https://thisecommercelife.com/blogs/comics/the-day-all-billionaires-died
I’m sure it’s annoying for some to click offsite, but it’s 20 panels long. IMO worth the read, though!
I wouldnt tell anyone i got superpowers but there woild be signs
The wild thing is you could probably live off only 1 million invested at say 3 percent, a whole life.
Billions? That should be just unlawful.
Well that would mean a return of 30k annually, which is a pretty low quality of life in the US. If you lived in a low COL place it may be enough to get by, but you can’t live in any US city with that.
Sure but assuming you’re healthy and relatively young you could just not touch any of it and roll the interest back into it. In 23-24 years it’d be 2 million and your 3% return would be 60k. More if you added excess earnings to it during that period, of course
Of course depending on risk tolerance you could speed this up considerably. Bonds are more like 4-5% and stocks are closer to 10%. But then of course risk raises, sometimes considerably but a 7% return more than halves the timeline to around a decade (though keep in mind sometimes bubbles burst, 2008 returns were -38% and that AI bubble is getting shakier and shakier)
The bigger issue is lifestyle creep and consumerism. The majority of people who get to this level of wealth get attracted to relentless consumerism. Then 60k, which can easily cover cost of living in most areas (especially with the assumption that your housing is paid for and otherwise debt free), is suddenly no longer adequate
And of course the biggest issue is that 99% of people will never have the financial resources to even consider the above
The scenario I was replying to was that you could just live off a million dollars, as in no work your whole life. I completely agree with everything you’re saying though. I lived very comfortably on $60k in one of the highest col areas in the US.
You can also use the $M up slowly.
Sure, no golden toilets, but food on the table and more for life is kinda a lot IMO. But that was not what the example was for ofc.
What’s $M up slowly mean?
You can use the 1.000.000 dollars during your lifespan too.
You’d run out much faster than you’d think. Life is expensive, especially if you have a home you need to maintain. Have a spouse or kids and you’ll run through that million in a decade.
Tell me you don’t understand compound interest without saying you don’t understand compound interest.
Edit: you wouldn’t run out if you do your math.
I understand compound interest very well, and your interest can’t compound if you’re constantly drawing on the principal. You’d need a job to offset expenses until your investments had time to mature, especially if your returns were at 3%.
Your premise was that $1m at 3% return was enough to live your whole life on and that’s just a fantasy unless you intend to die very young or live very poorly; and alone.
that might be a fine strategy if you’re retirement age, but for younger people that isn’t a good idea
Of course you can’t use 5.000 a month at 20. I thought people wouldn’t think, so I wrote using it “slowly”.
“Teachers were finally paid closer to their worth.”
I dunno, I just think the phrasing “closer to their worth” is really funny when the picture being painted is a hopeful one. We can’t actually hope that teachers will get a decent pay, even in a better world.
Kinda the point I think. It’s not a completely Utopian fantasy, and plenty of the capitalistic (etc) problems that already existed would still be here.
I love that even in this made up fantasy world (which is awesome btw), we’re still only able to pay teachers “Close” to what they’re worth.
Like, lol. Teachers are so fucked from a livable wage standpoint, that it would take 2 made up billionaire apocalypses to give them enough money to be paid what they’re actually worth.
My friends always say “You can’t just kill them. There will be someone to take their place.” The obvious response is kill them too. Eventually, people will stop being so eager to take their place!
Though as the comic says, there’s always going to be assholes. Limiting how much power they have would be great.
I am currently running a game of Vampire predicated on “what if you all just… took out the ultra rich?”. It has been satisfying.
The solution is an income and wealth tax tied to minimum wage. I also like a maximum wage (100% tax beyond) and a maximum wealth (ditto) including unrealized gains both tied also to minimum wage.
That can be part of a solution. You also need to plug up holes like “it’s not a wage - i just got a personal loan using my company stock as collateral”.
Oh, absolutely. Unrealized gains would include company stock and I’m not sure banks will be giving big loans on limited stock.
I have other ideas like corporations not being able to own Intellectual property (or severely restricted terms for such ownership), Abolishing political parties, abolishing organized religion, maximum corporation size (revenue and employee count) etc.
They’re right, though. It’s easy to say “make people not want to be billionaires” but outside this comic, it’s impossible. We need to address the issues that allow billionaires to exist and pass on their fortunes tax-free.
If I received a million dollars, everyone I care about would live a long, happy and healthy life. Elon Musk spent almost $300 million dollars just on the current US midterms to elect Republicans and enact legislation that will give him control over you and keep you poor and desperate…
It’s not impossible. There’s wealth taxes, there’s guillotines.
That’s… addressing the issues that allow billionaires to exist.
Take power and abolish them.
If you systematically kill billionaires then it is a systemic solution.
It’s your duty as a human to kill billionaires on sight. With whole groups of people killing them no one can be guilty.
The world prospers.
This is an attainable future, they say where there’s a will there’s a way
I believe in wytchcraft!
Prosciption for anyone with a net worth over a billion dollars. It becomes an affirmative defense in a murder trial that the victim had wealth beyond the legal maximum. This avoids the issue of government enforcement. You don’t have to try and track down every criminal billionaire squirreling their wealth away in hidden accounts. It just becomes legal to kill anyone with a net worth over a certain amount. The government doesn’t have to track down and arrest billionaires. They have to worry about their own children killing them, inheriting their money, and just donating anything over the legal threshold.
I’m a bit existentially confused by the anticapitalist webcomic being hosted on Shopify.
https://www.viruscomix.com/page433.html
Additional/further reading from Winston Rowntree
Oh, HIGH-FIVE on that! Subnormality is in a brilliant, unique class of its own, and I need to figure out how to post more of them on our comics subs. Which, actually… oh! Oh, oh, oh.
Okay, there’s a technique I’ve been using for some time now at my own community that I think will work nicely. Oh my…
Always good to see another fan of their work
Recently re-read Shirley Estar Goes To Heaven (In both forms, even if the original comic was VERY early 00’s edgy, it was still a DAMN good comic, and the novel rewrite is 10/10 scifi)
Recently re-read Shirley Estar Goes To Heaven (In both forms, even if the original comic was VERY early 00’s edgy, it was still a DAMN good comic, and the novel rewrite is 10/10 scifi)
Hang on, hang on, that’s also by Rowntree?
TBH, I only check in with Subnormality every couple months, altho I’ve been reading for… shoot, it must ~20yrs now. oO
Both the original graphic novel and the actual novel are :D
Same here, absolutely wild to think how different the webcomc scene was back then
“one day, like a miracle…” No, you need to make change happen the hard way.
One of the purposes of science fiction and fantasy is to allow us to imagine a different world, without necessarily knowing how get there from here. In this case, we’re imagining a post-billionaire world without worrying about how to get there from here.
If that world seems better than the one we have now, we could decide to put a long, difficult plan in place to get to that world.
There are no silver bullets, only lead bullets.
Idk what messed up religion y’all are trying to come up with now but we need to lock in and strike these mfers out of the country.
That’s a good start
What liberals imagine instead of helping anyone.
Everyone I don’t like is a “liberal”.
The OP is a liberal, though.
There must be a least a few if the irritating smarmy ones you wish this upon. It’s one thing being a billionaire from wealth accumulation or inheritance. It’s another to be an insufferable monster to humanity.
I agree we need to dismantle the system. However I do wish it upon many of the greedy stains that call themselves a person, they had every chance to do the right thing.
The bourgeoisie are just capital given a face.
Yeah, was not expecting to be bricked up so much today. You can’t just post stuff like that anywhere.
Now I’m going to be thinking about this all day.
bricked up
Come again?
I think it means they need to eat more fiber
Will do!
(cmon, I’m exaggerating, but well it is REALLY good news)
I need a “+” after billionaires. Can’t let Elon escape on a technicality.
If it follows set theory, then all trillionaires are billionaires. Math got your back!
I’d prefer to stretch it out a bit: One every hour, starting with the “poorest” of them, climbing up the list every time.
Make the ones on top know that it will be their turn eventually. They cannot avoid it. They cannot cheat it.
They can donate everything they own to charities or whatever they want, and some will certainly try. But it’s too late - The culling cannot be stopped.
Go the other way. Start at the top and go down to the global mean.
Cmon, we want to watch the worst of them panic.
I see the appeal
