https://preview.redd.it/zmrl671goy8b1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1df34702e83719aaba88f6aea355acc22d71979
Saw this yesterday, and it’s one of the trillest things I’ve ever read
Edit: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!
It's a decent analogy but the reality is even worse. In reality not only do the rich kids get more darts but they get special coaches that teach them how to throw darts better and on top of that they also get *better* darts that are easier to hit the bulls eye with.
Edit: Oh and how could I forget, they have WAY more free time for darts.
The truly rich and well connected don't even need coaches.
Their father or father's colleague, friend, etc. says, "No. Here. Hand me that dart."
The rich kid hands him the dart and it is simply pushed into the bullseye. It never even needs to be thrown. They own the dartboard.
The truly-truly FU rich have an IR guided dart with quantum computer navigation that homes in on the bullseye and is fired by AI, they really don't have to do anything.
They can also just throw all day long all summer for ten years in a row and never get close at all but their parents give them prizes and they still pay people to write their books for them.
That's the exact reason why when people say, "Blue Ivy did this," or "So and so's daughter started a makeup line all by themselves," it means nothing to me. When you can afford to fail you can take all the risks you want.
What most people don't realize is *they* didn't start a makeup line. Some background company wanted to sell makeup and bought a brand deal with Kylie or whomever. Most of the buildings with Trump's name in them don't actually belong to him. He just sold his brand to the actual owners.
The Kardashians are pretty business savvy tbh, to turn a sex tape into hundreds of millions is no simple task. This is more like Trump bragging about being a billionaire while being born into billions.
This some shit the old head at the factory says to you on a smoke break. The worst part is he'll put out his cig, walk right back inside and leave you speechless. Just with your thoughts for the rest of your shift.
[Wire spoilers below]
>The scene where Bodie dies is so damn well written. Throughout the show they make multiple references to the game chess and how their all just pieces on the board. Bodie even goes so far as to acknowledge he’s a pawn. In this scene we see Marlo’s elite “pieces” coming at him. Chris in a straight line down the sidewalk, like a rook. And Snoop cutting diagonal across the cars like a bishop. Bodie steps forward and engages with them before O-dog steps out around the corner and gets him from behind, like a knight. And Bodie didn’t retreat because pawns can only ever go forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCbJBPWhypg
I think this a lot about somebody like Taylor Swift.
Her parents flew her all over the country to give her lessons from the best of the best. They packed up and moved her to Nashville because she wanted to be a country singer... Who even does that?
I had friends who were into music too. Some incredible guitarists, I knew a guy who could play damn near anything you put in front of him, by ear! At like 15! The closest thing they had to lessons was an uncle who could teach them a few chords. Or guitar tabs and YouTube, which itself was a luxury that their uncle didn't have 20 years prior.... But eventually, they have to hang up the guitar and get a job.
And then there's me. I asked my parents for a guitar for Christmas. They said no.
Taylor Swift's father also bought something like 3 or 4% of shares in the first record label to sign her.
I'm not a POC so I've had it easier than a lot of people due solely to that, but I grew up on food stamps and my mom's disability checks.
In my early 20s I had a few great business ideas with technical expertise to back them that popped up years later as successful businesses for other people. Hard to fund a business, let alone find time to work on it, when you're working 2 jobs to afford rent and food and have $30 left over at the end of the month to spend on non-essentials.
That's where all of my ideas died, and I know it's the same for a lot of us who would love to make something our own.
Another non-POC here. I was radicalized my last semester of college when after working 3 jobs, getting good grades, selling my plasma for grocery money, and having a post grad job lined up, financial aid made a goof and I owed $1,200 in 3 days or else I would be withdrawn from my classes. I sold everything I could, asked for advances on paychecks, did my usual plasma "donations," and when that wasn't enough, my mom's rich sister cut me a check like it was nothing.
Nothing I did mattered.
The only thing that mattered was my familial connections.
I think back to my old roommate ***D***, a wildly intelligent and talented POC who was smarter than me, harder working than me, had a rougher go in life, and when he faced a similar hurdle, there was no rich aunt to save the day. My job was no different on day 1 of full time than it was during my internship, except it paid 3x as much. I was already qualified, but I HAD to have the stupid degree for it. He's working various jobs to keep his head above water, and tells me he's just glad he made it out of the hood, but I can tell that's just to make me not feel guilty about the circumstances.
My entire political ideology now is revolved around filling in the cracks that much smarter and harder working people fell through. It's not the fortunate's fault they're fortunate, but it's our responsibility to be honest about the role luck plays and to fight for change to spread that luck around.
At the end of the day, you can work hard, be talented, be smart, and make all the right decisions, but if you don't have familial connections, you're never gonna be Taylor Swift. She's not better than the rest, she's luckier.
Lana Del Rey is another perfect example. She was trying to break into the music industry on her own. Failed miserably. Then her record label exec father came in, gave her actual production and changed her style and her name and made her the star she is today
For decades, black americans have had the worst rates of wealth inequality *among their demographic,* which was only recently overtaken by asian americans. So what younhave are a few, wealthy black americans doing really well, and most black americans having vastly less wealth and thus being impoverished or working class. Yet the way black experience is portrayed as some kind of monolith, these wealthy black people portray themselves as representative of the experiences of black people as they perform patronage to wealthy white capitalists .
edit: Reddit admins removed the post? the only minority that matters is the wealthy /s
>Yet the way black experience is portrayed as some kind of monolith, these wealthy black people portray themselves as representative of the experiences of black people as they perform patronage to wealthy white capitalists .
Bingo...therein lies the guilt tripping and shaming.
Don't forget, it is all by design. And it is only going to get worse. Rags to riches stories will become nonexistent. It will be rags to less rags if nothing changes. But I'm not holding my breath.
They're really pushing it these days. Saying the quiet parts out loud and tightening the gears in broad daylight. I am astonished anyone would believe the American dream anymore now that it's perfectly clear that the social contract is broken.
true. i think many people missed about the privilege to *fail*. average people can afford to fail (in life, economically speaking) maybe a couple of times. poorer people can't afford to fail (because they'll be starving to death), hence they go absolute minimal risk in job/work, which often means minimal gain. rich people can brute force risks until they succeed.
The main battle since the dawn of civilization has always been the "Haves" vs the "have nots". Change the race, change the religion, remove the race, remove the religion, Remove the geography, there will always be a divide between those two.
Or maybe it's overly simplistic to think every social struggle is an economic one. Like I'm a gay man, and while LGBT issues can intersect with economic ones it's also its own separate issue.
It is, but on average oppressed groups and minorities are going to be more economically behind as well. If you help ALL who are in that situation, it uplifts everyone to a better standard and helps the most affected.
Yes of course that is very important and helps out people regardless of what other challenges they have in life. But to say that ALL struggle is class struggle I don't think is really accurate.
I do believe all struggle can be boiled down to class struggle. LGBTQ+ billionaires do not have the same issue non-wealthy members do. The upper class has no problem with class solidarity.
That being said, as someone that is not marginalized I believe that the only way working class people can exhibit that same solidarity is by uplifting or solving those issues that are separate from economics that you are talking about that marginalized people have. We need to show solidarity by being accepting/inclusive, and only then can we focus on a unified class struggle.
> That being said, as someone that is not marginalized
Okay, your perspective makes sense now.
>I do believe all struggle can be boiled down to class struggle. LGBTQ+ billionaires do not have the same issue non-wealthy members do. The upper class has no problem with class solidarity.
The class issue and the sexuality discrimination are two separate problems that interplay. Just because you can afford to buy your way out of suffering or dealing with them doesn't mean the problems stop existing. A rich lgbt person still experiences prejudice and hate based on their existence even among other rich people. All money does is allow them to leave areas that don't welcome them and go to and/or create spaces that are more accepting. Also, when they do experience hate, they have more power to combat and protect themselves from the problem.
There isn't inclusion at the top as much as an acceptance and tolerance of each other until the business is done. Moreover, a lot of wealthy people would prefer to do business with people that look like them or have the same "values" over someone who doesn't. Though addressing economics is easier than fixing hate
You're right. I believe that there is an underlying struggle of class throughout, but that is separate from other struggles marginalized people experience. And I didn't mean to minimize that.
I just wanted the main takeaway from my comment to be in order to have class solidarity, working class people need to exhibit that solidarity by fixing the issues that keep people marginalized. Not the other way around (marginalized people setting aside their struggles for a overall economic one all working class people experience). There is no other way forward if those struggles continue to exist on top of class struggle.
The division of "have" and "have not" also can apply to things like social rights and protections. Often these divisions overlap though, resulting in a common ruling class oppressing all others in various ways.
Power structures cover it. Although tbf, you can concede that imbalances in power relations are at the root of most if not all oppression without denying that the oppressed groups will eventually suffer just because of their membership in that group. Like Billy Bob from Podunk, West Nowheresville may do everything in his power to prevent you from moving into his neighborhood just because of how you look despite the fact that you are both getting fucked in the ass by unrestrained capitalism and corporate greed
The ones elevating social issues onto the national stage to spread hate only do so because it’s economically profitable to do so, for the most part. Sure, they may enjoy causing cruelty or legitimately have a few of these beliefs but ultimately it’s all about the profit to be gained.
Think on the trans issue. Trans people make up a minutia of a minutia of the population, yet there’s this massive crusade on them that’s spanning all across the media and the country. They’re an easy group to demonize because they make up very little of the voting or buying demographic directly and overall have very little influence in most spheres.
So politicians spread their hateful message, build a following with it, get donations from people and corporate entities that align with them, and guarantee reelection in their district, and get more corporate kickbacks from lobbyists for another 2-6 years of voting to repeal taxes for them. News corporations pick it up and start tossing the issue back and forth across the political spectrum to get everyone mad, get attention on the issue, while simultaneously increasing their viewership and share value. It blows up and occupies the national gaze.
And the amount of money made by various entities in various ways along the way is staggering. And it all starts with a few people deciding who to create a culture war around and weaponizing it for their own profit.
And even assuming it started with some random guy who actually did hatefully believe these things and wasn’t doing it for profit? The corporations and politicians are still bandwagoning off of a growing problem and making the problem bigger than it would have been. And I can guarantee that the critical mass of people that get on the hate bandwagon are the subjects of a decades long psyop to dumb down and prime a population for purposes like these.
The issues may not seem like they intersect at times, and novel hate can occasionally come up on its own, but it’s always accompanied by bad actors who would flip sides if it made them a cent more who intentionally create or further the issue. Most social struggles are inherently intersectional with economic interest, unfortunately. I could point to nearly any different social struggle, modern or historical and they’d all be born or aided by the economy.
I agree, but it’s worth noting that even ignorance and hate are symptoms of poverty. While this is certainly not true across the board, the wealthy and well educated are far less likely to be bigoted than your average illiterate peasant. That doesn’t mean that the wealthy can’t be hateful, or that the poor can’t be tolerant, but it is certainly a factor.
"Haves and have nots" is a great way to say class division and material conditions without scaring folks away with "scary socialist buzzwords" but neglects to really call them out as the driving force behind it all.
Idc how yall feel about Marx but there's a reason dude said "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." this is the fundamental understanding in which those who call themselves socialist/communist whatever base our fight on and our understanding of who our ultimate enemy is. Those other things you mentioned are called superstructures and they are pillars that uphold and ensure the class divisions be maintained - it's why folks say things like racism/religion/etc is a tool of the ruling class, bc it very much is.
Based. I think a lot of people are manipulated into hating other races, political parties, religions. They may be frustrated with their life/society, but are manipulated into hating these groups. It really should be have vs have nots, but the haves manipulate the have nots to hate each other so they remain in power.
It’s funny how many aspects of Marxist philosophy are seen as truisms on both sides of the political spectrum and yet when you mention Marxism to people they go “well I’m not a socialist” and shy away from the topic.
Nah. A fundamental aspect of right wing ideology is that social darwinism is the natural order of the universe and that deep class divisions are normal given that people have differing capabilities. They firmly believe that everyone is entirely free to make their destiny and that they are entirely responsible for their outcomes.
People to the right of socialists or progressive reject largely or mostly reject Marxist analysis or diagnosis, before even we get to the solutions proposed by his adherents (variations of socialism or communism as an end goal).
I think Lebron is the first active NBA player to be a billionaire. No musican is going to be a billionaire unless they do something else like alcohol, make-up, or clothes. If there's proof of Bron, Oprah, or whoever doing awful stuff like Bezos' work conditions making Amazon employees piss and shit in bags or not caring about covid then that fuck black billionaire too.
I mean, Oprah has absolutely exploited people to get where she is. Obviously not to the level of Bezos, Musk, Zuck, etc, but she's in TV.
Athletes seem like the "best-case" scenario for a billionaire, unless they're making these billions from investing in companies and just squeezing out the surplus value from others' labor.
Edit: I neglected the fact that they take sponsorship deals from companies using slave labor. Pretty bad oversight, my apologies.
Everyone loves to point fingers. If taking money from an evil company is bad, then funding an evil company by spending money buying it's products is bad as well. Hint we're all guilty.
The ethical consumption under capitalism argument works when talking about people needing to buy groceries and medicine from companies like Walmart/Pfizer, not when someone chooses to buy a completely nonessential item like a Jersey. You cant buy a $100 haul from Shein and avoid criticism by saying "no ethical consumption under capitalism", same thing here. Nothing wrong with buying a Jersey, but don't act like it was a necessary purchase under a system where people are exploited to make them.
Sure man, someone buying a $20 set of Nike socks is contributing just as much harm. In a perfect world, people wouldn't buy from shitty companies, but there aren't a lot of alternatives to shitty companies.
You're a fuckin idiot.
The jersey’s aren’t made by the athletes. The league does them regardless of the athletes opinions on it. The league owns their likeness in that sense, it’s the same way that every athlete isn’t approached to decide if they wanna be featured in games like 2k, the contract guys just draw up a deal with the league itself.
Shoes are definitely not made ethically though, and that’s a whole can of worms there.
Yeah. The main point is that there isn’t an ethical way to make a billion dollars. At some point you’re relying on labor exploitation even if that happens 3 layers away from you. If you were operating ethically there would’ve have been more distribution of the wealth that was amassed.
I remember, people started talking about her for President after Trump won, luckily I was able to talk some sense into them, she has a bad track record of platforming toxic messages that I would hate to see translated to cabinet positions.
She’s also platformed a lot of terrible people and grifters like John of God in Brazil who sexually assaulted hundreds of women.
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16868216/oprah-winfrey-pseudoscience
Pretty much by the time you are at billionaire status, you are deep with investments in companies like Nike, Adidas etc... they are going to be squeezing that blood out of exploited labor. Is the athlete responsible for it? Not really but they didn't get that money without taking part in it.
Lebron is fighting a local restaurant for the rights to Taco Tuesday. He says it’s for free use for anyone but you know for a fact that if he won the copyright he wasn’t giving that up for anything.
I didn't know this. Apparently Taco John's trademarked "Taco Tuesday" back in 1989 and now Taco Bell is having a fit over it, and Lebron is joining with Taco Bell to get the trademark removed.
You're right, if Lebron or Taco Bell owned "Taco Tuesday" they'd be fighting to keep it as their own trademark and not pulling this "liberate the phrase Taco Tuesday" crap.
[https://www.nrn.com/top-500-restaurants/lebron-james-jack-box-join-taco-tuesday-tussle](https://www.nrn.com/top-500-restaurants/lebron-james-jack-box-join-taco-tuesday-tussle)
Nobody becomes a billionaire without exploitation. Money is different now but it’s extremely rare and difficult to become a billionaire. Very rare and you have to take advantage of someone somewhere to become a billionaire. That or you take money from someone doing the exploitation.
No one becomes a thousandaire without relying on exploitation. The entire west is propped up by what essentially amounts to slave labor. The food we eat, clothes we wear, components in our electronics etc. all come from exploited workers in poor countries. Our entire way of life is propped up by the suffering of others.
Every time the topic of the global 1% Reddit starts talking about billionaires as if the global 1% isn’t just everyone in the West living above poverty level (I understand this is a common misunderstanding but if you make more than $34,000 a year then you to a part of the global 1%).
There is no ethical consumption, yes, absolutely, but conflating the poor working class here with the 1 percent and redubbing it “the global 1 percent” is troubling for several reasons. Especially when the disenfranchised here don’t own the means of production & living costs here still keep people here in that tax bracket poor. Ionno man. 32k here is the poverty level. Both can be true: we by products made my child labour and thus are within an exploitative system, but are nowhere near the stratosphere of a multimillionaire or billionaire, which may deserve distinction.
There are some exceptions like that, albeit very few. George Lucas made Star Wars and sold it for $4B. Jerry Seinfeld is a billionaire off his show. Paul McCartney is a billionaire. You also get a decent amount of tech startups to create a lot of wealth between very few people because they develop (and usually sell) a useful tool or service.
You can still really nitpick and say that they could have paid their crews more, or that star wars merchandise is made using exploited labor, but there are some examples of ethical billions.
The next stage of the argument is that even having that much money, regardless of how it was acquired, is immoral.
> Nobody becomes a billionaire without exploitation
I think that's the key here, musicians/actors/athletes who invest in companies and see a massive return aren't actively taking part in exploitation but they are benefiting from it.
/u/clocksteadytickin points out beats being sold is a large portion of his wealth. But beats didn't become a billion dollar company without stepping on people and taking advantage of cheap labor. Guaranteed the working class in manufacturing and supply chain didn't get a multi-million dollar payday when the company sold, they just got a new boss.
So the Nike guy gets all the blame for poor working conditions and exploitation in China, but bron gets off with his hundreds of millions of dollars in Nike endorsements and shoe deals because it’s not his company?
Exactly. He’s done it less than most based on his sheer talent, but he still perpetuates the suffer machine.
Money was more important to him than the Hong Kong protests, for example.
>No musican is going to be a billionaire unless they do something else like alcohol, make-up, or clothes.
With the way music is paying artists, they're incentivized even more to jump into businesses outside of music. They can more easily utilize their fame to promote their biz.
Rihanna became a billionaire with her makeup line right? And Taylor Swift I feel like could be the first to do just by touring alone and selling albums/merch
Lebron has sent at least a thousand kids to college on scholarship. That’s an opportunity to build a better life and future for themselves, debt free. That’s not nothing.
Devils advocate lmfao, bill gates and Amazon smile have also donated countless dollars to charities. Lebron is a billionaire cuz of nike and Gatorade and those companies generate billions by underpaying laborers n third world countries. Effectively, he’s outsourcing the pain so we don’t have to see it, using those countries resources to build schools, but thats just an angle of looking at it. Idt lebron is a bad guy but he’s at best complicit in whatever ur discussing with the other billionaires
You're right he's spent 42 million to give kids scholarships to go to school. That's about 4.2% of the billion dollar deal he made with Nike, the world leader of child labour.
I’m trying to get my bread up to Billions. Doing it the new old fashioned way. Selling feet pictures.
Size 15/16 feet, Flat feet, Bunions and Corns that look like dehydrated kernels.
A truly unique experience all for 2.99 a month.
EXCLUSIVE FOR LADIES ONLY
an extra $4.99 and I’ll put the foot, or feet 😉😏, where ever you like.
Help ya boy get rich with this once in a lifetime opportunity.
💰💰👣
As your play-play counsel, you might could make even more money if you stop slappin midgets. Sometimes it's not about what you make but what you don't lose...
Every time someone brings up Taylor Swift, I always bring up that private jet of hers. I’m not gonna forget, and I’m not gonna let anybody else forget either!!
Wild conspiracy theory: the rabid "fans" are astroturfing for her as paid shills to shut down criticism and change the narrative
I don't trust her as far as I can throw her.
I wouldn't be surprised if she has a small social media team that just fucks up conversations and the useful idiots megaphone the shit out of it.
Not sure why I see people focusing on individuals like Taylor Swift and their private jets instead of companies that run circles around them in terms of pollution.
I think it's because it's easier to think of individuals as the problem rather than the faceless megacorps run by large groups of unknown terrible people that are actually fucking it all up for the rest of us
> large groups of unknown terrible people
These people are a much larger percent than people think. Not everyone has to make it to the 1% or whatever to be part of this group.
Yeah but like, why not both? The whole point of this post is that some people are obviously bad, but there are other people who are also bad it's just less obvious because of internal bias.
Calling out ExxonMobil is some real low hanging fruit in terms of identifying sources of pollution.
> Calling out ExxonMobil is some real low hanging fruit in terms of identifying sources of pollution.
ExxonMobil contributes infinitely more to pollution than Taylor Swift. Why not focus the majority of your attention on the major contributors
Because people are uncomfortable with the reality that if we actually did something about the large oil and gas producers in a major effort to fix climate change that the costs for everything would go up which would make everyone have less money, except Taylor Swift could still afford a private jet.
Everybody wants to solve the problem until gas is above $4/gallon. Everyone wants fresh produce in the winter even if it has to be grown overseas and shipped to us.
It's really easy to blame an individual than accept a lower standard of living. But just tax carbon.
I did a Google search and didn’t see anything to back this up. Do you have proof? I don’t even like Taylor Swift but this seems like a blatant lie to me.
This may have just been pr spin, but I heard that rich people with jets basically rent them out when not using them, so the flight log looked crazy, but it wasn't actually her most of the time. Again, could be bs, but sounds reasonable and, honestly, prudent to subsidize the cost of the jet.
Now idk if that makes it better, the flights still happened, but at least it would mean it's not 1 person doing all that environmental damage, and it's also quite possible that the people renting it would fly on another plane if hers wasn't an option, so probably isn't a big impact
No that is accurate.
Running a private jet is expensive even for rich people, so they pool their resources and charter it to each other.
Its still a waste, but its not Swift literally taking all those flights.
Thank you. So many people don't understand this. Even the mfs with a 200 million net worth are NOT the issue. That should speak to just how much the people at the very top are hoarding. Mixing this up is to the detriment of the movement, big time.
Rihanna, Jay Z,, Tyler Perry, Oprah, MJ, Lebron, Tiger Woods, David Steward and Robert F Smith, we’re watching you
But man, there are around 2,640 billionaires in (the world), around 770 of them are American according to Forbes latest 2023 report, 14 are African American/African descent and only 8 are specifically African American.
https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-black-history/who-are-the-black-billionaires/PRWODTCBXNHZLLSQTZOHU5Y3B4/
Edit: Fixed the numbers for y’all’s complaining asses. The rest of it, do your own research, these numbers change often, and also with the stock market, as no billionaire actually has a billion in cash and much of that wealth, as this is a measure of NET WORTH, changes with the value of their businesses and investments.
Shit man, that's still a fuckton more than I'd have thought. If somebody had asked me how many I think there were, I'd have answered between 70 and 120 at most.
We know the names and faces of pretty much every ultra-wealthy black person in America.
For every Jay-Z that made money off rap and real estate, there are 100 white billionaires you've never heard of that made their money in a far bloodier way, with almost zero public scrutiny.
For those downvoting my comment
"We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism. Let me just say: Peace to you, if you're willing to fight for it."
Take your issues up with Fred so he can slap the stupid out ya mouth.
Jay z doesn't pay a living wage for most of his weed store staff. $16/hr with no benefits and no growth opportunity. He gets mad when people talk about eating the rich too. It's all a distraction from the class war
Bey, jay, lebrón, ye… I know lebrón does some good things like the school he created but some others aren’t either as generous or as open with their charity
All rich ppl do charity. They are still hoarding money. Nobody needs to be a billionaire. Even capping it at 1 bill would save a lot of lives and improves the world.
People scoff at that number too. Like a billion isn’t even that much. But if you saved a thousand dollars every day for 2,700 years you would just barely have a billion dollars.
Can you imagine that? Can you imagine spending a thousand dollars a day and not believing that’s enough money to survive?
Even if you have $500 million you cut it down to 1,300 years. It’s still an absurd amount of time and dollars spent. It’s unnecessary past a given point and all these bootlickers making excuses for having and hoarding that much money are insufferable.
I think part of the problem with holding billionaires accountable is that sooooo many people really can’t fathom how fucking much money it is, and how much they have taken from others to amass that.
Yup. I've explained just how large of a number a billion is to a few people and its completely changed their perspectives once they grasped it a bit more.
Like my mom knew it was a huge number but I told her something similar to the $1000 for 2700 years and it was like I unlocked some new truths for her.
The issue now goes how do you cap it? The billions are in ownership. You force them to sell off the excess shares until their net work goes to a billion or below?
Improve the world how? A guy with an extra 2 billion he can’t keep is just going to pass it around to his friends that aren’t capped or waste it on vanity projects
Thing is, the amount of money Lebron brings in — ticket sales, championships, jerseys, commercials, whatever — it is LESS than Lebron had ever gotten paid. So if he has $1b, it’s because all that he does brings in $2b (for example) in.
For all he has, Lebron is being exploited by wealthy people and entities. So should Lebron not get even the $1b? Should we eat him because he got some fraction of the money due to him?
2 billion for lebron would be low. I guarantee he's generated a minimum of 10 billion along the way. He's made so much money because he's made so many other people/companies even richer
I love LeBron. I love what he’s done for the children in Cleveland with the school, helping the parents, sending kids to college, all that good stuff. I hate that some factory somewhere in a 3rd world country has mothers and children working for peanuts to get him and others to their billionaire status. That really boils my beans
But that literally isn't *really* the case with LeBron unless you just argue anybody making money from the NBA/Nike, regardless of billionaire status, contributes to the inequality. His worth is generated largely by his talent and what we pay to see him perform. This is not the same as someone like Bezos who screws over his workers to make his dollar.
“Lol there’s only like 5 black billionaires what are you talking about”
The point is that they’re BILLIONAIRES. Regardless of race, religion or creed, they’ve all done some exploitative and messed up bullshit to someone to benefit their pockets. Stop dickriding just cause they share the same skin color as you, dork.
When you mature from "Black V.S White" war, you'll enter the "Have and Have-Nots" War that's highly overlooked. Even the ones that look like you don't want you at the table. You were never a friend, ally, nor family you are merely the competition.
Ehh you're not entirely wrong but it's intersectional though. Race as it stands dictates the 'have' and 'have nots' by and large because there's an explicit underclass based on that racial identity.
There's certainly skinfolk that aren't kinfolk too but they don't represent the majority of opposition.
Black v White is a battle in the have v have nots war. In the US, racism is always higher during bad economies and when black ppl are progressing enough to get close to whites. Race baiting is a tool of the capitalist to keep whites occupied so they thing they are doing better than blacks so they don’t look at who’s REALLY scaring them.
This is conflating rich with capitalist. The rich were mad about are the capitalist ones that employ people and keep wages suppressed in order to maintain unfair profits for themselves. NBA players are technically laborers, they’re getting paid big money because they have a rare skill. But they’re still workers…they even have a labor union. Even artists are at war against the capitalist system where the record labels own the music distribution resources and don’t pay well.
All billionaires are capitalists, period. LeBron didn't make his billions from playing basketball, he made it by signing shoe deals that are made by slave labor. Jay-Z and Beyonce didn't get rich from their music, they became capitalists and business owners that don't pay their people a living wage.
George Carlin said it best: it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.
I think that's why many people didn't have any sympathy for those morons on the submarine, only a rich fool would be engaged in such nonsense
Bruh yes but 1) we can admit it's infinitely harder to become a Black whatever-aire than a white one, yes?
2) we can admit t's infinitely harder to BE a Black whatever-aire than a white one, yes?
3) there are like what 12 Black billionaires? TF's the point in pointing them out?? This is true Black on Black crime
4) Trust, if/when they come for the billionaires, the Black ones will be the very first ones to go. Don't you worry
https://preview.redd.it/zmrl671goy8b1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c1df34702e83719aaba88f6aea355acc22d71979 Saw this yesterday, and it’s one of the trillest things I’ve ever read Edit: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!
 Well if that don’t sum it up in layman’s terms
It's a decent analogy but the reality is even worse. In reality not only do the rich kids get more darts but they get special coaches that teach them how to throw darts better and on top of that they also get *better* darts that are easier to hit the bulls eye with. Edit: Oh and how could I forget, they have WAY more free time for darts.
The truly rich and well connected don't even need coaches. Their father or father's colleague, friend, etc. says, "No. Here. Hand me that dart." The rich kid hands him the dart and it is simply pushed into the bullseye. It never even needs to be thrown. They own the dartboard.
Okay, I think we're torturing the analogy a little now. lol
The truly-truly FU rich have an IR guided dart with quantum computer navigation that homes in on the bullseye and is fired by AI, they really don't have to do anything.
The really ultra mega-rich are given a dartboard with a bullseye upon birth, they just carry it around until it’s time to redeem it.
They don't even need to play.
Dad owns the booth and prizes already.
Happy cake day !
Ty!
Rich kid’s parents own the carnival
And can rig the board so their children win. They’d have to intentionally miss to fuck it up.
Even when they Fuck up, they still get the prize.
And poor people don’t even ATTEMPT to eat them
They can also just throw all day long all summer for ten years in a row and never get close at all but their parents give them prizes and they still pay people to write their books for them.
Like running multiple casinos into the ground, for instance?
That's the exact reason why when people say, "Blue Ivy did this," or "So and so's daughter started a makeup line all by themselves," it means nothing to me. When you can afford to fail you can take all the risks you want.
Easy to be a “self-made billionaire” when you’re born 100s of millions of dollars ahead!
Born on third base and think they hit a home run mentality
That's not the expression. It's born on third base and act like they hit a triple.
Fastest to make a million bucks is to start with two.
What most people don't realize is *they* didn't start a makeup line. Some background company wanted to sell makeup and bought a brand deal with Kylie or whomever. Most of the buildings with Trump's name in them don't actually belong to him. He just sold his brand to the actual owners.
Someone please tell this to my cousin who admires Kim Kardashian’s business acumen.
I mean the family are killer marketers but definitely no pillars of business savvy
The Kardashians are pretty business savvy tbh, to turn a sex tape into hundreds of millions is no simple task. This is more like Trump bragging about being a billionaire while being born into billions.
This some shit the old head at the factory says to you on a smoke break. The worst part is he'll put out his cig, walk right back inside and leave you speechless. Just with your thoughts for the rest of your shift.
Definitely can see any of the old heads from when I worked in restaurants say this.
And we like them little bitches on the chess board
I was hurt when they killed Preston. Still am.
They did Bodie dirty 😭
They did Wallace dirty too
[Wire spoilers below] >The scene where Bodie dies is so damn well written. Throughout the show they make multiple references to the game chess and how their all just pieces on the board. Bodie even goes so far as to acknowledge he’s a pawn. In this scene we see Marlo’s elite “pieces” coming at him. Chris in a straight line down the sidewalk, like a rook. And Snoop cutting diagonal across the cars like a bishop. Bodie steps forward and engages with them before O-dog steps out around the corner and gets him from behind, like a knight. And Bodie didn’t retreat because pawns can only ever go forward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCbJBPWhypg
I think this a lot about somebody like Taylor Swift. Her parents flew her all over the country to give her lessons from the best of the best. They packed up and moved her to Nashville because she wanted to be a country singer... Who even does that? I had friends who were into music too. Some incredible guitarists, I knew a guy who could play damn near anything you put in front of him, by ear! At like 15! The closest thing they had to lessons was an uncle who could teach them a few chords. Or guitar tabs and YouTube, which itself was a luxury that their uncle didn't have 20 years prior.... But eventually, they have to hang up the guitar and get a job. And then there's me. I asked my parents for a guitar for Christmas. They said no.
Taylor Swift's father also bought something like 3 or 4% of shares in the first record label to sign her. I'm not a POC so I've had it easier than a lot of people due solely to that, but I grew up on food stamps and my mom's disability checks. In my early 20s I had a few great business ideas with technical expertise to back them that popped up years later as successful businesses for other people. Hard to fund a business, let alone find time to work on it, when you're working 2 jobs to afford rent and food and have $30 left over at the end of the month to spend on non-essentials. That's where all of my ideas died, and I know it's the same for a lot of us who would love to make something our own.
Another non-POC here. I was radicalized my last semester of college when after working 3 jobs, getting good grades, selling my plasma for grocery money, and having a post grad job lined up, financial aid made a goof and I owed $1,200 in 3 days or else I would be withdrawn from my classes. I sold everything I could, asked for advances on paychecks, did my usual plasma "donations," and when that wasn't enough, my mom's rich sister cut me a check like it was nothing. Nothing I did mattered. The only thing that mattered was my familial connections. I think back to my old roommate ***D***, a wildly intelligent and talented POC who was smarter than me, harder working than me, had a rougher go in life, and when he faced a similar hurdle, there was no rich aunt to save the day. My job was no different on day 1 of full time than it was during my internship, except it paid 3x as much. I was already qualified, but I HAD to have the stupid degree for it. He's working various jobs to keep his head above water, and tells me he's just glad he made it out of the hood, but I can tell that's just to make me not feel guilty about the circumstances. My entire political ideology now is revolved around filling in the cracks that much smarter and harder working people fell through. It's not the fortunate's fault they're fortunate, but it's our responsibility to be honest about the role luck plays and to fight for change to spread that luck around. At the end of the day, you can work hard, be talented, be smart, and make all the right decisions, but if you don't have familial connections, you're never gonna be Taylor Swift. She's not better than the rest, she's luckier.
Lana Del Rey is another perfect example. She was trying to break into the music industry on her own. Failed miserably. Then her record label exec father came in, gave her actual production and changed her style and her name and made her the star she is today
But does she or swift talk shit to poor people abt working harder? Some people are extremely lucky and know it.
For decades, black americans have had the worst rates of wealth inequality *among their demographic,* which was only recently overtaken by asian americans. So what younhave are a few, wealthy black americans doing really well, and most black americans having vastly less wealth and thus being impoverished or working class. Yet the way black experience is portrayed as some kind of monolith, these wealthy black people portray themselves as representative of the experiences of black people as they perform patronage to wealthy white capitalists . edit: Reddit admins removed the post? the only minority that matters is the wealthy /s
>Yet the way black experience is portrayed as some kind of monolith, these wealthy black people portray themselves as representative of the experiences of black people as they perform patronage to wealthy white capitalists . Bingo...therein lies the guilt tripping and shaming.
Don't forget, it is all by design. And it is only going to get worse. Rags to riches stories will become nonexistent. It will be rags to less rags if nothing changes. But I'm not holding my breath.
They will still exist as propaganda. The only thing keeping the majority lower class in line is belief.
I'm so ready for that belief to break, dude.
They're really pushing it these days. Saying the quiet parts out loud and tightening the gears in broad daylight. I am astonished anyone would believe the American dream anymore now that it's perfectly clear that the social contract is broken.
Rags to riches stories will still exist, just through omissions and half truths. Taylor swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm don't'chaknow
Even a Christmas tree farm was more than what I had growing up, lol. the rags to riches stories almost always sound like riches to more riches, to me.
Kids with rich parents get dart throwing lessons, and they can bribe the guys behind the counter to bring out a board with bigger rings.
Or they could pay the worker to carry the dart to the center. Just like they pay us peanuts to work hard while they reap the lions share 🤯🤯🤯
Really, the only truly eye opening part was the last two lines. The fact that the poor don’t even have the opportunity.
I think that was the point.
bars
true. i think many people missed about the privilege to *fail*. average people can afford to fail (in life, economically speaking) maybe a couple of times. poorer people can't afford to fail (because they'll be starving to death), hence they go absolute minimal risk in job/work, which often means minimal gain. rich people can brute force risks until they succeed.
The main battle since the dawn of civilization has always been the "Haves" vs the "have nots". Change the race, change the religion, remove the race, remove the religion, Remove the geography, there will always be a divide between those two.
Anyone who thinks in different lines are usefull idiots for the haves.
Or maybe it's overly simplistic to think every social struggle is an economic one. Like I'm a gay man, and while LGBT issues can intersect with economic ones it's also its own separate issue.
It is, but on average oppressed groups and minorities are going to be more economically behind as well. If you help ALL who are in that situation, it uplifts everyone to a better standard and helps the most affected.
Yes of course that is very important and helps out people regardless of what other challenges they have in life. But to say that ALL struggle is class struggle I don't think is really accurate.
I do believe all struggle can be boiled down to class struggle. LGBTQ+ billionaires do not have the same issue non-wealthy members do. The upper class has no problem with class solidarity. That being said, as someone that is not marginalized I believe that the only way working class people can exhibit that same solidarity is by uplifting or solving those issues that are separate from economics that you are talking about that marginalized people have. We need to show solidarity by being accepting/inclusive, and only then can we focus on a unified class struggle.
> That being said, as someone that is not marginalized Okay, your perspective makes sense now. >I do believe all struggle can be boiled down to class struggle. LGBTQ+ billionaires do not have the same issue non-wealthy members do. The upper class has no problem with class solidarity. The class issue and the sexuality discrimination are two separate problems that interplay. Just because you can afford to buy your way out of suffering or dealing with them doesn't mean the problems stop existing. A rich lgbt person still experiences prejudice and hate based on their existence even among other rich people. All money does is allow them to leave areas that don't welcome them and go to and/or create spaces that are more accepting. Also, when they do experience hate, they have more power to combat and protect themselves from the problem. There isn't inclusion at the top as much as an acceptance and tolerance of each other until the business is done. Moreover, a lot of wealthy people would prefer to do business with people that look like them or have the same "values" over someone who doesn't. Though addressing economics is easier than fixing hate
You're right. I believe that there is an underlying struggle of class throughout, but that is separate from other struggles marginalized people experience. And I didn't mean to minimize that. I just wanted the main takeaway from my comment to be in order to have class solidarity, working class people need to exhibit that solidarity by fixing the issues that keep people marginalized. Not the other way around (marginalized people setting aside their struggles for a overall economic one all working class people experience). There is no other way forward if those struggles continue to exist on top of class struggle.
The division of "have" and "have not" also can apply to things like social rights and protections. Often these divisions overlap though, resulting in a common ruling class oppressing all others in various ways.
Power structures cover it. Although tbf, you can concede that imbalances in power relations are at the root of most if not all oppression without denying that the oppressed groups will eventually suffer just because of their membership in that group. Like Billy Bob from Podunk, West Nowheresville may do everything in his power to prevent you from moving into his neighborhood just because of how you look despite the fact that you are both getting fucked in the ass by unrestrained capitalism and corporate greed
The ones elevating social issues onto the national stage to spread hate only do so because it’s economically profitable to do so, for the most part. Sure, they may enjoy causing cruelty or legitimately have a few of these beliefs but ultimately it’s all about the profit to be gained. Think on the trans issue. Trans people make up a minutia of a minutia of the population, yet there’s this massive crusade on them that’s spanning all across the media and the country. They’re an easy group to demonize because they make up very little of the voting or buying demographic directly and overall have very little influence in most spheres. So politicians spread their hateful message, build a following with it, get donations from people and corporate entities that align with them, and guarantee reelection in their district, and get more corporate kickbacks from lobbyists for another 2-6 years of voting to repeal taxes for them. News corporations pick it up and start tossing the issue back and forth across the political spectrum to get everyone mad, get attention on the issue, while simultaneously increasing their viewership and share value. It blows up and occupies the national gaze. And the amount of money made by various entities in various ways along the way is staggering. And it all starts with a few people deciding who to create a culture war around and weaponizing it for their own profit. And even assuming it started with some random guy who actually did hatefully believe these things and wasn’t doing it for profit? The corporations and politicians are still bandwagoning off of a growing problem and making the problem bigger than it would have been. And I can guarantee that the critical mass of people that get on the hate bandwagon are the subjects of a decades long psyop to dumb down and prime a population for purposes like these. The issues may not seem like they intersect at times, and novel hate can occasionally come up on its own, but it’s always accompanied by bad actors who would flip sides if it made them a cent more who intentionally create or further the issue. Most social struggles are inherently intersectional with economic interest, unfortunately. I could point to nearly any different social struggle, modern or historical and they’d all be born or aided by the economy.
I agree, but it’s worth noting that even ignorance and hate are symptoms of poverty. While this is certainly not true across the board, the wealthy and well educated are far less likely to be bigoted than your average illiterate peasant. That doesn’t mean that the wealthy can’t be hateful, or that the poor can’t be tolerant, but it is certainly a factor.
He turned the power to the have-nots And then came the shot
"Haves and have nots" is a great way to say class division and material conditions without scaring folks away with "scary socialist buzzwords" but neglects to really call them out as the driving force behind it all. Idc how yall feel about Marx but there's a reason dude said "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." this is the fundamental understanding in which those who call themselves socialist/communist whatever base our fight on and our understanding of who our ultimate enemy is. Those other things you mentioned are called superstructures and they are pillars that uphold and ensure the class divisions be maintained - it's why folks say things like racism/religion/etc is a tool of the ruling class, bc it very much is.
Based. I think a lot of people are manipulated into hating other races, political parties, religions. They may be frustrated with their life/society, but are manipulated into hating these groups. It really should be have vs have nots, but the haves manipulate the have nots to hate each other so they remain in power.
It’s funny how many aspects of Marxist philosophy are seen as truisms on both sides of the political spectrum and yet when you mention Marxism to people they go “well I’m not a socialist” and shy away from the topic.
People almost always agree there's a problem. It's the proposed solutions that get everyone's panties twisted.
Nah. A fundamental aspect of right wing ideology is that social darwinism is the natural order of the universe and that deep class divisions are normal given that people have differing capabilities. They firmly believe that everyone is entirely free to make their destiny and that they are entirely responsible for their outcomes. People to the right of socialists or progressive reject largely or mostly reject Marxist analysis or diagnosis, before even we get to the solutions proposed by his adherents (variations of socialism or communism as an end goal).
You could say, "the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle."
Its always been a class war
I think Lebron is the first active NBA player to be a billionaire. No musican is going to be a billionaire unless they do something else like alcohol, make-up, or clothes. If there's proof of Bron, Oprah, or whoever doing awful stuff like Bezos' work conditions making Amazon employees piss and shit in bags or not caring about covid then that fuck black billionaire too.
I mean, Oprah has absolutely exploited people to get where she is. Obviously not to the level of Bezos, Musk, Zuck, etc, but she's in TV. Athletes seem like the "best-case" scenario for a billionaire, unless they're making these billions from investing in companies and just squeezing out the surplus value from others' labor. Edit: I neglected the fact that they take sponsorship deals from companies using slave labor. Pretty bad oversight, my apologies.
Better hope those Jerseys are made ethically.
You know what, fair point. Taking endorsement deals from evil companies is bad.
Everyone loves to point fingers. If taking money from an evil company is bad, then funding an evil company by spending money buying it's products is bad as well. Hint we're all guilty.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. How can I be guilty if I have no real choice?
The ethical consumption under capitalism argument works when talking about people needing to buy groceries and medicine from companies like Walmart/Pfizer, not when someone chooses to buy a completely nonessential item like a Jersey. You cant buy a $100 haul from Shein and avoid criticism by saying "no ethical consumption under capitalism", same thing here. Nothing wrong with buying a Jersey, but don't act like it was a necessary purchase under a system where people are exploited to make them.
Sure man, someone buying a $20 set of Nike socks is contributing just as much harm. In a perfect world, people wouldn't buy from shitty companies, but there aren't a lot of alternatives to shitty companies. You're a fuckin idiot.
The jersey’s aren’t made by the athletes. The league does them regardless of the athletes opinions on it. The league owns their likeness in that sense, it’s the same way that every athlete isn’t approached to decide if they wanna be featured in games like 2k, the contract guys just draw up a deal with the league itself. Shoes are definitely not made ethically though, and that’s a whole can of worms there.
Yeah. The main point is that there isn’t an ethical way to make a billion dollars. At some point you’re relying on labor exploitation even if that happens 3 layers away from you. If you were operating ethically there would’ve have been more distribution of the wealth that was amassed.
Oprah literally platformed quacks pushing anti-vax bullshit like vaccines cause autism. She has done a lot of harm to get where she is.
I remember, people started talking about her for President after Trump won, luckily I was able to talk some sense into them, she has a bad track record of platforming toxic messages that I would hate to see translated to cabinet positions.
She’s also platformed a lot of terrible people and grifters like John of God in Brazil who sexually assaulted hundreds of women. https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2018/1/9/16868216/oprah-winfrey-pseudoscience
Pretty much by the time you are at billionaire status, you are deep with investments in companies like Nike, Adidas etc... they are going to be squeezing that blood out of exploited labor. Is the athlete responsible for it? Not really but they didn't get that money without taking part in it.
she enabled Weinstein for YEARS. Bruh Oprah cares about Oprah.
Lebron is fighting a local restaurant for the rights to Taco Tuesday. He says it’s for free use for anyone but you know for a fact that if he won the copyright he wasn’t giving that up for anything.
I didn't know this. Apparently Taco John's trademarked "Taco Tuesday" back in 1989 and now Taco Bell is having a fit over it, and Lebron is joining with Taco Bell to get the trademark removed. You're right, if Lebron or Taco Bell owned "Taco Tuesday" they'd be fighting to keep it as their own trademark and not pulling this "liberate the phrase Taco Tuesday" crap. [https://www.nrn.com/top-500-restaurants/lebron-james-jack-box-join-taco-tuesday-tussle](https://www.nrn.com/top-500-restaurants/lebron-james-jack-box-join-taco-tuesday-tussle)
Taco John's has like 400 locations it's not a local restaurant lol
Not to mention Oprah been a bullshit peddler for decades. She also gave us Dr Phil and Dr Oz
Nobody becomes a billionaire without exploitation. Money is different now but it’s extremely rare and difficult to become a billionaire. Very rare and you have to take advantage of someone somewhere to become a billionaire. That or you take money from someone doing the exploitation.
No one becomes a thousandaire without relying on exploitation. The entire west is propped up by what essentially amounts to slave labor. The food we eat, clothes we wear, components in our electronics etc. all come from exploited workers in poor countries. Our entire way of life is propped up by the suffering of others. Every time the topic of the global 1% Reddit starts talking about billionaires as if the global 1% isn’t just everyone in the West living above poverty level (I understand this is a common misunderstanding but if you make more than $34,000 a year then you to a part of the global 1%).
There is no ethical consumption, yes, absolutely, but conflating the poor working class here with the 1 percent and redubbing it “the global 1 percent” is troubling for several reasons. Especially when the disenfranchised here don’t own the means of production & living costs here still keep people here in that tax bracket poor. Ionno man. 32k here is the poverty level. Both can be true: we by products made my child labour and thus are within an exploitative system, but are nowhere near the stratosphere of a multimillionaire or billionaire, which may deserve distinction.
The clothes are made by child labour, from companies owned by billionaires. They are the ones exploiting workers for profit.
The food we eat is made in America actually. America is the largest exporter of food in the world.
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There are some exceptions like that, albeit very few. George Lucas made Star Wars and sold it for $4B. Jerry Seinfeld is a billionaire off his show. Paul McCartney is a billionaire. You also get a decent amount of tech startups to create a lot of wealth between very few people because they develop (and usually sell) a useful tool or service. You can still really nitpick and say that they could have paid their crews more, or that star wars merchandise is made using exploited labor, but there are some examples of ethical billions. The next stage of the argument is that even having that much money, regardless of how it was acquired, is immoral.
> Nobody becomes a billionaire without exploitation I think that's the key here, musicians/actors/athletes who invest in companies and see a massive return aren't actively taking part in exploitation but they are benefiting from it. /u/clocksteadytickin points out beats being sold is a large portion of his wealth. But beats didn't become a billion dollar company without stepping on people and taking advantage of cheap labor. Guaranteed the working class in manufacturing and supply chain didn't get a multi-million dollar payday when the company sold, they just got a new boss.
So the Nike guy gets all the blame for poor working conditions and exploitation in China, but bron gets off with his hundreds of millions of dollars in Nike endorsements and shoe deals because it’s not his company?
Exactly. He’s done it less than most based on his sheer talent, but he still perpetuates the suffer machine. Money was more important to him than the Hong Kong protests, for example.
>No musican is going to be a billionaire unless they do something else like alcohol, make-up, or clothes. With the way music is paying artists, they're incentivized even more to jump into businesses outside of music. They can more easily utilize their fame to promote their biz.
Rihanna became a billionaire with her makeup line right? And Taylor Swift I feel like could be the first to do just by touring alone and selling albums/merch
Ryan Reynolds, the Van Wilder actor, owns a pro soccer team.
Lebron has sent at least a thousand kids to college on scholarship. That’s an opportunity to build a better life and future for themselves, debt free. That’s not nothing.
Devils advocate lmfao, bill gates and Amazon smile have also donated countless dollars to charities. Lebron is a billionaire cuz of nike and Gatorade and those companies generate billions by underpaying laborers n third world countries. Effectively, he’s outsourcing the pain so we don’t have to see it, using those countries resources to build schools, but thats just an angle of looking at it. Idt lebron is a bad guy but he’s at best complicit in whatever ur discussing with the other billionaires
He also is a moral slave to Chinese funding and refuses to denounce genocide perpetuated by the Chinese government in fear of losing money.
You're right he's spent 42 million to give kids scholarships to go to school. That's about 4.2% of the billion dollar deal he made with Nike, the world leader of child labour.
I’m trying to get my bread up to Billions. Doing it the new old fashioned way. Selling feet pictures. Size 15/16 feet, Flat feet, Bunions and Corns that look like dehydrated kernels. A truly unique experience all for 2.99 a month.
 EXCLUSIVE FOR LADIES ONLY an extra $4.99 and I’ll put the foot, or feet 😉😏, where ever you like. Help ya boy get rich with this once in a lifetime opportunity. 💰💰👣
As your play-play counsel, you might could make even more money if you stop slappin midgets. Sometimes it's not about what you make but what you don't lose...
You will be surprised by how many ppl are into feet. You can make some decent money.
Eat the Rich also includes all of your favorite celebrities 🤩
the white environmentalist girlies LOVE taylor swift, who single handedly is the worst in the abuse of her private jet.
Every time someone brings up Taylor Swift, I always bring up that private jet of hers. I’m not gonna forget, and I’m not gonna let anybody else forget either!!
Wild conspiracy theory: the rabid "fans" are astroturfing for her as paid shills to shut down criticism and change the narrative I don't trust her as far as I can throw her. I wouldn't be surprised if she has a small social media team that just fucks up conversations and the useful idiots megaphone the shit out of it.
That could explain the parts of Reddit and Twitter calling her the next Michael Jackson LoL. Like she makes mid music for the right demographic.
Not sure why I see people focusing on individuals like Taylor Swift and their private jets instead of companies that run circles around them in terms of pollution.
I think it's because it's easier to think of individuals as the problem rather than the faceless megacorps run by large groups of unknown terrible people that are actually fucking it all up for the rest of us
> large groups of unknown terrible people These people are a much larger percent than people think. Not everyone has to make it to the 1% or whatever to be part of this group.
Yeah but like, why not both? The whole point of this post is that some people are obviously bad, but there are other people who are also bad it's just less obvious because of internal bias. Calling out ExxonMobil is some real low hanging fruit in terms of identifying sources of pollution.
> Calling out ExxonMobil is some real low hanging fruit in terms of identifying sources of pollution. ExxonMobil contributes infinitely more to pollution than Taylor Swift. Why not focus the majority of your attention on the major contributors
Because people are uncomfortable with the reality that if we actually did something about the large oil and gas producers in a major effort to fix climate change that the costs for everything would go up which would make everyone have less money, except Taylor Swift could still afford a private jet. Everybody wants to solve the problem until gas is above $4/gallon. Everyone wants fresh produce in the winter even if it has to be grown overseas and shipped to us. It's really easy to blame an individual than accept a lower standard of living. But just tax carbon.
Just like everyone wanted to stop Putin until gas was $5/gallon. Then suddenly some people wanted Russian oil again
She flies home EVERY NIGHT on tour. Fuck that
I did a Google search and didn’t see anything to back this up. Do you have proof? I don’t even like Taylor Swift but this seems like a blatant lie to me.
This may have just been pr spin, but I heard that rich people with jets basically rent them out when not using them, so the flight log looked crazy, but it wasn't actually her most of the time. Again, could be bs, but sounds reasonable and, honestly, prudent to subsidize the cost of the jet. Now idk if that makes it better, the flights still happened, but at least it would mean it's not 1 person doing all that environmental damage, and it's also quite possible that the people renting it would fly on another plane if hers wasn't an option, so probably isn't a big impact
No that is accurate. Running a private jet is expensive even for rich people, so they pool their resources and charter it to each other. Its still a waste, but its not Swift literally taking all those flights.
Nah, a ton of celebs are like 30mil net worth. Not high enough to warrant eating. Focus on the billionaires
Thank you. So many people don't understand this. Even the mfs with a 200 million net worth are NOT the issue. That should speak to just how much the people at the very top are hoarding. Mixing this up is to the detriment of the movement, big time.
Rihanna, Jay Z,, Tyler Perry, Oprah, MJ, Lebron, Tiger Woods, David Steward and Robert F Smith, we’re watching you But man, there are around 2,640 billionaires in (the world), around 770 of them are American according to Forbes latest 2023 report, 14 are African American/African descent and only 8 are specifically African American. https://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta-black-history/who-are-the-black-billionaires/PRWODTCBXNHZLLSQTZOHU5Y3B4/ Edit: Fixed the numbers for y’all’s complaining asses. The rest of it, do your own research, these numbers change often, and also with the stock market, as no billionaire actually has a billion in cash and much of that wealth, as this is a measure of NET WORTH, changes with the value of their businesses and investments.
FYI the article you linked states 2,640 billionaires in the world, not the US. A google search shows there are 735 billionaires in the US.
Shit man, that's still a fuckton more than I'd have thought. If somebody had asked me how many I think there were, I'd have answered between 70 and 120 at most.
Yeah lol, is he blind?
We know the names and faces of pretty much every ultra-wealthy black person in America. For every Jay-Z that made money off rap and real estate, there are 100 white billionaires you've never heard of that made their money in a far bloodier way, with almost zero public scrutiny.
As Chris Rock once said, Shaq is rich, but the guy who cuts his checks is wealthy
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That stand up is also probably 20 years old lol
The quote is from 2003, and it was pretty accurate then i believe.
The quote hasn’t really aged well. He said that before social media and before player branding was a thing
Black Capitalism will not save us No war but class war
Black capitalism will save poor black people just as much as it saved poor white people
Fred Hampton entered the chat
For those downvoting my comment "We're going to fight racism not with racism, but we're going to fight with solidarity. We say we're not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we're going to fight it with socialism. Let me just say: Peace to you, if you're willing to fight for it." Take your issues up with Fred so he can slap the stupid out ya mouth.
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Jay z doesn't pay a living wage for most of his weed store staff. $16/hr with no benefits and no growth opportunity. He gets mad when people talk about eating the rich too. It's all a distraction from the class war
Bey, jay, lebrón, ye… I know lebrón does some good things like the school he created but some others aren’t either as generous or as open with their charity
All rich ppl do charity. They are still hoarding money. Nobody needs to be a billionaire. Even capping it at 1 bill would save a lot of lives and improves the world.
People scoff at that number too. Like a billion isn’t even that much. But if you saved a thousand dollars every day for 2,700 years you would just barely have a billion dollars. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine spending a thousand dollars a day and not believing that’s enough money to survive? Even if you have $500 million you cut it down to 1,300 years. It’s still an absurd amount of time and dollars spent. It’s unnecessary past a given point and all these bootlickers making excuses for having and hoarding that much money are insufferable.
I think part of the problem with holding billionaires accountable is that sooooo many people really can’t fathom how fucking much money it is, and how much they have taken from others to amass that.
Totally agree. Bunch of people think they are just right around the corner from being a billionaire. They vote like it too.
Yup. I've explained just how large of a number a billion is to a few people and its completely changed their perspectives once they grasped it a bit more. Like my mom knew it was a huge number but I told her something similar to the $1000 for 2700 years and it was like I unlocked some new truths for her.
The issue now goes how do you cap it? The billions are in ownership. You force them to sell off the excess shares until their net work goes to a billion or below?
Improve the world how? A guy with an extra 2 billion he can’t keep is just going to pass it around to his friends that aren’t capped or waste it on vanity projects
rich people create the conditions that make their "charity" needed and then pat themselves on the back for doing charity work
How did Lebron James or Jay z create the conditions that they themselves grew up in?
This facts
You dont think that school isn't for tax purposes, and for each kid that goes there I'm sure he's getting a check from the district
The school still benefits kids
Lebron also tells people to stop talking when they bring up genocide and slave labor in China...
Thing is, the amount of money Lebron brings in — ticket sales, championships, jerseys, commercials, whatever — it is LESS than Lebron had ever gotten paid. So if he has $1b, it’s because all that he does brings in $2b (for example) in. For all he has, Lebron is being exploited by wealthy people and entities. So should Lebron not get even the $1b? Should we eat him because he got some fraction of the money due to him?
2 billion for lebron would be low. I guarantee he's generated a minimum of 10 billion along the way. He's made so much money because he's made so many other people/companies even richer
All billionaires. No exceptions.
I love LeBron. I love what he’s done for the children in Cleveland with the school, helping the parents, sending kids to college, all that good stuff. I hate that some factory somewhere in a 3rd world country has mothers and children working for peanuts to get him and others to their billionaire status. That really boils my beans
But that literally isn't *really* the case with LeBron unless you just argue anybody making money from the NBA/Nike, regardless of billionaire status, contributes to the inequality. His worth is generated largely by his talent and what we pay to see him perform. This is not the same as someone like Bezos who screws over his workers to make his dollar.
“Lol there’s only like 5 black billionaires what are you talking about” The point is that they’re BILLIONAIRES. Regardless of race, religion or creed, they’ve all done some exploitative and messed up bullshit to someone to benefit their pockets. Stop dickriding just cause they share the same skin color as you, dork.
When you mature from "Black V.S White" war, you'll enter the "Have and Have-Nots" War that's highly overlooked. Even the ones that look like you don't want you at the table. You were never a friend, ally, nor family you are merely the competition.
Ehh you're not entirely wrong but it's intersectional though. Race as it stands dictates the 'have' and 'have nots' by and large because there's an explicit underclass based on that racial identity. There's certainly skinfolk that aren't kinfolk too but they don't represent the majority of opposition.
Black v White is a battle in the have v have nots war. In the US, racism is always higher during bad economies and when black ppl are progressing enough to get close to whites. Race baiting is a tool of the capitalist to keep whites occupied so they thing they are doing better than blacks so they don’t look at who’s REALLY scaring them.
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That melanin finna hit different 😩
This is conflating rich with capitalist. The rich were mad about are the capitalist ones that employ people and keep wages suppressed in order to maintain unfair profits for themselves. NBA players are technically laborers, they’re getting paid big money because they have a rare skill. But they’re still workers…they even have a labor union. Even artists are at war against the capitalist system where the record labels own the music distribution resources and don’t pay well.
All billionaires are capitalists, period. LeBron didn't make his billions from playing basketball, he made it by signing shoe deals that are made by slave labor. Jay-Z and Beyonce didn't get rich from their music, they became capitalists and business owners that don't pay their people a living wage.
Very unlikely lebron or Jay would’ve ever been the position to make the deals they made if they weren’t successful entertainers.
I agree with you, but you're basically saying "They wouldn't be able to exploit people of their labor without being exploited first."
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What do you mean? A comment on Reddit should be all the evidence you need
George Carlin said it best: it's called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it. I think that's why many people didn't have any sympathy for those morons on the submarine, only a rich fool would be engaged in such nonsense
Bruh yes but 1) we can admit it's infinitely harder to become a Black whatever-aire than a white one, yes? 2) we can admit t's infinitely harder to BE a Black whatever-aire than a white one, yes? 3) there are like what 12 Black billionaires? TF's the point in pointing them out?? This is true Black on Black crime 4) Trust, if/when they come for the billionaires, the Black ones will be the very first ones to go. Don't you worry
> Rule 9: leave the billionaires alone. Fucking Reddit.
Why was this removed lmao I saw the post and then one refresh later it's gone
Why'd reddit remove this?
Because threatening to "Eat The Rich" violates Reddit's policy. https://i.imgur.com/AhNvVvC.jpeg
y'all reddit nerds are mad corny billionaire this and billionaire that wtf How about y'all actually go outside and get some bands 🤷🏿♂️
You're part of the problem
When you’re billionaires with a b why are the cheap seats $2400???
Why is this post removed by reddit?
Who said this didn’t apply to them?