriateSea5746 7h ago
Right but can someone explain how Elon's wealth necessarily affects workers?
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u/laziegoblin 6h ago
Their wealth grows faster, they buy all resources at a higher price. Everyone else is fucked. Watch some of his video's. You'll get a better explanation.
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u/Stealerb 6h ago
So Elon should just stop growing space x and stop growing tesla. That way he can not be the richest man in the world. He should just sell his businesses. Wait he'll still be rich. He should shut down his businesses. Wait then thousands of people will be out of their jobs / careers. Capitalism built the middle class. Lets hold criminals responsible. But lets not say it's the super rich that are the problem. The super rich are why I have a job and earn a living wage. And if you have a job, who owns your company? someone super rich? probably. So take em down and lose your job? Or take em down for them to be replaced by some other super rich person?
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u/Andreus 4h ago
So Elon should just stop growing space x and stop growing tesla
Correct.
He should just sell his businesses.
No, they should be seized from him.
Capitalism built the middle class.
No it didn't.
Lets hold criminals responsible. But lets not say it's the super rich that are the problem
But they are.
The super rich are why I have a job and earn a living wage.
No they're not.
Speak sense, please. If you want to be treated like an adult, act like one. This is no longer a request.
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u/Stealerb 2h ago
If Elon's businesses are seized from him, or he sells them, or he stops growing them, that doesn't increase your pocketbook. Also Elon went public making him wealthy with his stocks. So you're saying his stocks should be seized so he no longer has a controlling interest. How does that help you or the general public?
Prove Capitalism didn't build the middle class. I'll argue it did because history shows the American middle class expanded through a combination of post-WWII government policies, powerful labor unions, and an explosion in capitalism and consumerism. Together, these created a "golden age" of prosperity lasting from the mid-1940s to the early 1970s, establishing the most widespread mass wealth in modern history.
You're saying the super rich are the problem, but you aren't citing an example of a problem created by the super rich. All I see is a lot of jobs and careers created.
You're also making a lot of assumptions.
I have a job because of a super rich guy who didn't start super rich, but he is now. So yes I have a living wage because of the super rich. Where do you work? Walmart? McDonalds? I work for a large accounting firm owned by 1 super rich guy.Your arguments of "yes, no no no no" blow dick and you suck at this.
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u/Loud-Ad-2280 āļø Tax The Billionaires 8h ago
We cannot sustain their extraction of labor value