I’m a bit torn on the topic of entertainer billionaires and millionaires. Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties? It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
Likewise with people who bought stock shares before a big merger or bought crypto a decade ago which made their wealth more than decuple in value. They certainly didn’t start at the same low as the majority of people, but that’s also not really their fault.
Let’s say that there can be some, that it’s possible to be, a good billionaire but let’s all agree we should be taxing the fuck out of them.
Taylor Swift released a crap load of different versions of her last couple albums, each one having different songs and artwork knowing that at least her most die-hard fans would buy every single one. It is 100% on her that she became a billionaire.
she also has the power to break the harmful status quo of the industry if she so chose. her concerts are bigger than ticketmaster. she could refuse to do ticketsales through ticketmaster and give a lot more power to audiences and artists in the ticketbuying marketplace. she doesn’t because the status quo benefits her because she’s more entertainer than artist
A billionaire is 999 times richer than a millionaire, you may end up a millionaire by chance but there’s no way you can magically become a billionaire. Assuming you bought 1000 bitcoins when they were worth a cent you would have sell them at 1 or 10, assuming you win a billion at the lottery you would give some of it away and cease to be a billionaire as a result.
Keep also in mind that these people work hard to secure contracts and royalties, the more investments you have the more work you have to do to manage them.
I feel like this is seeing in action the thinking that led to the cultural revolution. “Sure, he’s just a chemistry teacher. But he’s one of the evil ones. He’s in the bad group. Into the labor camp!”
Fixing the awful problems with our society requires changing a lot of things, among them taxes and the power of the wealthy to distort government and public opinion. Demonizing Taylor Swift relentlessly will do fuck all.
Of all the rich and influential people in US Taylor Swift is the least of your problems. She’s an absolute winner for opposing the power grabbing ppl. Take it out on Jeff Bozos or Elon or some other undemocratic capitalist.
I’ll agree with you that Taylor Swift is not a billionaire of biggest concern. It’s not black and white, it’s a scale of grey. That said, anyone with over a billion UD dollars in personal and private wealth is in the you shouldn’t have that much money club. Full stop. That’s black and white. The grey comes in with how much over are you and what did you do to get it. Taylor Swift is not like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, or Peter Thiel, but she does have too much money and probably doesn’t do enough to encourage new talent who would be her competition. She’s a capitalist, just not the worst kind.
Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties
Nope. They are in fact able to spend money to help those that need it, so you can pack away your ridiculous strawman.
It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
It’s their fault if they hoard vast riches rather than meaningfully contribute to the betterment of the people, though.
Let’s say that there can be some, that it’s possible to be, a good billionaire
ABSOLUTELY not. You don’t accidentally become a billionaire in a day. You become a billionaire by hoarding ridiculous amounts of money long past the point where you have enough for everything you could ever need.
You don’t become a billionaire by hard work. You exploited a lot of people, you fucked over a lot of people. If they were a billionaire but literally everyone that worked for them was a multi-millionare I’d shut up. If I made $100,000 (of current USD) for 2,000 years… I wouldn’t have made a billion dollars.
Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties? It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
They don’t become billionaires off of royalties. Taylor Swift is selling tickets to her shows for hundreds or thousands of dollars. She could be paying her staff more, and charging her customers less, but she chooses not to, because she is greedy.
I’ve seen this viewpoint a lot lately, and while I absolutely agree that tickets to her shows are expensive, when my wife bought tickets to the Eras Tour she was able to get them on the primary market for about $300 each for very good seats. The secondary scalping market was selling the same seats for between $2,000-$4,000 depending on the show, and people were buying them at that price. From a supply and demand perspective, Taylor Swift was absolutely selling those tickets below their true market value.
As for paying her crew more, she also paid out $197 million in bonuses to her crew across the tour. That’s about 10% of tour revenue in bonuses. Not profits, revenue. I’ve been tangentially involved in the entertainment industry since college and have multiple friends directly involved, and I’ve never heard of any other performer giving that much in bonuses to their crew.
Additionally, she donated to food pantries in every city she performed in. While the amounts she donated to each food pantry have not been released, people have worked out that it was likely at least $20k/pantry, based on the number of meals the pantries said they would be able to provide with it. That’s at least $1 million across all the cities, which is obviously not enough, but is far more than most other entertainers do.
I know she gets a lot of flack because she’s so visible in our culture, but in terms of how bad billionaires are, she’s significantly better than a lot of others who fly under the radar. There are over 3,000 billionaires today, according to Forbes, and I’m pretty certain most of them made their money through much worse methods than singing songs and selling overpriced merch to fans. 😛
That’s not exactly a good-faith argument. You said she should pay her staff more and charge less for tickets. I provided a counterpoint to that.
Going back to the original question that you were asked, should she have retired when she started to approach $1 billion in net worth?
I will point out that the ownership rights to her music, which she purchased with the money she made from The Eras Tour and now owns completely, is probably worth close to $1 billion in valuation alone. Even if her entire liquid net worth was taxed from her, she’d be a billionaire on paper just by virtue of her music catalog & the value of her name.
Ticketmaster actually takes the most from sales to her shows, but yes she specifically could be making better use of her money, such as not renting a super-yacht and not flying everywhere on a private plane.
I don’t think there is a tax authority with the power to do that, not in the west.
Power is the answer, and I’m not sure any current governments have enough of it or the wherewithal to use it, certainly not globally.
They seem to be able to find a weak government and lawyer/accountant their ‘wealth’ to appear there.
Maybe somewhere like China can control it’s local billionaire problem more effectively than some others, but I don’t really know.
Tax alone isn’t the answer. if the richest man in the world were to pay 200 billions a year in taxes they would still be a billionaire and if these 200 billions ends up on building a ballroom for politicians not much is achieved.
A billion is an amount of money so ridiculous that it should simply be illegal to have that much.
I don’t think it’s that unwarranted to calculate that there’s a certain amount of money that you could realistically spend in a lifetime, and anything after that might as well be passed on to taxes and other charities/community initiatives to help everyone else.
It’s probably not something us common folk think about, but I’m certain that these people have thought about it at least once before, and their decision to keep the money for themselves is what makes them evil. There are no good billionaires because to reach that level you need to have made that decision long ago; the “good billionaires” are still millionaires.
That’s exactly the point I think anyone reasonable would make.
It’s not necessarily how they got the money, it’s that they keep it. If I won the lottery, and got a multi-billion dollar payout, I could wire most of that money to a DAF, tell it to distribute the money to 200 different charities I like, and it could be done within the week.
Keeping that much money is a choice. Continuing to spend it all on lavish expenses while the poor suffer is a personal choice, not one they’re forced to bear the consequences of due to their fame.
You know who is a good billionaire? Steve Wozniak.
Because he got his, more than he could ever need, and then he decided to stop. Since then he’s lived on his ranch and participated in tech outreach ever since
You could self publish and live in luxury at $100 million. You could keep making music, hell you could do it in complete creative freedom
Power. At some point money stops being what it is to most people and becomes leverage to do things. The truly wealthy don’t have to worry about having the ability to buy things, they shift to being able to influence and control stuff. Now, that can certainly be used for good, so there’s the difference between the perceived good and bad billionaire.
You literally can’t be a billionaire and give it away. You’d start giving long before that if you ever would part with more than slivers of your dragon hoard
Well technically even if they buy a ranch and self publish all their own works with their own studios then their assets are still more welath than most people will ever earn.
The only way to truly get rid of wealth is to give it to somebody else.
No one needs more than 5 million dollars. That’s enough for a comfortable life without laboring every again.
If they make a shit load of money doing concerts, that money needs to keep moving. Tax it so it can go into schools and infrastructure and such. They don’t need a mega yacht. People are starving and suffering from problems money would solve.
I would expect in our lifetime we will see median house price around that mark, it really depends on the country, somewhere it’s enough for a whole extended family but I don’t think that’s universally applicable
I’m a bit torn on the topic of entertainer billionaires and millionaires. Is it our opinion that they should just retire as soon as they hit 2 or 3 million, and end all contracts with royalties? It’s not really their fault, at that point, that they keep making money.
Likewise with people who bought stock shares before a big merger or bought crypto a decade ago which made their wealth more than decuple in value. They certainly didn’t start at the same low as the majority of people, but that’s also not really their fault.
Let’s say that there can be some, that it’s possible to be, a good billionaire but let’s all agree we should be taxing the fuck out of them.
Taylor Swift released a crap load of different versions of her last couple albums, each one having different songs and artwork knowing that at least her most die-hard fans would buy every single one. It is 100% on her that she became a billionaire.
she also has the power to break the harmful status quo of the industry if she so chose. her concerts are bigger than ticketmaster. she could refuse to do ticketsales through ticketmaster and give a lot more power to audiences and artists in the ticketbuying marketplace. she doesn’t because the status quo benefits her because she’s more entertainer than artist
A billionaire is 999 times richer than a millionaire, you may end up a millionaire by chance but there’s no way you can magically become a billionaire. Assuming you bought 1000 bitcoins when they were worth a cent you would have sell them at 1 or 10, assuming you win a billion at the lottery you would give some of it away and cease to be a billionaire as a result.
Keep also in mind that these people work hard to secure contracts and royalties, the more investments you have the more work you have to do to manage them.
I am sure the Aryan Goddess is completely unproblematic and earned all her money without hurting anyone. Truly, a self-made billionaire.
Also, it’s always Taylor Swift.
I feel like this is seeing in action the thinking that led to the cultural revolution. “Sure, he’s just a chemistry teacher. But he’s one of the evil ones. He’s in the bad group. Into the labor camp!”
Fixing the awful problems with our society requires changing a lot of things, among them taxes and the power of the wealthy to distort government and public opinion. Demonizing Taylor Swift relentlessly will do fuck all.
Of all the rich and influential people in US Taylor Swift is the least of your problems. She’s an absolute winner for opposing the power grabbing ppl. Take it out on Jeff Bozos or Elon or some other undemocratic capitalist.
I’ll agree with you that Taylor Swift is not a billionaire of biggest concern. It’s not black and white, it’s a scale of grey. That said, anyone with over a billion UD dollars in personal and private wealth is in the you shouldn’t have that much money club. Full stop. That’s black and white. The grey comes in with how much over are you and what did you do to get it. Taylor Swift is not like Elon Musk, Sam Altman, or Peter Thiel, but she does have too much money and probably doesn’t do enough to encourage new talent who would be her competition. She’s a capitalist, just not the worst kind.
Nope. They are in fact able to spend money to help those that need it, so you can pack away your ridiculous strawman.
It’s their fault if they hoard vast riches rather than meaningfully contribute to the betterment of the people, though.
ABSOLUTELY not. You don’t accidentally become a billionaire in a day. You become a billionaire by hoarding ridiculous amounts of money long past the point where you have enough for everything you could ever need.
You don’t become a billionaire by hard work. You exploited a lot of people, you fucked over a lot of people. If they were a billionaire but literally everyone that worked for them was a multi-millionare I’d shut up. If I made $100,000 (of current USD) for 2,000 years… I wouldn’t have made a billion dollars.
That’s a lot of words to say “I didn’t understand the meme”
It’s your interpretation that the meme is intended to be sarcastic or ironic?
They don’t become billionaires off of royalties. Taylor Swift is selling tickets to her shows for hundreds or thousands of dollars. She could be paying her staff more, and charging her customers less, but she chooses not to, because she is greedy.
I’ve seen this viewpoint a lot lately, and while I absolutely agree that tickets to her shows are expensive, when my wife bought tickets to the Eras Tour she was able to get them on the primary market for about $300 each for very good seats. The secondary scalping market was selling the same seats for between $2,000-$4,000 depending on the show, and people were buying them at that price. From a supply and demand perspective, Taylor Swift was absolutely selling those tickets below their true market value.
As for paying her crew more, she also paid out $197 million in bonuses to her crew across the tour. That’s about 10% of tour revenue in bonuses. Not profits, revenue. I’ve been tangentially involved in the entertainment industry since college and have multiple friends directly involved, and I’ve never heard of any other performer giving that much in bonuses to their crew.
Additionally, she donated to food pantries in every city she performed in. While the amounts she donated to each food pantry have not been released, people have worked out that it was likely at least $20k/pantry, based on the number of meals the pantries said they would be able to provide with it. That’s at least $1 million across all the cities, which is obviously not enough, but is far more than most other entertainers do.
I know she gets a lot of flack because she’s so visible in our culture, but in terms of how bad billionaires are, she’s significantly better than a lot of others who fly under the radar. There are over 3,000 billionaires today, according to Forbes, and I’m pretty certain most of them made their money through much worse methods than singing songs and selling overpriced merch to fans. 😛
“He was a very gentle rapist”
That’s not exactly a good-faith argument. You said she should pay her staff more and charge less for tickets. I provided a counterpoint to that.
Going back to the original question that you were asked, should she have retired when she started to approach $1 billion in net worth?
I will point out that the ownership rights to her music, which she purchased with the money she made from The Eras Tour and now owns completely, is probably worth close to $1 billion in valuation alone. Even if her entire liquid net worth was taxed from her, she’d be a billionaire on paper just by virtue of her music catalog & the value of her name.
Ticketmaster actually takes the most from sales to her shows, but yes she specifically could be making better use of her money, such as not renting a super-yacht and not flying everywhere on a private plane.
Lmao, you cited prices of tickets but the actual cause for those prices is somehow whataboutism?
Tax is the answer
I don’t think there is a tax authority with the power to do that, not in the west.
Power is the answer, and I’m not sure any current governments have enough of it or the wherewithal to use it, certainly not globally. They seem to be able to find a weak government and lawyer/accountant their ‘wealth’ to appear there.
Maybe somewhere like China can control it’s local billionaire problem more effectively than some others, but I don’t really know.
Tax alone isn’t the answer. if the richest man in the world were to pay 200 billions a year in taxes they would still be a billionaire and if these 200 billions ends up on building a ballroom for politicians not much is achieved.
A billion is an amount of money so ridiculous that it should simply be illegal to have that much.
I don’t think it’s that unwarranted to calculate that there’s a certain amount of money that you could realistically spend in a lifetime, and anything after that might as well be passed on to taxes and other charities/community initiatives to help everyone else.
It’s probably not something us common folk think about, but I’m certain that these people have thought about it at least once before, and their decision to keep the money for themselves is what makes them evil. There are no good billionaires because to reach that level you need to have made that decision long ago; the “good billionaires” are still millionaires.
That’s exactly the point I think anyone reasonable would make.
It’s not necessarily how they got the money, it’s that they keep it. If I won the lottery, and got a multi-billion dollar payout, I could wire most of that money to a DAF, tell it to distribute the money to 200 different charities I like, and it could be done within the week.
Keeping that much money is a choice. Continuing to spend it all on lavish expenses while the poor suffer is a personal choice, not one they’re forced to bear the consequences of due to their fame.
You know who is a good billionaire? Steve Wozniak.
Because he got his, more than he could ever need, and then he decided to stop. Since then he’s lived on his ranch and participated in tech outreach ever since
You could self publish and live in luxury at $100 million. You could keep making music, hell you could do it in complete creative freedom
Why would you want to become an avatar of wealth?
Power. At some point money stops being what it is to most people and becomes leverage to do things. The truly wealthy don’t have to worry about having the ability to buy things, they shift to being able to influence and control stuff. Now, that can certainly be used for good, so there’s the difference between the perceived good and bad billionaire.
Now that’s a totally different argument, but it’s bullshit
Being a billionaire means you cease to be a person. Your personal finances are a corporation that does nothing but take
Point to a good billionaire. I’ll point you to a PR firm and probably pictures at Epstein’s Island with half naked children
There are no good billionaires. That’s both prescrive and descriptive, it’s just not a real thing for a whole host of reasons
Mostly agreed, but if Woz had gone billionaire, he’d have more to give. I wouldn’t pursue such a life myself though.
You literally can’t be a billionaire and give it away. You’d start giving long before that if you ever would part with more than slivers of your dragon hoard
Well technically even if they buy a ranch and self publish all their own works with their own studios then their assets are still more welath than most people will ever earn.
The only way to truly get rid of wealth is to give it to somebody else.
So? The world isn’t fair. I don’t begrudge people who have more than me, frankly I’m way more disturbed that anyone has less than me
It’s fine to be rich. Especially if you actually earned it through your own efforts
It’s not fine to hoard so much it destroys the fucking world, and that’s what it means to be a billionaire
I begrudge people sitting on billions of dollars while others starve.
Yeah, and those people are destroying the world
If someone has ten million? Good for them. A hundred? Pushing it, but not so much that their mere existence means others must starve
A billion? No, fuck off, your sheer hoard kills people systematically
No one needs more than 5 million dollars. That’s enough for a comfortable life without laboring every again.
If they make a shit load of money doing concerts, that money needs to keep moving. Tax it so it can go into schools and infrastructure and such. They don’t need a mega yacht. People are starving and suffering from problems money would solve.
I would expect in our lifetime we will see median house price around that mark, it really depends on the country, somewhere it’s enough for a whole extended family but I don’t think that’s universally applicable