Hey thanks for posting this! My trivia guy asked this at the bar last night and I remembered the whole graphic so we won a gift card!
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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I was writing that it's not a bad price to pay to establish a feudal system where you're part of the oligarchy, but honestly, what do they need more than they already have? The current system gave them everything they could ever wish to obtain.
what do they need more than they already have?
These people have an illness. They wouldn't be billionaires if they didn't have an all-consuming desire to obtain and hoard wealth and power at all costs.
They still have people that can say no to them, their workers can quit, they need to deal with consumers boycotting their products.
Globally, China is rapidly catching up to and surpassing Americans in more and more industries, and they need to protect their status.
Nothing is enough for them.
Nothing is enough for them.
This is what it comes down to. They will never be satisfied. There is no end..
We could oblige and give them an end and the nothing that would finally satisfy them :)
Legal disclaimer: I mean butts
Its all losses on paper, unrealized losses.
I could see them all coming out ahead in some other way, tax minimization, write downs/write offs, other financial methods not accessible to normal people that don't have a fleet of accounts and tax lawyers on retainer. And they'll all be ready to profit massively during and after any future crash.
The cynic in me says that they all have a bunch of call/put options, algorithmic high frequency trading and dark pools at the ready, or other bets that'll make them massively rich and any upcoming stock market crash is calculated and planned by influencing a bought president. Maybe that's giving them too much credit but the people that advise these billionaires and the president are definitely ready to profit off of whatever is coming.
Also the bit that everyone's leaving out, since election day, all these guys had huge boosts to their stocks. All the current losses basically corrected whatever gains they got since November.
Basically, they aren't hurting yet.
Basically, they aren't hurting yet.
Exactly. You could reduce their wealth by a factor of 1000, and they would still have more than 90% of people. They will never be genuinely hurt by losses. Not like 99% of people would be.
The chart shouldn't make anyone happy. The true horror of it should be realized; in reality it's an accounting of how much they're "spending" money to make money. They will continue to make more. The scales here are unfathomable to most people.
It's borderline misinformation to not include their total wealth for context.
It is misinformation. It was probably designed to make us think we've won and to relax our gaurd
That's the neat part. You don't give them credit. Their lawyers and hedge funds do this for them and are rewarded the more fraudulent they can get
I don't know. I were filthy rich, I for one probably wouldn't mind a small (and quite likely temporary) hit on my net worth if it means I get to buy promising upstarts and some of my competitors for small change because they're now grossly underfunded/undervalued thanks to the crash.
But then again, I'm a cynic, and probably just projecting here.
Really? Because if I had even a fraction of their wealth, I would stop working and just enjoy my life because I already had far more money than I could ever need. I would fund passion projects, and give away money to causes that I believe are important.
These are not normal people. It's never enough for them.
All cynicism aside, so would I, probably. What good is immense wealth if you don't use it as a means to gain happiness?
As much as it pains me to say this as a decades-long passionate M$ hater, Bill Gates is doing something right there.
But you're right about one thing of course ...
These are not normal people. It’s never enough for them.
IMHO Melinda changed Gates's view on the world. As much as her desktop idea was nightmare fuel, they did create a foundation, had some kids together, and that let Gates grow as a person away from Ballmer's "Developers, Developers, Developers!" culture.
OK but since January 17. What about before? Because i know Musk doubled his money when Trump got elected.
Yes, Tesla stocks are merely back to pre-election levels. Looks like they will keep dropping though.
Please, if there is a god.
They just climbed today. Maybe Musk (via proxies) is buying while cheap because he has insider info that a subsidy is about to be handed to Tesla.
I suspect that is the point of the yoyo tariffs: insider trading.
I'm legit wondering who even profits from Trump's politics?
If regular people are getting fucked and billionaires lose wealth and the stock market tanks, who comes out on top?
Apart from the European military industrial complex?
I've been wondering the same about a lot of right wing economic policy. Why push for policy that is a net negative for everyone in the long run? I have since realized that it does make sense if you don't look at it in terms of wealth, but rather in terms of power. The control you have over other people doesn't depend on your absolute wealth, but rather the relative wealth you have compared to others, and so for someone looking for that kind of power (i.e. most billionaires as far as I can tell) it wouldn't matter if something they do hurts everybody, as long as it hurts you more than it hurts them.
Anyone who plays it right:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_(finance)
Bonus points for anyone with insider information.
The on again, off again tariffs are a great way for Trump to exploit insider trading for his own benefit. I have not seen a single journalist cotton on and most of the Left are circle-jerking about him being stupid. He is evil.
By making it impossibile for the state to run, so that private companies will step in and charge people for stuff. That and destroying small and medium enterprises allowing companies to buy on the cheap
The people with real money and power are taking huge gains. They are and will not suffer losses, other than temporary, strategic losses. This is prestidigitation. We're focused on exactly what they want us to see, not what's happening while we continue to be entertained by side shows.
Trump and Putin seem to like each other.
"He only had one dick and one stomach"
Ben Elton
These losses mean nothing to these people.
If the numbers mean nothing to them, then why are they literally destroying societies and killing people to make the numbers go up?
Good question - I don't know.
Perhaps its more about ~~being~~ having the biggest ~~dick~~ number relative to others.
Perhaps its something to do with power.
The Ben Elton reference was to a book (stark) set in the 80s.
Societies and people mean less than nothing to them.
Doesn’t include the gains they made on trumps election
Do you reckon that some people voted for Trump just because they knew he was so incompetent that he would inadvertently fuck shit up for everyone, friends included - and that there are enough disillusioned people in the US fed up of any semblance of the status quo (progressive or otherwise) who just wanted to watch the world burn as much as they're suffering?
A vote of pure spite and nihilism
There are tankies that proudly did this.
I believe it, means to an ends or whatever
I’m sure that a man as fond of Nazi dogwhistles as Musk will appreciate the fact that, given that a B looks like an 8, his losses are almost a Nazi codeword.