Nobody becomes filthy rich by being honest. You can only become this rich by exploiting people and having absolutely no fucking empathy whatsoever.
The biggest lotto win in the USA was $2.04 BN, in California. Subtract taxes and there is no way that comes close to the account of money other billionaires have ammassed, even assuming there was no outstanding debt to pay and the money was invested in high-yield investments (green or not). I believe you’re right.
In theory a modern artist, writer, musician, etc could become a billionaire from direct to customer sales, but I’ll believe it when it happens.
Isn’t Taylor Swift a billionaire? That is about the extent of my knowledge of her though.
Wasn’t Taylor Swift born into a wealthy family? That’s why she could take the time and chances to become a pop star. Not that I’m saying she isn’t talented, she obviously is, but a lot of talented poor kids don’t get that opportunity.
Yeah. But I wonder if she’s the first billionaire off actual performance and content sales.
Kanye supposedly was before he lost all his endorsements for openly being a Nazi. Artists dont actually own any means of production so they can very quickly lose everything.
Some do. Some, like Shaq or Ryan Reynolds (or Kanye) use their money to invest in other companies. Ryan Reynolds coming out and saying Nazi shit would probably be bad for Mint, just like Ye’s controversy was bad for Yeezy, just like Elon’s controversy is bad for Tesla.
I think Paul McCartney was
Even them are profitting off the work of hundreds of people. Or rather, a publisher is profitting off of their work along with the work of a lot more people.
Direct to customer meaning they sell direct to a customer. Presumably through digital copies and owning a server rack.
You can certainly argue that even that kind of hypothetical billionaire shouldn’t exist, and you’d be right.
As much as I dislike her and her views, J.K. Rowling would be an example wouldn’t she?
Nah. Tons of merchandising, films, publishing etc.
Those Quidditch brooms and plastic wands don’t assemble themselves in a sweatshop.
Think more like if some self hosted webnovel had the same success somehow, or if she’d been as involved with checking the conditions of the merchandise empire as thoroughly as she was apparently involved in making sure the child actors were treated well. Not particularly likely, but hypothetically.
Why do the merchandise sales not count? Are they not a product of her creative writing? Many webnovelists sell merch. One of my favourite webnovelists semi-recently hired an editor, would that disqualify them?
I’m a little confused on how you are defining the conditions. If the artist can only count their personal contributions than I don’t think it is possible in any sense. No person no matter how hard working or talented can personally generate a billion in profit.
because made by “slaves” (low-paid workers), so the income becomes “dirty”, the entire point of this post.
Add single use garbage like party favors too, which pollute the earth to the list.
“by being honest”
That’s why it’s called filthy rich
Absolutely agree. Happy mutual cake day!
Oh I didn’t even notice! Nice! You too! 😁
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Eat the rich.
Feed the poor 🎸🎶 Until there are, no rich no more 🎶
(The original starts with “Tax the rich” but you do what you can with what you got right?)
Are these the job creators I’ve heard so much about?
See? Trickle down economics really works! The wealthy trickle down $8 per day to their thankful employees for 18hr shifts! And don’t you dare say it’s slavery, you damn liberal! They’re getting paid and free to leave at any time! Slaves don’t get paid!
Yes
Firstly, who the fuck are they?
Secondly, you have the money, why can’t you just be reasonable? Like it’s not enough to rich, and not work and be happy, travel the world without limits and without a care… you somehow need to hurt people. It’s awful.
But how else will they get a bigger house? Nicer, larger yacht? More private jets?
Like, I kinda understand the “more more more!” mentality. As my income has gone up over the years, there’s always something more my monkey brain tells me I should want. A nicer, more comfortable car. A new video card. Two angry ponies. You know how it is. I tell it to shut up because I have more than enough already.
I’m not a sociopath, though, so at no point has my monkey brain told me to enslave others so I can have nicer stuff.
Yeah but still, once I hit my “number”, I’m taking my small slice of the pie and living life. There isn’t a never ending drive to accumulate forever and ever. That’s just these psychos
Why do the ponies have to be angry? Seems kind of uncharacteristic
Little Grandpa story time:
Ponies are generally nicer than horses, but I was raised believing ponies were angry, vicious little assholes. My father was bucked off of a pony in his twenties, causing him to break a rib and paralyze half of his diaphragm. Being the actual asshole in this story, he never stopped to think that maybe he was too heavy and too drunk for a pony, so he spread pony hate throughout his life. I want angry ponies as I dislike my father and on a primal level think they’d keep me safe from people like him, like two pissy, grass eating charms to protect against narcissists.
But how else will they get a bigger house? Nicer, larger yacht? More private jets?
Yeah, paying your staff a liveable wage would be like a fraction of your wealth would mean it take slightly longer to get that bigger house, larger yacht, or new private jet.
Because they’ve got their fortune by being an absolute psychopath not having a second thought about walking over dead bodies for a penny. This is how anyone becomes rich, just throw all morals, compassion and legality to the wind. And they can’t stop now.
SMH. Is it any surprise how they got to be rich?
Behind every great fortune is a great crime
Just one?
There are also some okay crimes
I’m not even kidding when I say it’s getting to be pretty close to the time that we need to break out the guillotines and remind these people what happens if they get too sure of themselves.
It’s far past that time tbh.
It’s always a good time to get out the guillotines
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They wouldn’t even notice the money if they paid their staff properly. But people like that actually get off on the cruelty. I hope they throw those fuckers in jail.
I think maybe the rich folks just don’t think about their staff or employees as people, or they think they’re out to get them.
I work manufacturing adjacent and see a lot of this attitude from the management layer. They think they own people and that every dollar they give them, every break, every word not out of necessity is the worker pulling one over on them.
It’s a sad othering, like they’re not raking in money with these people. It’s like they think the money is coming no matter what, and every wasted moment is direct theft in opposition to them.
Actual monsters. I know you don’t get this rich by being generous but god damn. Unless people like this do get jail time then nothing will change.
Fuck, I’m not generally one for capital punishment, but it’d send a message.
Watch in awe as absolutely none of these fuckers go to prison.
@Blackmist
Several family members got 4,5 years each in Prison.
They will take the judgment to the next court.
@return2ozma
UKs richest family? But not the King? 🤔
Nope, not the King. He might have a lot of stuff, but quite a lot of that is basically unsellable. So his crown might be worth a gazillion, but parliament would probably interfere if he tried to sell it off. And it would be an issue what is actually his to sell and what is really owned by the state.
Much of it is owned by the Crown Estate. Which is technically owned by the current monarch, but it’s not their personal property.
All sounds like a scam to me to prevent inheritance taxes scooping off a chunk every time one of them carks it.
All the revenue that the Crown Estate generates is given directly to the UK government to use, so they get plenty of tax from it already. ~$400 million in 2022 for example.
The british royal family are a bit like a church, Not that rich on paper but buffalo buffalo buffalo owning so many assets all over the world that if you did the legwork to put it all together they might turn out to be richer than the richest oligarchs.
I need a better linguist to ELI5 buffaloes
Or is this just bully bully bully
As mentioned the sentence looks unrelated to bison and/or the city, leaving the interpretation to be ‘bully intimidate bully’ which sounds jank
Am I just overanalyzing a phrase meant to be a joke
The king is worth at around $700 million.
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It’s been found that wealth reduces compassion.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Four members of the UK’s richest family are on trial in Switzerland amid allegations they spent more money caring for their dog than their servants.
It’s alleged that Prakash and Kamal Hinduja, together with their son Ajay and his wife Namrata, confiscated staff passports, paid them as little as $8 (£7) for 18-hour days, and allowed them little freedom to leave the house.
Although a financial settlement over exploitation was reached last week, the Hindujas remain on trial for trafficking, which is a serious criminal offence in Switzerland.
They deny the charges.This week in court, one of Geneva’s most famous prosecutors, Yves Bertossa, compared the almost $10,000 a year he claimed the family had spent on their dog, to the daily amount they were allegedly paying their servants.The Hinduja family’s lawyers did not specifically deny the allegations of low wages, but said they must be viewed in context - noting that the staff were also receiving accommodation and food.
Mr Bertossa is calling for prison terms, and millions of dollars in compensation as well as legal fees.
It is not the first time that Geneva, a hub for international organisations as well as the world’s wealthy, has been in the spotlight over the alleged mistreatment of servants.
The original article contains 449 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 54%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So, they were housed and fed while working 18 hour days, thus not being able to leave the house. So that’s their defence, that you have to take shelter into context. When they couldn’t leave… Fucking throw the book at them
Their defense is that they were literally using them as slaves by keeping them in slave quarters they can’t leave but we can’t call it forced slavery because they threw a couple euro coins in the cellar at the end of the day to call it wages
Does Switzerland have guillotines?
No. Probably why they came here.
But seriously, why do rich Criminals always come here and think they can get away with it just because they’re rich? We arrested the child of Gaddafi. The son of a literal fucking dictator in charge of Libya, a country that is fairly important in European politics.
If not even he got away with it, what makes you think you will?
If you’re asking why wealthy people run to Switzerland specifically I have to assume it is in part due to the history of banks that make disclosing ownership a crime making them useful to hide capital in offshore accounts to dodge taxes in their home country, stash money related to crime or exploitation, laundering, etc. While their money may be stored anonymously once they show up in person they themselves are no longer anonymous and subject to arrest.
