The Myth Of "Self-Made" Billionaires

Great piece - one simpler explanation to add is the general public is innumerate allowing the billionaire class to grandstand all they want without pushback. Try asking anyone in the worker class to define what a billion dollars is and you might be surprised. I've asked dozens of locals I know and none got it right - the closest (after staring at me thinking it was a trick question) 'overguessed' at 100 million. Others thought 10 million. If the nearest in my unofficial poll is off by an order of magnitude 10 too small then Houston - we have a problem.

I didn’t know that people did not know this.

It would be great if there was a graphic (maybe interactive) that shows how the money hoarded is displaced from the rest of us and how that remaining amount is all that is left to be taxed for public use. This is why people hate the idea of taxes in the first place. Because there isn't a lot of money left after the hoarders extract most of it. We're all being spread so thin. Then people decry government programs as socialism but would rather pay more to the rich for their privatized version. But if that same money that was hoarded could have been used in the first place to pay for those things we all need. People are just ignorant (often intentionally).

he has made innovations in a lot of areas but a lot of his work is just futuristic mumbo jumbo (hyperloop) that wouldnt work. he also used children cobalt miners and caused a coup in bolivia, so

Even though Elon is not self-made I still enjoy his corporations work at Tesla and SpaceX, other than that billionaires are stupid

i worked out how much i could earn if i was paid the amount i made and it £65 an hour when i’m getting paid £6 lol

I love this one. I wish a lot of Americans didn’t worship billionaires. I wish giving help to others wasn’t seen as a bad thing. I wish people who received help not have a stigma either.

But how long do we keep trying those strategies when just get rolled back and thwarted all the time anyway? This is the famous Revolution vs. Reform question.

All of those are nice, but they are really just a check to the capitalist system. Workers owning the means of production would do all of those things and more by itself. And a flatter distribution of wealth. All while reducing the class disparity also.

I love this idea

We need - higher welfare levels - higher rental, medical and other cost of living subsidies - higher disability and pensions - significantly lower medical and medical insurance costs - significantly higher minimum wages - on top of that a solidly dignified basic income for low incomes. And we pay for all of this by implementing a "maximum income" everywhere in the world, and countries that don't play along we penalize. Personally I think a private (personal) affluence level of about a billion dollars/euro should be plenty for every human being, and a yearly private income of about 100 million euro/billion should be absolutely tops. That means 100% tax over that. Call it a Guillotine/Pitchfork tax.

Khannea

You're certainly welcome to your own opinion. I happen to disagree quite strongly, as is evident in my videos. I hope you'll change your mind at some point, but obviously the choice is yours.

JT Chapman

Look I support your channel and love the content you produce. That's just a fact. I have a critique though and it's one that will no doubt not go over well with this crowd. We live in a predatory late-stage capitalist system right now. This really can't be argued, what also can't be argued is the capture of our government by the hyper-rich. They own most politicians and the ones they don't own are under the direct control of those who they do. An the ones they do own are firmly entrenched at the very top of both sides of our duopoly. So we are not leaving this system behind any time soon is the major point. No matter how much we wish it would be changed. With the hyper-rich owning most of our government, they have destroyed the regulations so that they could profiteer without hassle from their vassals in the government. They have also had the politicians add a bunch of red tape and roadblocks to up and coming companies in certain industries like transportation, energy production, and launch services contracting. So that the already established mega-conglomerates in those industries have no worries with unauthorized disruption of their vast empires from up and comers. This is the basis for a lot of Elon Musk's hatred of government regulations. Not because they protect the environment or against wrong-doing, but because a lot of the regulations protected companies like Ford, GMC, Duke Energy, Exxon, BP, Boeing, Lockheed, and ULA from actual competition that they couldn't crush at will. Those are Elon Musk's true to the word enemies. Because he decided to address climate change in 3 ways; transportation, energy production, and space waste. It can't be argued that Tesla has literally forced the entire automotive industry to adopt electric vehicles. Since they have come on the scene, every major automotive manufacturer went from ignoring EVs exist to publicly stating they will be changing the majority of their production from fossil fuel burning internal combustion engines to fully electric in a decade. Because they can't compete with Telsa's vehicle performance and efficiency. An they know the public also sees this as a fact considering a 4 door all-electric luxury sedan can toast a multi-million dollar fossil fuel spewing hyper car in acceleration and range. Then there is the energy production side. Musk has been push hard for micro-grid solar production, grid-scale battery power storage, and massive investments in solar farms. The battery Tesla installed in Australia is hands down amazing and has helped keep them from reopening a ton of coal and heavy oil peaker plants. He's now about to do the same in California. These projects matter a lot to helping with the insane climate crisis already upon us all. Lastly launch services for space missions. This gets conflated to Bezos and Branson's little tourist companies, but it's way beyond that. In fact it's now beyond every other major country's launch services. We were throwing away these massive vehicles after a single use. You know where those vehicles with all those harsh fuels and chemicals ended up? The ocean. Does the ocean need more pollution? Nope. Well SpaceX pioneered the ability to reuse these vehicles to stop the massive waste going on and then didn't just pocket the difference in price. He passed the savings on and has drastically reduced the cost of getting payloads to space. Not to mention the Starlink internet system is literally designed to give rural people internet. The major providers of high speed internet have completely ignored rural areas because running a ton of fiber optic cable to a couple of homes in the boonies isn't profitable. Well Musk wanted to change that and hook them up to the high speed net everyone else gets. An over a half million people finally get that privilege because of SpaceX and Musk. Point is that people hate on Musk because of him being a billionaire on paper, his abhorrent labor practices, and because of other billionaires trying to copy him and failing. Folks completely ignore the fact he has done the most good addressing climate than any other single person... ever. Period. Prove me wrong. Please. Show me another single person who has completely transformed an entire industry like transportation to directly address the climate crisis. Let alone 3 seriously dirty industries. With telecom being the 4th he's about to completely disrupt with Starlink destroying the business of AT&T, Comcast, Hughes Net, and Verizon.

The sadest thing is that this is considered normal

Josh Elchert from the pizza shop in Findlay, Ohio is my childhood friend! I actually LIVE right down the road from his store. I literally grew up working with him in his father-in laws pizza shop. Go figure, he married into the business. He could have never done it himself. He’s actually a SUPER nice guy, but he would never be able to wrap his head around the fact he exploits his workers. Especially using his kind act as an example of that exploitation. He’s a nice guy, but kinda ignorant. Small fkn world. Always LOVE your videos and ALWAYS proud to be a contributor. Keep up the good work!

Been waiting on this one!

The retailer I work for has a running total of the sales for each day and they always hit at least $100,000 and that's just counting our location. Really sucks that I'm the one running back and forth grabbing items off shelves, helping customers, and memorizing countless item locations only to receive a fraction of the money I'm bringing in for the company. This video is very well done, thank you. I wish more people would open their eyes to the reality that they are being exploited instead of pretending that by saying that they somehow give in to a "victim mentality".