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Bill Gates No Longer World's Richest Man
alphadogg writes "Riding surging prices of his various telecom holdings, including giant mobile outfit America Movil, Mexican tycoon Carlos Slim Helu has beaten out Americans Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to become the wealthiest person on earth and nab the top spot on the 2010 Forbes list of the World's Billionaires." I'd still let the guy buy me dinner if he's ever in my town. He's probably still good for it even though he's fallen on hard times.
When I'm laid off and searching garbage cans for food, it will bring me great comfort to know that at least someone is doing well.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...when people's losses equal more money than I will EVER have in my entire life...I become a sad panda :(
Living With a Nerd
Who?
He doesn't care that you don't know him.
And the poor got poorer. Nothing new to see here, move along.
It's criminal, though isn't it? Millions of people are out of work, thousands are losing their homes, a majority of Americans have so little in savings that a single illness can put them over the edge into poverty, and yet, all these guys, despite a huge recession, saw their fortunes go UP.
Go figure.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
In America, greed is a game. Sure, Gates, Buffet and rich asshole #1 have money.
Question: Did they earn it?
Answer: No. They played a game well and have received a cash prize.
No man does 53 billion dollar of work. He games the system so the incremental profits of the workers at the bottom of the pyramid trickle up into his pockets.
If you disagree, you are wrong. The truth in the paragraph above is undeniable by clear-minded, rational people. However, fear of socialism fueled the Cold War, was the justification of the US war in Viet Nam, the US funding and training of death squad in Nicaragua, and is the rational for the current Cuba embargo. Oh, and fear of socialism is the primary undercurrent to keep healthcare in America as a luxury only the wealthy can afford.
America is a fucked up mess. Capitalism is a fallacy.
Let me guess, you've never in your life made a tax deductible charitable donation have you? Here is why I think that:
Let's say you have an income of $10. And your tax rate is 30%. So if you just pay your taxes and make no charitable donations, you'll pay $3 in taxes leaving you with $7.
Now let's say that you have that same $10 income. The same 30% tax rate. Now say you donate $5 to charity, deduct that amount from your income and pay your taxes on the remaining amount. So $10 minus $5 leaves you with $5. In the US there is a cap on deductible donations, say $2 is the max you can deduct. So when it comes time to pay taxes, even though you donated $5, you only get to deduct $2 of that amount. You must take your remaining $5 and pay taxes on an income of $8, which leaves you with $2.6 in your pocket ($10 - $5 - $8 x .3 = $2.6).
The reality is that you always have less money in your pocket after making a deductible donation than if you'd just paid your full tax liability. You don't make charitable donations in order to keep more of your money for yourself, it just doesn't work that way.
Reagan is the primary person to blame for the current economy. Basically he sold the world a pyramid scheme. Trickle down economy is EXACTLY what a pyramid scheme is. The idea that anyone who joins the scheme just pours some money into the top of the pyramid and then reaps his rewards as it trickles down to him. And it works, for the first few layers until to many people are needed to join to keep the system flowing and it all collapses.
And just like pyramid schemes continue to be popular, reaganomics continue to be popular, by the same kind of people. The scammers and the ignorant.
A pyramid scheme MUST fail, because the longer it continues, the larger it becomes. It can only work in fictional universes were infinite growth is possible (and for a long time, that is exactly what Reagan fans claimed). For a manufacturing nation as you claim it would in, this would mean that their must be an infinite number of resource to use in manufacturing and an infinite market to take the products. Or to put it in simpler terms, it would mean for Microsoft, that it could half the release cylce of their flagship product Windows each time, and still find a growing market for it. So by now you would be getting a new windows every day, pay 300 bucks for it, and have 6 billion people buying it.
Silly? That is what reaganomics boil down to. Infinite sustained growth.
Like all pyramids scams, we want to believe that it could work, but it doesn't. And it shows the fatal flaw in democracy. People that fall for scams, get to vote.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
America does tax the the rich to support its poor, therefor it is a socialist state. Trust me, you don't want to see real capitalism. Places like Hong-Kong used to be it and it ain't pretty. Think American ghetto's are though, imagine people with actual paying jobs living in "housing" that is a shell, with inside a mesh of cages that house entire families. Yes, not dissimilar to how chickens are housed in battery farms.
In a true capitalistic country, there is no restriction on what can be for sale. You would have legal organ harvesting, since money buys anything.
America right now might be bad, but it could be a lot worse.
And you can't really blame the Bill Gates of the world for it either. He got 1 vote. It is the millions of people who are just a paycheck away from complete financial ruin who vote against a system that could give them a proper safety net because they think that next paycheck will have a billion dollar amount on it, and then they would have to pay 50% taxes on it and that 500 million would mean utter ruination of their dream to one day make it rich.
It ain't the rich who worry about taxes, if Bill Gates suddenly had to pay 80% in taxes, what would he loose? Nothing. It is the idiots who live on minimum wage who somehow capping capital gains tax is a good thing for them.
It is the American dream vs gritty reality and reality doesn't stand a chance.
Sweden is the almost complete opposite, there the working and middle class (the majority voter) believe that the best system for themselves is a system where you can take a year off from work, or not work at all and be supported by the state. An alien thought to most Americans, but ultimately the Swedish system can only exist because the majority votes for it.
And the majority of American seem to want the current system.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Conversely, if you really support a charity/church/whatever and want to give them $5 (which happens with a lot of people), if you take your pre-tax $10, pay $3 tax, and give $5, you only have $2 left. With a tax deductible contribution, you have $2.60 left for yourself. So your "cost" is less by taking the deduction.
Some people like to donate their money to what we consider to be worthy causes.
The richest guy in the world being from one of the most corrupt countries? Big surprise. When you own much of the industry in an entire country, you know some nasty deals have gone on somewhere.
I'm pro-capitalist, but if a single business/person owns controls that much, it ceases to be capitalism. There is no competition, no new investment, no invention. Nothing but collecting payment since there is no other option. The sad thing is the Mexican government probably couldn't break up Carlos' monopolies at this point even if they wanted to.
Congrats Carlos. You won. Everyone else in Mexico loses.
FUNK!
The problem with this is that many very wealthy people create their own charities. Since it's your charity, you can control who controls it. And it's likely that the tax money saved by donating to the charity will be at least partially made up by the charity spending money on things you would have spent money on anyway. The result is that your effective tax rate is lower.
Using your example, why not donate $2 to a charity you control, have it spend 10c on something charitable, and have $1.90 go to pay for that vacation villa you want that lets disadvantaged children stay there every once in a while when you're gone anyway? There's rules governing how a charity can spend its money. But there are a lot of ways to game the system.
I'm not accusing Bill Gates of doing this. It looks as though he really is being charitable. But don't assume that every wealthy person who gives to charity is doing so out of altruism.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.