Posted on 11/10/2019 7:11:33 PM PST by GuavaCheesePuff
"Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars?" That's one of the questions The New York Times recently put to the avalanche of candidates coming for the Democratic partys presidential nomination in 2020. A few of them, and not necessarily the most left-wing ones, offered a squishily-philosophic no. "I'm not sure anybody cosmically or morally deserves to have a billion dollars," as South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg put it. Others were more positive: John Hickenlooper, the former governor of Colorado, thinks the aspiration to make a billion dollars "drives a lot of our economy." One thing just about everyone agreed on was that the existence of billionaires is offensive in the context of a society also beset by inequality, poverty and deprivation of opportunity. "It's a question that isn't meaningful outside its moorings," as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put it.
(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...
We are here: If there are no absolutes by which to judge society, then society is absolute. Francis Schaeffer, How Shall We Then Live? (Old Tappan NJ: Fleming H Revell Company, 1976), p. 224.
Thou shall not covet, Exodus 20:17. How about having too many horses, or husbands (or ex-husbands) as Ilhan Omar has, or too many spoons or clothes or shoes? Is that wrong too? Idiocy runs rampant on the left and cannot be corrected or overcome.
Some people made some money.
EXACTLY. And thank you for your common sense
Under a different arrangement, a form of worker-elected committee could run the company just fine.
The term for a worker's committee in the Russian language is "Soviet". It's been tried. It almost broke the nascent Soviet Union in a single year until Lenin put a stop to it.
The one that grows out of the barrel of a gun, if necessary.
To pretend that Buttboy or any of the others will stop at billionaires, or millionaires, or anyone at all who happens to annoy them is to court imprisonment or execution.
When you think large, successful corporations, at their heart are (initially) a small number of people who build something a large number of other people are willing to buy (or in the case of The Facebook and Google, a large number of people supplying eyeballs that can be sold to lots of client companies). Some of those companies are monopolies, others get in before the cost of market entry rises too much.
What is a billionaire? Someone who was either very lucky or very astute in the choice of efforts. Sometimes breaking the law and getting away with it. Sometimes building their pile on the backs of others without paying them much of anything.
I just wish that, in my neighborhood, FedEx was as good and reliable as UPS...
Please...do not give Sanders AOC, et al any ideas!
What about Soros? Bet they wouldn’t jump at the chance to take his billions(like I would)
Isn’t everyone in Venezuela a billionaire?
It could also be stated that a billionaire is someone who was able to convince a lot of investors that their product is worth investing in. Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, Apple, Costco, the list goes on and on. But for the many winners, there are probably a lot more losers.
Awesome. I like it.
I developed an app to measure the number of wipes left on a roll of toilet paper. I figure that the VCs on Sand Hill Road will give me at least a billion
It’s the parable of the talents.
Matthew 25:28 Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents.
Is it okay to ask why? Personally, I dont care if there are billionaires out there. Id like to have more money, but who wouldnt?
Getting to be a billionaire means being obsessed but Ive never had that level of obsession and I dont envy people who do.
Im happy that there are billionaires out there. And maybe instead of hating them we should see how they can help. For one thing, a little pressure to make them stop spending their cash on Planned Parenthood or other such causes would be nice.
Bernie and Warren are millionaires... If someone is willing to do the stuff necessary to create that kind of wealth - more power to ‘em.
What’s the alternative? That some ‘committee’ decides what’s worth buying - - or selling? And we live like the old soviets did - - where some central planner decided the most important book to print was on ‘tractor repair’?
No way... they earned it... theirs to spend as they wish.
That's almost what's happening now...The FED just created almost another trillion to dump into the economy... Problem is there's too much (paper) money floating around...To the ones other than the poor saps like me, money has become meaningless...For anything other than greed or power, there's nothing a person couldn't buy with a hundred million or two...We're playing one huge game of Monopoly...
Not necessarily. A lot of very wealthy people actually began with a Very Good Idea - and successful investors were those able to recognize a good idea.
Being an investor involves risks equal to those of being an entrepreneur. If you just want to ‘get rich quick’ you aren’t going to be successful on either side of the equation; and if you are afraid to be a ‘loser’, you will never take a chance either way.
thought you were a bible man pete, not cosmic man. bible doesn’t say anywhere how much money God may allow a person to have or be given, but it does speak to not stealing or otherwise doing wrong to others to get it, and it says you should tithe and be a good steward. most billionaires and millionaires likely don’t bother with what the bible says.
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