this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2025
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A Boring Dystopia
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The helicopters and personal assistants and private jets and staffed mansions aren't the problem. With all of those, money is moving from the rich person to pilots, crew, maintenance staff, laborers, builders. Workers are making a living, earning paychecks from all these expenditures. Their lavish lifestyles are not the problem.
The problem is their stock portfolios. They aren't converting their wealth into worker paychecks. They are leveraging their wealth to take more and more wealth from workers throughout the economy.
I would argue that the fact that they are using only for themselves an amount of labor and resources that would normally serve a large number of people due to the sheer extravagance of their needs increases costs for everyone else by increasing scarcity.
To be fair, if they really were just living lavishly and not using their wealth to amass more wealth like some kind of wealth black hole, then the extreme expenditure of such a lifestyle would one day drain their money dry, since they couldnt possibly actually earn enough to live like that. Were it not for the effect of wealth begetting more wealth, the issue you refer to would eventually solve itself.
This why we start taxing at 100% over a certain amount. They can keep living lavishly indefinitely while everyone else gets to benefit from putting money to actual use.
Gulfstream is an excellent example of this in action. Gulfstream jets can double the price over comparable products from brands like Bombardier or Cessna. And all of the crew, maintenance, training, and other operating costs can easily double as well. And, IMHO at least, there's nothing about the Gulfstream aircraft that justifies this extravagant expense. As far as I can tell, the Gulfstream name is a machine that transfers money from unsuspecting and vain rich people straight to Gulfstream and a few aerospace workers.
Not mad about some scientists fleecing rich morons.