There are plenty of people out there making six figure salaries who don't save a dime of their income and even carry credit card debt, car payments, and house mortgages.
Yeah but like, 6 fig salaries are basically functionally middle-class right now (at least the first hundred - 200k is). Folks in the 200K+ range probably are doing okay but like, for the folks making just barely 6 figures it's more comfortable but definitely not comparable to rich folks... let alone the ultra-wealthy.
Millionaires are fine, honestly, but when you get to billionaires or the ludicrous folks that have 100s of billions - that's gross wealth hoarding and the vast majority of them have not put in a proportionally larger amount of work or ingenuity compared to the people they're profiting off of.
It's difficult for me to personally empathize with people who make six figures when I've been spending $15k or less a year for over 2 decades. Don't ask me how I do it; I don't even know. Scrappy as hell.
And of course you can make that argument all you want: that $100k is middle class, but does that mean you're implying that the middle class isn't supposed to save any money? Because ultimately the point is to showcase that the culture pushes everyone to live beyond their means no matter what their situation is. Just shift 6-figures to 7-figures and nothing changes. Everyone acts the same.
Also it needs to be pointed out that nobody has hundreds of billions of dollars. Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos do not have DOLLARS. They have companies and they own billions of dollars worth of STOCK, which is not the same as dollars whatsoever. Is it really wealth hording to build a business and want to hold a controlling share of your own business? How is that hoarding? That stock was printed out of thin air. The total market cap is a largely meaningless number. Even if they paid their employees more that doesn't guarantee their stock price would go down. Are they supposed to dump stock to pay employees more? None of the stakeholders would allow that. So what are they supposed to do?
What would we say if someone on Hive was a billionaire? Would we say that guy is a greedy asshole and they should dump their bag on the market making everyone on the network instantly poor? Kinda the same logic as above.
Oh no, they are. I think middle-class is the start of being able to save money (and put stuff away for retirement). Which is what everyone should be able to do but society screws everyone over and so, so many folks never get a chance to actually consider savings/retirements/etc.
That's a good point, though I think if we extended it to what folks are saying about billionaires IRL it wouldn't be so much 'dump their bags' as 'donate a reasonable percentage to the DHF and other delegations'.
Almost everyone pays effectively more tax (percentage-based) than billionaires do and THAT is the bigger problem. There should be (and to a degree is, within HIVE at least) an expectation that whales support those below them. It's not perfect here, but its arguably way better than in the US or Canada.
Right but there's a very real argument awkwardly lingering that states we should leave the billionaires alone unabated so they can continue acquiring wealth and making everyone else rich through the increasing spot price of the underlying asset, be it a stock or crypto token. A crypto token is obviously much better because a stock can be printed out of thin air and crypto can't.
The existence of a billionaire on Hive means the spot price has gone at least x100. Probably more like x1000.
I do love the way the ultra-wealthy like to pretend that trickle-down economics works and hasn't been disproven again and again. Always fun. 🤣