Does anyone really need to be a billionaire?

Yes, they are hubs for economic activity. We all need them for our jobs. And if you discourage them from economic activity by taking the fruits of their labor from them, they take their marbles and refuse to play with the rest of us. And the rest of us are the ones that really get hurt.

I work for a lot of rich people. One is a complete ass hole and I no longer work for him. They rest are salts of the earth.

Do not envy anyone, O man, for their earthly, passing happiness, for everything in the world is as the grass and the flower of the field; do not envy the rich and the glorious; do not envy those who are surfeited with earthly pleasures; but sensibly imitate him who is adorned with virtues. Do not desire authority, honor, any advantages whatever; do not desire excellent dwellings and buildings, or any other luxury; for all this is temporary and corruptible, all is passing away and quickly will vanish like smoke. Everything will remain here, everything will be turned into dust and ashes, for nothing is eternal on the earth. Only be sensibly zealous for those things which are united with the Lord or are deemed worthy of the grace of the Most Holy Spirit; for whoever receives it will be richer and more glorious that all the rich and glorious.

--Saint Demetrius of Rostov

Does anybody need anything but food, clothing and shelter?

Although I'm not as fond of billionaires as T, I recognize that they provide a lot of economic benefit. I suspect they still would provide a good deal of economic benefit if their tax rate was a wee bit higher.

People don't become billionaires because they like money. They become billionaires because they like doing the stuff that makes them money. If it was about the money, there are lots easier ways to do it than starting Microsoft, Innovative Market Systems, or Apple.

Cindy Hamilton

I think a billion is a thousand million. A thousand thousands is a million. I hope you did not get this definition from Pocahontas.

A billion isn't a thousand, thousands, that's a million. It's a thousand millions.

We need them to fund a remedial math course for you.

It takes a lot of work to become a billionaire and along the way most have created jobs, invested in the start up of other companies and kept the economy in good shape. Nothing is stopping you and I from doing the same if we have the ability and courage to do so.

The tax code needs a big overhaul but adding a wealth tax is not the right way. Wealth tax is punitive by jealous incompetents. Simply "I don't have it so you don't deserve it"

Apply the same wealth tax standard to you. Since you have more than 10 other people in your town, we are going to make you pay up and give money to them to equalize it. Even if you have to sell your car and other possessions to come up with the money.

Nope.

In Britain until 1974 or so, a billion wass a million millions. That might be what confused Roscoe. Government usage was changed then to what you said, with the hope that when others use it to mean a million million, they will be explicit about that.

In the USA some other countries it's what you said.

Just a semantic question for wheich you gave a pretty good answer, and yet you had to add something unrelated and stupid.

Speaking for myself, I don't need it.

I read the question as "do we really need billionaires?" The answer to me is yes. They have enough wealth to generated more wealth. It is often said that you do not create wealth by distributing it. In the extreme if we all had an equal share of the nations wealth there would be no large investments in generating more wealth and we would stagnate.

Well said. If we put in a wealth tax, where will it stop? It is like a reverse pyramid scheme starting by confiscating a percentage of many billions. When the well runs dry we increase the percentage and drop the amount of wealth qualified to confiscate. When that runs dry, we drop the levels again. The lion needs to be fed.

So the minimum wage works it way up to $28/hour but after redistribution the top wage in the county will effectively be about $30.

I do think employers have a moral and ethical obligation to pay a fair wage to the people that make then a success. Education and skills should be rewarded.

If the Walton family weren't related to Sam Walton, where would they be? If Soros wasn't a speculator who almost brought down the Bank of England for his profit would he be sweeping out bathrooms in Hungary?

How about the Kochs? Old Fred was a colorful guy. While being sued for patent infringement he set up refineries in the Soviet Union that didn't recognize US IP rights. His disillusionment with Uncle Joe resulted in his rabid anti-communism that he passed on along with the money. His next stop was the Third Reich where he built a refinery to produce the high octane fuel needed to keep the Messerscmitts in the air.

When the heat dies down he came back to the US. After he died, all was not well in Koch land and the four brothers litigated against each other.

Sure, some billionaires made it through hard work and produced valuable products. Some worked hard manipulating the markets with a flair that would make a vulture gag. Some just won the silver spoon.

Some have, and some have destroyed jobs in the US by moving manufacturing plants and outsourcing jobs. Do you think those that got rich in the shaky financial manipulations that almost brought down the economy were beneficial? Do you think wealthy patent trolls are a good thing?

In our mobile society we are seeing rich and even middle class people moving because of high taxes. This applies not only to our states but also nations.

It may not be moral obligation but employers have to pay more to get better employees. There was a story of a guy complaining that he had been working 20 years at minimum wage. The comment was made that maybe life was trying to tell him something.

You touched on the major difference between someone who has money and someone who does not. Simple logic dictates that simply working for a living can be profitable, but either having additional people work for you (aka start a business) or investing and having your money work for you is the way to financial security. Many people are not willing to take either risk. They just complain when someone else is successful.

A little humor my friend. You need to lighten up.

The Kochs helped to put the company I worked for out of business. Around 3000 people out of jobs in a small town area ( under 40,000 people each) of about 4 towns with in 20 miles.

They bought the company , let it run down and found some sucker group to buy it. Stole much of the pension plan while at it.

The pensions and 401k plans of companies are something that needs to be addressed. Even those of towns. Most are underfunded and some have already gone away or been reduced very much. Just like the Ponzi scheme of Social Security.

Your point? There are criminals and unethical people everywhere but that should not stop the rest of the population from success. Take away the billions and they would still be nast.

On Sat, 9 Nov 2019 03:27:23 -0600, Roscoe snipped-for-privacy@hungryhippo.com wrote:

A thousand thousands is a MILLION. It is a thousand MILLION that makes a billion, no? 1,000 is a thousand

Other countries such as the United States use the word billion (or words cognate to it) to denote the billions as 1,000,000,000. For details, see Long and short scales – Current usage.

Milliard, another term for one thousand million, is still found occasionally in English, and is very common in most other European languages.[1][2] For example, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Georgian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, and Ukrainian — use milliard (or a related word) for the short scale billion, and billion (or a related word) for the long scale billion. Thus for these languages billion is thousand times larger than the modern English billion. However, in Russian, while milliard (????????) is used for the short scale billion, trillion (????????) is used for the long scale billion.

Also, under HISTORY:

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word billion was formed in the 16th century (from million and the prefix bi-, "two"), meaning the second power of a million (1,000,0002 = 1012). This long scale definition was similarly applied to trillion, quadrillion and so on. The words were originally French, and entered English around the end of the 17th century. Later, French arithmeticians changed the words' meanings, adopting the short scale definition whereby three zeros rather than six were added at each step, so a billion came to denote a thousand million (109), a trillion (1012), and so on. This new convention was adopted in the United States in the 19th century, but Britain retained the original long scale use. France, in turn, reverted to the long scale in 1948.[3] In Britain, however, under the influence of American usage, the short scale came to be increasingly used. In 1974, Prime Minister Harold Wilson confirmed that the government would use the word billion only in its short scale meaning (one thousand million). In a written answer to Robin Maxwell-Hyslop MP, who asked whether official usage would conform to the traditional British meaning of a million million, Wilson stated: "No. The word 'billion' is now used internationally to mean 1,000 million and it would be confusing if British Ministers were to use it in any other sense. I accept that it could still be interpreted in this country as

Not too many billions were earned totally ethically. More were basically "stolen" - one way or the other.

I don't (generally) buy lottery tickets or raffle tickets - but that doesn't mean I'm not a gambler. Thirty years ago in August I went "all in" on the biggest gamble of my life and have not taken a "pay cheque" since. It didn't make me rich. I could have lost EVERYTHING, but it kept bread on the table and I "retired" debt free at 65, with a modest house and 2 decent second hand vehicles and a small nest egg, that along with my government pension SHOULD allow me to modestly live out my remaining years - if I keep on doing a little bit of business for the next few years and am careful.