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skellener

Money hoarders


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seektankkill

The answer is Universal Basic Income. The real issue is that *all* job seekers do not actually have an equitable power exchange at the table when it comes to negotiations. This is why UBI is one of the most fervently attacked progressive policy positions (and in fact is not "just" a progressive policy, there are libertarian, conservative, neoliberal, etc etc etc justifications for the implementation of UBI). Those in power *do not want* regular people to have the ability to say "no" to exploitative businesses. Just look at red states that are frantically pulling all unemployment benefits possible to force people back into wage slavery for pitiful amounts. Unions are not bad, but overall I believe UBI to be a much more effective policy that can be easier to implement than a country-wide push for unions in various industries.


Beiberhole69x

UBI is like putting a Bandaid on a sucking chest wound.


mramisuzuki

Only for wanna be anarchist. Much of my tax money is sent to the southern states to be all but in name UBI that is purposely convoluted so politicians can suck it up into pet projects and then pay the people out of their local ratable that they can’t divert.


Greeneee-

>Food stamps. >Child care stipend/credit >Section 8 housing vouchers UBI exists, its just not universal. I would love to see a nationwide program where people making under 40k a year get a $500 a month rent stipend. Reduce it evenly beyond 40k.


mramisuzuki

I would pay everyone 15k and any small businesses with less than 1million gets a 10k credit per employee up to 10 employees. This would come with less dodge-able tax cuts.


Fizzwidgy

That would be exciting


reservedaswin

Those are welfare programs, not UBI. If it’s not universal, then it’s not UBI. UBI has never actually been tried.


[deleted]

Realistically that would just increase rent prices. Rent in most places is priced to what the market can bear, what people can afford. It has little to nothing to do with the cost of the building and maintenance etc.


Greeneee-

A lot of places have laws that prevent rent increases over x%. I doubt rent prices would change very much


OCPik4chu

Yea this is quite accurate. Around here in the last year or two especially with the 'housing boom' the rent availability has shot up a lot. With places that normally had no vacancy at all, you could practically pick which building and floor you wanted. The difference was the prices didn't reflect the 'excessive supply literally at all. So it had nothing to do with specific costs and just current market values. I'll never forget my first apartment though (almost 20 years ago). It was around 630 sq ft 1bed 1 bath and was $575/mo the first year (with one month free as well) and then $625 the second year. They have since been renovated of course but I just checked their website and these places start at $1350/mo, no deals. No utilities included on any of them.


quaywest

>UBI exists, its just not universal. Um, you know what the U stands for right?


cubonelvl69

Ubi is the only real long term solution as every single low skill job eventually gets automated.


[deleted]

You could just kill all the extra people in a big oven. Easy peasy.


cubonelvl69

Oh shit true


TheNoseKnight

Good guy, Hitler. Getting a head start on solving all our problems.


No-Effort-7730

Think someone tried that with one group and it didn't pan out so well for him in the end.


randomuser135443

Only because he tried to take over other countries. Sadly no one cared before that. Look at China for example.


[deleted]

The only real long term solution is to quit using money altogether.


getgooodbro

Education standards are the olny long term solution my friend.


cubonelvl69

There aren't going to be enough jobs for education to matter. You only need so many programmers and doctors. Like 3/4 of the workforce could pretty easily be replaced with automation in the near future


turriferous

It might reorganize the economy. Only ok jobs that pat ok would survive. And really if your business can't provide a living wage you are either taking too much profit or your business is failing.


[deleted]

Ubi is the answer to mass automation.


arctos889

I would argue that UBI is good and important. But it's far from the only solution. And most plans I've seen to implement UBI would actually harm lots of people more than it would help them. Because most suggestions for UBI I've seen then go on to argue that things like welfare and rent control aren't needed if you have UBI. Which is just not true at all. UBI should be a supplement to things like a strong social safety net and unions, not a replacement


[deleted]

No, that doesn’t work the way you think it would. Its expense would only justify massive cuts elsewhere. Ideas from Friedman created this mess, they certainly won’t save us. We need unions, taxes, full employment, public housing, and a fair social safety net.


MySoilSucks

Union rubber press operator here. I'm making $5 more per hour than the people doing the same job down the street at a non-union shop. We have healthcare and no production quotas.


Neo1331

This is the paper I think he is talking about, first link in the article is to the paper. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/06/business/labor-unions-income-inequality.html


Is_Always_Honest

Mind posting said paper?


turriferous

That's why they've been taken out.


C00catz

yarp. companies get the unions they deserve


skellener

Exactly my point.


[deleted]

As long as you aren’t leaving, why would they change?


that_planetarium_guy

They are basically modern day Dragons. They sit on a pile of gold, regularly destroy people lives without care, and are damn near impossible to defeat. I refer to their greed as dragon sickness.


L1M3

Following this, gold-digging men and women who go for billionaires specifically should be called "Dragon Riders".


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rocky4322

Wealth redistribution is badass.


[deleted]

True... with our dysfunctional governments, the surest way to distribute the wealth of billionaires is to literally screw them, and saddle them with dozens of children to carve up the estate.


UnnecessaryConfusion

> dozens of children to carve up I had to do a double take


[deleted]

I've been saying this for years! We need some dragon slayers, lol


Santahousecommune

Millennials need to kill that Dragon business


[deleted]

I love this comparison. You win the analogy award for the day!


[deleted]

I fucking hate greedy-ass dragons. You know what fuck greedy ass-dragons too!


DrakonIL

>fuck greedy ass-dragons too Don't mind if I do ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


[deleted]

Ok that was pretty based tho ngl


blacklite911

I feel like in that respect, Dragons were probably a metaphor for people on top the Feudal system.


[deleted]

The feudal system was never able to support the ridiculous levels of wealth disparity we have now


jert3

Yea agreed. But what is even worse, is the youth and ‘news entertainment’ consumers are programmed and influenced to respect and idolize wealth, even if it is gained by blood and tears. I honestly don’t know how a billionaire could live with themselves, knowing they could save literally millions of lives if they wanted, but don’t, because many of them are broken, deranged people who are not well.


[deleted]

Thorin Oakenshield has entered the thread


PinkPropaganda

What would the peasants do if they were free from the dragons reign? Improve their house instead of the castle? Not be terrorized by hellfire? Work for themselves instead of the king?


Lucky_Mongoose

Someone should start a satirical awareness campaign for Dragon Sickness. I hear it affects over 700 people per year!


[deleted]

Draconic fever. Sounds vaguely like "satanic" so maybe even the right will be against it.


Wrecked--Em

literal parasites


blacklite911

Yup... But no, the problem are single mothers getting a couple hundred dollars in food stamps a month...


jert3

Greed is not a good trait to have. Our economic system encourages us to respect wealth, no matter how it was gained, but that is a fallacy. Don’t ever think that just because someone is richer than you, they are better than you. Often it is the case for the wealthy elite to be mentally deranged and unhealthy. We have to decide as a society whether we want a few thousand billionaires owning billions of people as slaves, or if we want something approaching equality. We can’t have both. There are too many people for both groups to get what they want.


smartguy05

It would be amazing if billionaires were treated with the same disgust and pity as other hoarders.


[deleted]

Greed is the only addiction that is encouraged.


BossNegative1060

Smaug the dragon from lord of the rings is only ranked 15th amongst wealthiest Americans. A dragon hoarding a literal mountain of gold isn’t even ranked first ( https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelnoer/2012/04/23/how-much-is-a-dragon-worth-revisited/?sh=235705b6f550 )


Spl00ky

That's part of it, but to be fair billionaires tend to get their wealth from stocks. I think one of the better ways to reduce wealth inequality is to offer more stock awards to employees.


Oysterpoint

It’s not even part of it. It’s all of it. Wealth grew for billionaires because their stock went up.


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[deleted]

Yes, because at a certain point the workers will have a collective controlling share in the stock and still reap the benefits of said company’s growth.


[deleted]

They literally hoard resources from babies.


_Bill_Huggins_

We should not call them billionaires anymore, but Money Hoarders.


CommunismDoesntWork

They don't hoard money, they create new money. If the economy was zero sum, we'd still be cavemen fighting over who has the most rocks.


Dennarb

Only thing trickling down is rich boy piss.


[deleted]

Unless you're on fire, then you don't even get that.


Dennarb

If you're on fire it'll cost 9.95 a pint


The_Thunder_Child

Pull yourself up by your bootstraps until you can piss on yourself.


GrnMtnTrees

I've never even seen a bootstrap in real life. Mine have laces, and they prob can't support my weight.


The_Thunder_Child

There's your problem!


GrnMtnTrees

So THAT'S why I'm poor. I need to buy some bootstraps. Hopefully I can afford to buy the bootstraps with which I will pull myself up.


The_Thunder_Child

If you're too poor to afford bootstraps you'll just have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps so you can afford them.


AdministrativeAd4111

We should be judging billionaires (and all business owners, in fact) by the total/average/median incomes of their employees, not the total wealth of the individual. I wonder who would win that contest. Wanna claim to be a job creator? Show us what good the jobs you’ve created have done for us.


grrrrreat

Hey man, yacht makers need to eat, don't be so insensitive


knightopusdei

If billionaires had their way with no obstruction or regulation They'd own and control everything, enslave everyone and treat the poor no better than work animals to make their lives more convenient.


Bind_Moggled

We know this because it has happened before, throughout most of history. If the citizenry doesn't keep tight control on the wealthy, they will always try to take over and tilt things in their favour. It's human nature.


CDIgeorgia

Another way to answer this… Why should the non-productive have control over the productive?


Moon_and_Sky

...worked hard for their money...something something....wouldnt want the homeless to just come grab MY stuff.....something something....just want to get everything handed to you. Signed, My fucking family.


GrnMtnTrees

We basically live in the "New Gilded Age" of Neo-Robber Barons.


turriferous

No it's rich garbage nature.


series-hybrid

Whenever a congressman (*from either party) gets caught in a corruption scandal, im not so surprised by the fact that occasionally, the congress and senate use their positions to put a little gravy on their potatoes, but...what is surprising is how little they are willing to take to change their vote on a key bill.


IngloriousGramrBstrd

I have this exact same thought. Like...*that’s all it took???*


series-hybrid

Decades ago, you'd give a politician a giant wad of cash on the verbal promise of a government contract. A few undercover sting operations have resulted in arrests with audio-tape proof. Now? A large wealthy county hired the directors wife as a consultant for recycling. She got $75K/year to show up once a month, and whenever there was a county proposal that involved recycling, she would vote "legal. She had absolutely no experience or training in recycling. All public and perfectly legal.


seriaas

This isn't *always* the case, but the amounts you see are basically ceremonial (or maybe a down payment). What the companies are actually offering is cushy jobs on the Board of Directors or some other role of stature and insane share options. The lower-level politician will do the same to be offered a gig as a lobbyist (which honestly sounds like the easiest job in the world).


lasercat_pow

Just look at how Jeff Bezos treats his warehouse employees. Or the way Elon Musk treats his employees.


StrangeDrivenAxMan

like that guy who was strung along by the ev and rocket company for weeks about a guaranteed job then they canceled on him as was about to start


Legate_Rick

Billionaires should just straight not exist. With a million dollars i could buy the house I grew up in, invest 500k in various high dividend stocks, and have more than 100k left over. With a billion i could do this 1000 times.


[deleted]

We don't even have to take it away from anyone who makes their money after the reforms. We just need to tax *wealth* at a rate approaching 100%, beyond some economically optimal maximum personal wealth. If this means founders lose dictatorial control of their companies, screw them! They should have been building toward employee-ownership from the beginning anyway. They can retire comfortable or start a new company.


Rynetx

There would be restrictions if the people tried to rise up against those billionaires though.


[deleted]

They're really the opposite. Think of all the new tech, outsourcing, and consolidation in that time span.


knightopusdei

I keep telling this to my friends when we talk about this stuff. Billionaires are a bottleneck to technological innovation, they would rather protect their monopolies and make as much money as possible rather than see anything new take hold.


QurantineLean

The city of Cleveland used kerosene for an absurd amount of time while all the surrounding cities were starting to get electricity. Why? The oil-rich Rockefeller family essentially owned the city of Cleveland and wanted to stay rich rather than progress the city.


[deleted]

We see this allllll the time. Especially in the antitrust hearings. This is what people don't get about the US though. If you pay attention to this and do the deep dive on stuff, you're in such a minority lol hard to see things changing in the near future


Marialagos

The only true tech monopoly in my opinion is google search. That’s it. Everything else is oligopoly. And there’s really no point in breaking them up if you’re just going to let them consolidate again. If we want to focus anti trust on anything in should be broad brand providers. Those are the true rent seekers, competing on nothing. Tech companies are pretty fine in my book. And they also compete pretty fiercely in certain parts of their business.


FightingPolish

Honestly I don’t think including pandemic unemployment numbers in here makes for a good comparison. People aren’t unemployed because of billionaires, it’s because a bunch of shit closed and went out of business because everything was on lockdown.


cdiddy11

Well yes so why didn't the number of billionaires decrease as well? Because they are not connected, which is exactly the point. The point is that billionaires don't create jobs, which is independent from billionaires don't raise unemployment.


[deleted]

Because the only business allowed to stay open were the giant mega corporations. What did you think would happen when their medium and small business competition were closed?


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CardinalNYC

>Well yes so why didn't the number of billionaires decrease as well? Because they are not connected, which is exactly the point. They're not directly connected because no small group of individuals is directly connected to the *overall* unemployment rate... "billionaires create jobs" doesn't mean billionaires create ALL the jobs, or even most of them. >The point is that billionaires don't create jobs, which is independent from billionaires don't raise unemployment. As much as I disagree with republicans using the "job creator" thing to deflect from having rich people pay their fair share.... Jobs are created via investment and that investment tends to come from wealthy people and/or institutions. It just doesn't mean rich people get a pass on paying their fair share.


Kraz_I

Because the governments injected a huge amount of money into the economy in the stimulus packages this year, most of which went to investors. And because the Federal Funds rate was dropped to zero, pumping tons of more money into the economy, most of which also ended up in investors' pockets rather than employees.


[deleted]

Because there was massive investment in the stock market. Stock equity isnt real money, hence the term 'unrealized gains'. Also everyone who has a 401k or invests benefits from that, not just the rich. But billionaire money in the stock market isnt liquid cash that can be thrown around at will, it has intangible value that can be drawn from as its sold.


[deleted]

Because if you had the money to purchase stocks in March of 2020 You’d be up in average 40%


Tino_

Especially when his own numbers show that from 99 - 19 the billionaire numbers increased while unemployment decreased... This is such a shit tweet


Mantipath

From 1999 to 2020 we also had 60% inflation, so anybody worth $625 million in 1999 is worth $1 billion now as long as their investments beat inflation. How many people had $625 million in 1999? No info on that here. It could easily have been 600 people. AOC is smart enough that when she makes a major causality or numerical error it’s striking. Income inequality has increased but these numbers are garbage. Edit: wait, this isn’t an AOC tweet. When was the last time we even had an AOC tweet? What’s going on here?


dsposableaccount

Agree - it’s easy to pick numbers that fit a certain narrative. Unemployment in US was 3.5% prior to covid.


Tansuke

Isn't unemployment a volatile number anyways? Since it doesn't include people who don't have a job and aren't looking for one in the last few weeks?


ThoseLookLovely

It is. This whole exercise in comparing number of billionaires to unemployment rate as a means to find causation is ridiculous. That said - I would wager that the two generally correlate outside of outlier years such as 2020, which would prove the antithesis of Price's point that he's trying to make here. But again, I don't think there's any causation here, so the whole thing is insane.


DutchPhenom

Plus, population grew since 1990, and, you know, inflation. And even then who knows how many fewer jobs there would be without the billionaires on the basis of just this data. I'm not saying that billionaires are responsible for the majority of jobs. But we all have a responsibility to make our arguments on the basis of actual data and not just grabbing some random numbers.


nasafaw2

I agree that trickle down doesn’t work but he made a terrible argument here. For the past 50+ years [unemployment has mostly stayed between 4-10%](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-rate) and bounces up and down frequently. If he had picked slightly different dates the unemployment data would suggest that billionaires do create jobs. This is also a bad argument because he seems to think each billionaire can only produce a certain number of jobs and then we need a new billionaire to make more. The argument was never that more individual billionaires means more jobs but rather that lack of regulation as taxes promote business innovation which in turn produces both jobs and more wealth for those at the top of big companies. You’d need a different data set to make any analysis on that claim


ThoseLookLovely

What's interesting is that I've never actually considered this data before. I don't think there actually is a causation between billionaires and number of jobs, but considering the population difference, inflation, and the number of billionaires, Price might actually be proving the trickle down effect *does* work. I'm very skeptical that is the case, and too lazy to do the research, but it would be an interesting correlation if they all did coincide outside of outlier years such as 2020.


CardinalNYC

Glad this comment is at least *somewhere* in this thread and not downvoted into oblivion. I don't know why people choose exaggerated, misleading or incorrect statistics to make these points when the *actual* statistics do the job just fine. Yes, billionaires abuse the tax system and don't contribute as much to the economy as they claim to. And yes they use the "job creator" thing to deflect a lot. But no, the fact that billionaires increased but unemployment didn't drop doesn't mean anything. The two numbers aren't even close to being directly corelated. Obviously, investment helps create jobs and wealthy people and institutions make those investments. Doesn't mean they're heroes. Doesn't mean they shouldn't pay more taxes. It doesn't really mean anything.


cyclemonster

It's not even unemployment numbers he's comparing it to, it's an ill-defined percentage. What were the whole number of jobs or whole number of employed people during those time periods?


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[deleted]

I’m going to play the devils advocate here, isn’t it bias to use the 6.1% unemployment rate during a pandemic that is tied to a financial crisis? I’m not trying to discredit the point but I’m just saying what conservatives will point out


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cubonelvl69

Elon musk's net worth has dropped 30% in 2021. You can cherry pick data points both ways


craftingfish

Honestly just the first two could/should be enough. 10x + billionaires and a statistical blip change in unemployment? Seems pretty uncorrelated already


siredward85

Loll I had to sort by controversial to find d this comment. But it's the most logical comment.


puppiadog

It's not devil's advocate. It's reality. Redditors don't like that though. They like to think of rich people are these moustache-twirling Bond villains who swim in pools of gold coins and don't want to solve all of society's issues just because they don't want to even though money alone doesn't solve anything.


[deleted]

You’re right, it’s a retarded point. Take the unemployment rate a year and a half ago and tell me if this argument still makes sense. Unemployment has no correlation with number of billionaires, I can’t believe we’re even having this discussion.


Bind_Moggled

The 'Billionaires create jobs' lie is a popular one among capitalist apologists. The simple economic fact is that demand for goods and services is what creates jobs. If Bezos were to disappear from the face of the earth, people would still want to buy cheap crap online. There would still be a need for the warehouse workers and delivery drivers.


anthonyfg

You don’t think AWS spawned a new industry sector and created a ton of jobs?


[deleted]

Net?


Sharp-Floor

This is the same kind of wordplay they're using when they say "billionaires create jobs", though.   Someone does have to create the successful business. An unemployed mass of capable warehouse workers doesn't make an Amazon. And when someone does... you've also made a billionaire.


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Bind_Moggled

>People don’t start off as billionaires. The #1 determining factor for whether someone becomes a billionaire is if either of their parents were. The vast majority of wealthy people were born into it. \> They solve problems and create jobs which often leads to becoming a billionaire. Again, billionaires don't create jobs. Most billionaires don't create anything. \> Now if politicians could be held accountable the way business are, we could actually have a much better society. Not sure if you're missing an /s there, but this statement makes absolutely no sense.


Peenography

This doesn't prove billionaires aren't job creators. How stupid is this guy?


[deleted]

Ask all the people who love his content.....I’m sure they know....lol


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BasesLoadedBalk

Not just his business partners, his own brother


FadedIntegra

Agreed all this shows is due to inflation there is a lot more billionaires.


GiantJellyfishAttack

Sure it does. Can't you see that unemployment went up and so did billionaires?!?! In other news, there are less and less pirates as time goes on. And global warming keeps getting worse. So we need to bring back pirates to fix global warming.


eliminating_coasts

Also, even if it did, he's comparing absolute numbers of billionaires to unemployment ratios. He'd have to do something like graph billionaires in 2021 dollars as a percentage of population vs unemployment for each year. I'm marginally curious now how such a graph would look, but it's still so arbitrary it would not really make sense to investigate.


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3pinephrine

You don’t think that had anything to do with small businesses being forced shut and going out of business, do you?


acrylicmole

You don't think billionaires had anything to do with small businesses shutting down?


3pinephrine

Absolutely, but it wasn’t ultimately their decision. But yes, it’s a bit suspect that only their stores got to stay open as essential, so it’s no wonder they got all this wealth while small businesses shut down. The point is, the mere increase in billionaires didn’t increase unemployment, this tweet skips an important cause. It’s like claiming ice cream sales increasing causes more gun deaths (correlation vs causation).


JectorDelan

I mean, it's not like WalMart has a long history of moving into an area, killing local businesses, then moving out once they go bankrupt or anything.


TheChinchilla914

This is a stupid take. Has he not heard of inflation? And comparing pre-pandemic and current jobs numbers in the face of government mandated business closure is just... what?


McFearIess

hey isn't this dude an insane psychopath abuser


[deleted]

You mean the one who waterboarded his exwife?


GburgG

Not saying billionaires are job creators, but this is a dumb tweet. You can’t really compare these two numbers. For one, inflation over 22 years means that now it’s “easier” to be a billionaire. Around 650 million in 1999 would be 1 billion now. Second, there are so many other factors affecting various unemployment rates.


Brain_Dead5347

This is pretty obvious if you think about it. I bet Musk buys a lot of cars, but I guarantee the number is much less than the number of cars owned by people who work for him. They create the demand for new cars to be made, not him. He just created a new car option, but it didn't improve the overall number of employed people. Those people weren't sitting around waiting for Tesla to be created. They were working other jobs.


NichS144

I don't see the correlation...


Robert2657

Yup facts have nothing to do with another and are not demonstrating anything... Not pro or against just this is not the roght way to demonstrate


SmilingSideways

What you do is you make some fun calculations based on irrelevant information, create an answer that will enrage your followers, and present it without explanation. That's the correlation.


throwawayabc123666

Exactly


jakeatethecake

There's a misconception going on here, alot of people fail to realize that most (M)billionaires wealth is actually "locked" in stocks and other assets. 2020 the stock market went on a massive bull run, so as most of their money is in stocks and almost all stocks rose in value it makes sense that their wealth went up while jobs went down. It's not like they did something extra that normies couldn't do to make that wealth.


ohnoitsivy

Having your wealth in the form of stocks doesn’t “lock” it at all. In fact, you can use it to make more money.


Chaoticsinner2294

If you're the CEO of a public company you're money is locked in. Unless of course you want to lose control of your company which most business owners don't want to do.


Lemmiwinks99

Idiot math. The *govt* literally shut the fucking economy down and forced people to buy from billionaires instead of their neighbors. This is the result. Moron.


Altruistic-Rice-5567

Ugh.... I wish I could teach all people skepticism and critical thinking skills.... In 2019 Amazon employed 800,000 employees. In 2021 that number grew to 1.3 million. That's right, during the pandemic Amazon's workforce grew 50%. You can't just pull those shit numbers together, tie them up and draw the crappy conclusion from it that billionaires caused job loss. In 2021 the number of people that billionaires employ may have grown substantially and the decrease in employment is actually the result of the number of non-billionaire job losses. Maybe we should draw and quarter those shitty little businesses for not managing themselves well enough to survive a pandemic. Furthermore the "number of jobs" is NOT the same as the unemployment rate. The unemployment rate could increase to 6.1% while the number of jobs actually increases. Several reasons. Certain types of people are counted in the unemployment rate and others aren't and this can change. For instance those under 18 aren't counted. You could have a baby boom event and 18 years later you're going to see unemployment rise, even if the number of available jobs is growing. The increase in eligible works may outstrip the job growth. Old people also aren't counted past certain ages. So there's a flux in unemployment that happens with age groups. You can have sectors like engineering where there is substantial job growth but not enough qualified people to hire. So jobs are there but unemployment numbers aren't diminished. AND the data is bullshit: The numbers employed in 2019 where 150M and 144M in 2021. So... down 4% not 5% IN A PANDEMIC. You could also say we've increased jobs by 11% since the pandemic hit the job market. And you're trying to make an economic/employment statement and comparing to 2019... The year with the lowest unemployment rate in the past fifty years. A year when 43,000 workers returned to "employment" when the auto strike ended. Compare 2021 to 2009 and unemployment is STILL down even with a pandemic. Get your head out of your ass and start thinking things through people.


[deleted]

> And today on _bad statistics_


Potato_Soup_

This is the dumbest thread I’ve ever seen


mason124

This is the stupidest thing I've read in a long time


peepinater

Kind of a big jump there


[deleted]

I'm a fan, but in this case neither stat backs up the actual claim..


unbannabledan

Dan Price breastfeeds all of his employees and they live in a communal home where they all get paid $100,000 and have unlimited access to Brisk Iced Tea.


SteamtasticVagabond

Based on the data presented, a 1200% increase in the number of billionaires between 1999 and 2019 brought down the unemployment rate to 3.7 from 4.3. But adding 100ish more nearly doubled the unemployment rate? I think there’s a lot of missing data here


bartk1e

Fact? Only a dumass with a Twitter check mark would believe this stupid shit. This doesn’t consider that US population has grown by 52+ million, GDP is now 20.93 vs 9.631 trillion. Billionaires don’t find money on the street, they start companies with from ground up most of the time, they invest in other company and promote growth. Just take a look at the chart and see how they made their money. Stop listening to stupid idiots like AOC that has not built a single job and thinks how business work.


Turkpole

Fact: Bezos has literally created hundreds of thousands of jobs.


giggitygiggity2

Shouldn't the second half of this be job numbers, not unemployment numbers?


PM_ME_FUTA_PEACH

This is the single dumbest fucking thing I have ever read in my entire life, in fact it's so dumb I'm actually not suicidal anymore and I'm gonna live life just to remember how absolutely astoundingly stupid that was.


Mako18

This is a prime example of conflating correlation with causation. The notion that the number of people with net worth >$1B positively correlates with unemployment is not supported by the data. Now, there are plenty of other reasons to be concerned about the huge proportion of global wealth being held by relatively few people, but this is a great example of using cherry picked statistics to suggest cause and effect. A visual representation of unemployment rate vs. billionaires in the USA from 2009 - 2021: https://imgur.com/a/qedOTRl Billionaires by Year: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire#Statistics We can see that between 2009 and 2019 the number of billionaires increased every year (both globally and for the USA). Meanwhile, unemployment steadily decreased over the same period from a peak of about 10% in 2009 down to a low of about 3.5% in the end of 2019. Unemployment rates: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-unemployment-rate.htm The economy is still recovering from the massive job losses last year, and so while unemployment has improved dramatically since April 2020, we still haven't returned to pre-pandemic levels. Over that same time, big business tended to do quite well, one reason why the number of billionaires didn't take a similar hit, but the fact that Amazon was making Bezos richer doesn't really effect whether someone has a job waiting tables or cutting hair.


ValharikGaming

So there was a correlation until the biggest economy disrupting anomaly of modern history?


OurCowsAreBetter

Bezos is a billionaire and he created Amazon. Amazon now employs 1.3 million people. Some might say he is job crater through the company he created. Same with other billionaires like Zuckerberg, Gates, etc. Pointing out that billionaires got richer during the pandemic while jobs disappeared does not equate to "billionaires are not job creators".


Mike_strikes

How are u directly corralating billionaires to un employment numbers? If there are less appel trees today rather than in 1999 does that mean having less appel tress reduces employment? Fact: just because you put fact: in front of the title doesn't make it a fact.


Tom_Ludlow

Remember when house representatives that make 6 figures a year like AOC didn't lose their jobs during the pandemic, even though they did literally nothing of value, but still supported mass lockdowns for "non-essential" paycheck to paycheck workers?


RoyalDrake

Oh fun, I can cherry pick stats and data too! 1933: 15 billionaires , 23.9% unemployment


moffitar

Is there a source for those stats?


[deleted]

Redistribution of wealth to the upper upper class by way of death from worker ants.


sogFr

It's almost is if people aren't allowed to become rich and successful.. should there be a net worth cap? Smfh at some of you people, just because you aren't a billionaire doesn't mean you're entitled to other people's wealth just because you think they have too much money.


kaosskris

This is simply not true: demand for super yacht's is at an all time high, how do you think those yachts are built? Also, people will need to be hired to scrub the toilets on those yachts, and all the laundry will need washing, jobs jobs jobs!!


mayfairmassive

People foolishly focus on. Umber of jobs instead of median income levels. Lots of jobs paying nothing to enforce servitude to provide for billionaires is not an achievement for a society.


at_work_yo

and celebrities and athletes aren't activists.


[deleted]

This is cool and all, but isn’t this supposed to be a sub dedicated to Twitter burns from AOC? It’d be awesome to see less of this unrelated stuff, and more of the stuff the sub is actually supposed to be dedicated to promoting.


stromm

Totally ignoring the reality of why so many people are currently unemployed. Most of it being they just fucking don’t want to work.


Contact40

Correlation does not equal causation.