The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

englishpremier · 18 Apr 2022 at 13:08

Best thing I ever heard about Twitter was David Camron's interview on Absolute Radio. "too many twits might make a ****"

(*a stupid or obnoxious person / a woman's genitals)

HACO · 18 Apr 2022 at 13:10

Colonel_Klinck said:
Are Keanu Reeves and JK Rowling communists? Funny they seem like capitalists, maybe just ones that possess some empathy. Rowling lived on benefits for a time, perhaps that is why she has given so much money away to good causes.

Its amazing that "communists" is the buzzword of the right again. Its like we've jumped back to the 70s/80s buzzwords when there were such things as communists and they were still a threat, kind of.

edit: the communists bit wasn't necessarily aimed at you. It is the buzzword of the right now though

Yeah. We're back to the point where every time we talk about giving back to the community, focusing on the society, increasing taxes on the wealthy or market regulation the right comes back with accusations of communism.

Colonel_Klinck · 18 Apr 2022 at 13:11

I'm not sure anyone is against people being rewarded for their talent and innovations. I don't begrudge Bezos being rich, Amazon is amazing (for me as a consumer). He should be paying far more tax though, as should Musk.

chroniclard · 18 Apr 2022 at 13:19

Colonel_Klinck said:
tHE rIgHt ARe bEiNG cEnsoRed!

meanwhile a right wing journalist

https://twitter.com/x/status/1515792345622528002

Since the trump lying era mad conspiracies and lies are all the right have left to them. Same with the Tories.

HACO · 18 Apr 2022 at 13:23

Colonel_Klinck said:
I'm not sure anyone is against people being rewarded for their talent and innovations. I don't begrudge Bezos being rich, Amazon is amazing (for me as a consumer). He should be paying far more tax though, as should Musk.

Exactly. I honestly never seen anyone (with any serious political power) seriously argue that these people shouldn't be rich. Only that they should pay more taxes. Even the proposals about taxing unrealised gains would never leave them poorer, it's only a couple of percentage points per year, their wealth grows by significantly more than that.

Jono8 · 18 Apr 2022 at 14:08

Colonel_Klinck said:
I'm not sure anyone is against people being rewarded for their talent and innovations. I don't begrudge Bezos being rich, Amazon is amazing (for me as a consumer). He should be paying far more tax though, as should Musk.

Indeed. I don't agree with communism, but capatalism in its current form has got out of control, and the global wealth divide is getting absurd.

One thing that should be introduced is some sort of mandated profit share for employees. No more executives milking every last penny to buy super yachts, whilst paying workers minimum wage.

People that earn 1000x more than other people are NOT doing 1000x the work or 1000x more intelligent/useful.

Energize · 18 Apr 2022 at 14:10

Jono8 said:
Not hording ridiculous sums of money and buying super yachts worth hundreds of millions of pounds, and instead living a reasonably modest lifestyle and helping communities?

Helping communities doesn't mean forgoing extravagances like yachts. The two are not mutually exclusive.

That being said, Musk has received so much tax money for all his failed business ventures that it's criminal.

arknor · 18 Apr 2022 at 15:16

goldy6660 said:
Tax them properly sure but said billionaires just generally hides it to stay richer. Should there be a rule to make a billionaire no longer allowed to run a business once they make X and have to select another to run it.

Essentially circulation of wealth or stop the earning once it gets to X levels

they keep it in stock and get out loans lol anything to avoid taxes, then we are meant to worship them if they give 0.0001% to charity

Twinz · 18 Apr 2022 at 15:17

Jono8 said:
People that earn 1000x more than other people are NOT doing 1000x the work or 1000x more intelligent/useful.

We vote for who is worth what with our dollars.

Jono8 · 18 Apr 2022 at 15:54

Twinz said:
We vote for who is worth what with our dollars.

Which doesn't work, because we are all idiots.

arknor · 18 Apr 2022 at 15:57

Jono8 said:
Which doesn't work, because we are all idiots.

then get every western country to do a pact that no one can earn more than 100X minimum wage then everyone would have to be paid more in order for the elites to get a raise.

doesn't stop people who own their own company taking out dividends though or whatever

MasterBaker · 18 Apr 2022 at 16:09

Imagine Bill Gates starting out in his bedroom thinking he'll get rich but only so rich as people will moan about it.
Does OCUK make too much profit and should be taking a look at themselves and sharing the wealth?

Colonel_Klinck · 18 Apr 2022 at 18:05

MasterBaker said:
Imagine Bill Gates starting out in his bedroom thinking he'll get rich but only so rich as people will moan about it.
Does OCUK make too much profit and should be taking a look at themselves and sharing the wealth?

Again no one is saying they shouldn't be rich. We are simply saying they should pay more tax. They are still going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams. And Bill Gates would still have done what he did, as would Steve Jobs, as would Jeff Bezos, as would Elon Musk.

Twinz · 18 Apr 2022 at 18:15

Colonel_Klinck said:
Again no one is saying they shouldn't be rich. We are simply saying they should pay more tax. They are still going to be rich beyond their wildest dreams. And Bill Gates would still have done what he did, as would Steve Jobs, as would Jeff Bezos, as would Elon Musk.

All in favor of making that rich guy in the corner pay for our programs raise your hand! (Don't worry, we will vote ourselves a lower tax rate and *still* tell them they aren't paying their "fair share")

-Awfully convenient to decide someone who has earned more than you has less of a right to their money than you have to yours. -even more convinient when you outnumber them.

chroniclard · 18 Apr 2022 at 18:28

Wealthy already pay more tax as it should be, it's the ones that reduce their tax burdens to ridiculous amounts that need sorting.

Lucky we have a progressive government here who have introduced the highest tax burden since the 60s. :cool:

Colonel_Klinck · 18 Apr 2022 at 19:38

Twinz said:
All in favor of making that rich guy in the corner pay for our programs raise your hand! (Don't worry, we will vote ourselves a lower tax rate and *still* tell them they aren't paying their "fair share")

-Awfully convenient to decide someone who has earned more than you has less of a right to their money than you have to yours. -even more convinient when you outnumber them.

You think someone worth billions should pay the same amount of tax as someone earning 20k? Sorry I don't. Asking them to pay more on amounts above 50m or 100m isn't leaving them in the poor house, far from it. Life has been good to them, either through being born in the right crib, luck in the DNA lottery, born in the right country, some piece of luck along the way, they have ended up richer than gods. Billions of people work incredibly hard so it just that, lots of people work just as hard, if not harder than these guys. No one is taking their companies away, they should just be asked to pay a bit more.

Jono8 · 18 Apr 2022 at 20:13

MasterBaker said:
Does OCUK make too much profit and should be taking a look at themselves and sharing the wealth?

Probably.

We are all our own worst enemies though. Easily manipulated by advertising and sales talk, to pay through the nose to make other people obscenely rich.

hurfdurf · 18 Apr 2022 at 21:02

Twinz said:
All in favor of making that rich guy in the corner pay for our programs raise your hand! (Don't worry, we will vote ourselves a lower tax rate and *still* tell them they aren't paying their "fair share")

-Awfully convenient to decide someone who has earned more than you has less of a right to their money than you have to yours. -even more convinient when you outnumber them.

Every single pound earned of their money has been enabled by society. Therefore each of their pounds should contribute to society.

HACO · 18 Apr 2022 at 21:06

Twinz said:
All in favor of making that rich guy in the corner pay for our programs raise your hand! (Don't worry, we will vote ourselves a lower tax rate and *still* tell them they aren't paying their "fair share")

-Awfully convenient to decide someone who has earned more than you has less of a right to their money than you have to yours. -even more convinient when you outnumber them.

That's the whole idea behind progressive taxation. The more you take from society, the higher percentage of that extra money you should pay back.

This is accepted in every developed economy. Someone who makes £200k should pay a a higher percentage of that in taxes than someone who makes £20k. We all accept that, somehow except for billionaires who are able to avoid or evade and some hacks come to their defence.

dowie · 18 Apr 2022 at 21:17

Colonel_Klinck said:
I'm not sure anyone is against people being rewarded for their talent and innovations. I don't begrudge Bezos being rich, Amazon is amazing (for me as a consumer). He should be paying far more tax though, as should Musk.

Why should he? It's up to them if they choose to take an income or sell some shares. Not some commentator subjectively declaring they've not paid "enough".

Ironically if they'd sold up their entire stake much earlier and just retired then they might well have paid far less in tax still and their companies might not have grown and created so many jobs... but they'd be much less rich and people would be happier that they've paid a larger % of tax on a much smaller amount.

I'm all for taxing inheritance/transfer of wealth etc.. but this notion that billionaires must pay lots of tax simply because they're rich is just bizarre to me - you pay tax on income or realised gains. If you want to keep your stake in a business growing then that's up to you.

HACO said:
This is accepted in every developed economy. Someone who makes £200k should pay a a higher percentage of that in taxes than someone who makes £20k. We all accept that, somehow except for billionaires who are able to avoid or evade and some hacks come to their defence.

They haven't though - Bezos and Musk are subject to the same tax rates on their income and capital gains too - that they've not chosen to cash everything out right now is up to them. Same as anyone else - if you want to invest in a stock and that stock does really well then it's still up to you when to sell, you don't owe anyone any tax on gains that haven't been realised yet, you owe tax when you actually cash in and make realised gains.

Musk exercised some options recently IIRC and paid billions in taxes as a result.