I think that, somewhere north of $1 ~ $5 million is life-changing on its own. There’s no need for someone to have tens of millions or hundreds of millions. Tens of millions is like, changing multiple lives in a family with how much that can stretch.
Whenever someone has billions to their name, it is boggling to think about. That it becomes just ‘fuck you’ money at that point because more often than not, not a lot of billionaires out there being charitable. When they know they’re set for a few lifetimes just by a single billion alone.
No single person should ever have that amount of gross wealth.
Just enough to escape capitalism. 5 million invested in stocks means you would never have to work again. Any more than that and you are part of the problem that everyone is trying to escape.
Honestly though, really we should all be working for an escape for our entire species, not individual escape pods.
No one needs more than $5 million. That’s enough for a conservative investment portfolio to give you a mid six figure income without doing any labor. Watch TV all day and eat chips, still net six figures.
Maybe then no one can afford mega mansions and mega yachts, but I’m okay with that. We don’t need that much concentration of wealth.
I mean, maybe I want to go after a passion project and not waste away on someone else’s dream of what having money looks like?
$5mill ain’t gonna start & fund a lot of impactful projects
I’ve read your post a dozen times and I’m confused.
Are you at the $5 million cap in this scenario? You’re certainly not going to waste away with $500k/year coming in, labor free.
Or are you closer to median income of like $80k, and thus have no funds for a big passion project?
Either way, you can always pool resources and form an organization of some sort. We don’t really want a ton of power collected in individuals. Especially not if the only reason they have that power is because they had money.
Let me put it this way.
It’s possible to become a millionaire through a combination of hardwork, brains, luck and timing.
It’s impossible to become a billionaire after that without exploiting others, whether that is workers, employees, investors…whoever.
In other words, it’s possible to be an honest millionaire, but not an honest billionaire.
So the amount of wealth a person is entitled to is the amount that they can earn with their own labour without exploiting others in order to do so.
So if you own a furniture store, and you pay your employees a living wage, give benefits, etc… and after that you’re successful enough to be a millionaire…great. You deserve it. If you’re an employer and you own a furniture store, and in order to become a millionaire you have to pay your workers minimum wage and rely on unfair labour practices to inflate your profits…you don’t deserve it.
I use the furniture store example because I worked for just such a guy. Family run business. Paid us all well enough. Gave us benefits. Made sure we were taken care of. Treated us like family. And he was financially very successful while managing to do so. Could he have made even MORE if he had taken it from wages and benefits…sure. But that wasn’t the type of person he was.
To me, THAT example is capitalism working as it should in it’s purest form. Corporatization is just a bastardization of the concept created by venture capitalists and shareholders.
It’s impossible to become a billionaire after that without exploiting others, whether that is workers, employees, investors…whoever.
People say this, but I don’t think it’s true.
If I simply ask for people to give me money if they like me, and I get 1 million people to give me a dollar each, then I become a millionaire. Nobody’s being taken advantage of, everyone is voluntarily doing this.
Getting to a billion is a lot harder but not impossible. If I ask and 10 million people give me $100 each over the course of 10 years, I might make a billion dollars that way.
So who can do this kind of “ask people for money” at these scales? Anyone who provides a service where the marginal cost of each additional recipient of that service doesn’t cost anything. A musician playing music in a subway station performs basically the same amount of work whether 10 people walk by or 1000 people walk by in the time that he performs. And if you’re a recording artist, you might release a song that literally over a billion people enjoy.
Yes, sports leagues and movie studios and record labels and Ticketmaster and book publishers and live venues and broadcasters and tech platforms are often exploitative in many ways, but authors, musicians, artists, filmmakers, comedians, and other creators can and do sometimes do things that make the world better by billions of dollars worth of happiness, while taking a cut worth hundreds of millions, or even billions.
Ultimately, we do things that produce value in some way or another. Sometimes we get to keep the fruits of our labor, and sometimes we get to profit from that value created. Often, as in the world of intellectual property, the value is very far removed from the actual cost to produce, including the cost in terms of human labor. When that happens, sometimes the excess value is worth billions. Even without a big team creating that value.
I see what you’re saying. But to me it’s very much a “You can’t swim in the sewer without getting covered in shit” morality-play.
The very act of providing a service that earns more than a billion dollars by necessity requires the cooperation of a number of different entities. As you described, Ticket Master, Publishers, Distributors, etc… So while they themselves might not be directly exploiting people, they have to interact and make use of partners that do if they want to play in that billionaire paddling pool.
To me, exploitation by association is still exploitation.
But that’s me. Everyone is welcome to their own opinion.
To me, exploitation by association is still exploitation.
But by this telling, the billionaire isn’t any less moral than the person who buys the tickets. If simply transacting with this system is unethical, then the billionaires aren’t any worse than the millionaires, or even the people barely subsisting on what they have.
In my eyes, there’s a huge difference between the person who actively exploits others, and one who incidentally interacts with a person who exploits others. Especially if choosing to opt out wouldn’t actually reduce the exploitation happening. There are still degrees to things, so it’s entirely possible for the billionaire artist to be ethically superior to the millionaire venue operator, even when they both rely on the other.
Not to mention, there’s a difference in kind when talking about exploitation in terms of a team effort where not enough of the fruits of the labor get shared fairly with all team members (positive sum interactions) versus when one actively takes from another, and that victim is worse off from the transaction.
I totally agree. And id like to ask, what sort of system benefits this?
Regulation is what government does and kills small business while large corps either pay em off to get by or they submit to regulation and lose a few billion but doesn’t affect em.
Socialism is viewed here as government ownership of everything, no more individualism, and Americans fear government above all else (ironically blindly trusting corporations with all their money and data).
Cant we outlaw corporations and continue as we are? Sure would be nice.
Cant we outlaw corporations and continue as we are? Sure would be nice.
I think the world would do better if all of us shrank a bit to be more mindful of a community economy.
If my neighbour down the street woodworks in his spare time and makes bespoke tables and chairs, I’ll do everything I can to go buy from him rather than a corporation (for example)
Growing up on an Acreage, it was more common for us to buy a half a side of beef or pork from the farmer next door than to go to the grocery store. Same for vegetables from farmer’s markets or similar community markets.
It’s less about criminalizing corporations and more about refusing to reward them for making their profits off the backs of poverty wages and government subsidies…
I agree.
People are SO against doing that though, almost vehemently so. 1000 people will go to scamazon to buy some junk before 1 person goes 2 blocks to get it from a local store. People are so lazy they dont want to get up to put in a dvd (yes im old, but this is something I heard a friend actually say not long ago)
Not to mention everything made local costs 4x more by default.
There’s really not much sense of community anymore in America.
Agree. Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
Personally, every penny you have in money/assets/stocks over £1b is taxed at 100% in exchange you get a medal that says “I beat capitalism” and a statue.
Its a compromise. You can have 999 mil as long as you invest back 100% into society thereafter…though, no one ever needs 999 mil either.
as long as you invest back 100% into society
Taxes
Yeah but then they find ways to slurp up the tax money through bailouts and BS government contracts.
Yes, but we are talking tax policy, not how to solve human greed and corruption.
Getting to direct where every dollar goes above a billion is a huge amount of power. A single person deciding how to spend millions or billions of dollars to do what they deem to be improving society? They may do some good things, but a democratic process would probably do better overall.
Exactly
While I agree, then you are giving the government massive power to decide how much you shouldn’t make.
And what happens with all the “tax” money? Straight into politician pockets.
I’m not bothered about the specifics, its the principal.
The money could all goto charity for all I care. Point is, no person on this planet should have that much wealth at the expense of others.
I agree.
But its still dangerous to give government that power. however, if you can actually elect the politicians, its fine. But we all know its rigged bullshit and votes dont actually matter anymore, if they ever did.
It’s gotta be less dangerous than letting individuals have it. I mean, look around.
They’re in the trillions now. It’s like a disease.
likeNo they aren’t. Musk is only around 700-800B as of the end of 2025.
Oh, Ok. I was worried.
This is a difficult question because we don’t have an agreed upon baseline of what “living” looks like worldwide.
Some countries may say, “living a long life.” Other countries may say, “And a roof over your head.” And Other countries may say, “That and a yearly vacation.”
Also, it’s sad to say that million dollars isn’t even “dick around” money anymore. My wife’s retired grandparents retired on a million at age 70. They’re living okay, very modestly at age 90. Medicine is fucking expensive, hip surgeries, paying for physical therapy, etc. No brand new cars or fancy trips. Just coupon clipping and finding lunch deals.
Enough to cover their needs: from shelter and food, to enriching experiences and opportunities. We could all have this if we taxed the rich and corporations adequately as we once did.
Billionaires don’t have billions in their bank accounts. That’s not how wealth works. It’s not like they’re sitting on a pile of cash and just want more. The vast majority of it is tied to property and businesses edit: and stocks. Thinking that just because one could comfortably retire that they should is kind of like telling a runner to stop running after having completed their first marathon. They’re a runner - runners run. A person who became a billionaire views making money the same way. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re good at and derive meaning from.
Billionaires don’t have billions in their bank accounts. That’s not how wealth works.
This is a strawman argument used by dishonest business types who think everybody else is dumb about how wealth works. Nobody is saying billionaires have billions in their bank accounts.
The vast majority of it is tied to property and businesses
Right you are on the same page as the rest of the people arguing against the existence of billionaires.
The number of properties held by a person should be limited to one. Ideally having a clause saying that it has to be on rent for a regulated price. And individuals cannot own a majority of business unless it’s a one man job. I would like the world to head towards worker owned cooperatives instead of 0.01% hoarding 90% of the wealth.
Thinking that just because one could comfortably retire that they should is kind of like telling a runner to stop running after having completed their first marathon. They’re a runner - runners run.
So the entire neo-liberal thesis is that we should reward psychopaths. That’s kind of a non-starter for sustainable living.
A person who became a billionaire views making money the same way. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re good at and derive meaning from.
I can’t begin to tell you the enormous amount of problems with this statement with regards to somebody’s mental health. You can’t be a billionaire without causing suffering to other people. Without leaving somebody else with the short end of the stick. Kindness is alien to people who think this is okay and should be encouraged. This level of worship of money is quite deviant because civilization evolved and thrives on cooperation, not on some misconstrued notion that a single person can derive so much “value” such that they can demand 99% or more of wealth.>
Means the only solution is the guillotine sadly.
In America midwest, 100k is plenty to own a couple acres and a few cars and buy most things you want and travel.
On the coasts, about $250k yr to live like this, maybe 350k.
own a couple acres and a few cars
On the flip side, plenty of us don’t want to own acres or cars. None of that sounds appealing to me.
We should all figure out what is actually important to us, and where that stuff tends to be cheaper, relative to what we can earn in that place.
I like a variety of nice restaurants, a good butcher shop, good bakeries, a good coffee shop/roaster, farmers markets, and other specialty food sellers within walking (or at least biking) distance of my home. I like the option of seeing live music and standup comedians, preferably also within walking distance of my home. I like having multiple playgrounds and parks and libraries and even museums within walking distance of my home. I like that my kids can walk to and from most of these places, too.
So I pay a shitload to live in a place like that. It comes with tradeoffs: it costs more, we have less space, we can only have one car in our household. But that stuff isn’t important to me (we have money to spare, we don’t like too much space, we hate driving).
Most importantly, though, the thing I like about living in a high salary, high cost of living city is that when set aside 10% of your income for savings and 10% of your income for travel, those are types of things where a dollar is a dollar, so that 10% of a larger number goes further. Someone who lives in a big house on a big plot of land in the Midwest still has to pay the exact same amount that I would when they’re getting a hotel room in London or an Airbnb at a ski town in Colorado.
Thats good! I wish I could be more minimalist but im not. Im a maximalist for sure lol.
Most things about living in town just require spending money all the time (not that im not spending it other places but still)
Like fancy eateries or bars etc, just drains money away so fast and you dont actually “get” anything out of it. (Except experience, which my memory is so bad ill forget it anyway)
Good point on the high salary area however one could argue there’s actually more opportunity here where I could buy land to rent out, or buy a house to flip etc. Big money makers. But I am too lazy to want to do that right now haha. And while trips are fun and i like to do them sometimes, having my own big garage is more fun and more useful to me. Plus I love driving (more sport type driving events, but I go for cruises on open roads a lot too). I feel like a trapped animal in cities, not for me.
Thats good! I wish I could be more minimalist but im not. Im a maximalist for sure lol.
I think you’re misunderstanding my point. Mine isn’t minimalism. I’m not denying myself anything that I want. Or even owning less stuff or spending less money. Mine is just steering things into what I like rather than what I don’t care all that much about.
And for my preferences, that maximum for my own happiness is going to come from living in a dense city with a lot going on.
I’m cautious about using the word “need”. No one needs almost anything. That is not the standard we should be judging things. Anyone can point to anything you love and say you don’t need it. It can get miserable quickly.
Excessive wealth does corrupt, in many ways so a limit on personal wealth is easily justifiable.
Without writing an essay, a somewhat arbitrary 100 milion seems like a reasonable upper limit if there are some appropriate checks in place. For example, fines need to be proportionate to wealth. A speeding ticket serves a social purpose, but extreme wealth defeats the purpose. Proportionality, so it hurts the rich the same way it hurts the working man making a $200 speeding ticket becomes a $10,000 speeding ticket for the hundred-millionaire. Similarly taxes need to be progressive and at the limit, become 100%.
The key is to never allow personal wealth grow to where it can corrupt the state. Buying up media companies, funding political orgs, buying politicians etc, is a key goal of the wealth limit.
A house, a car, and enough to pay all the bills and still have some lifestyle, without the terror of knowing you are one job loss away from homelessness and starvation. Able to retire for 25 years before dying.
I think for us (a family not a single person) that really is a million in the bank and 200k per year. We don’t have that, nor do many others.
As a cap? I think nobody needs to accumulate more than 5 million in cash and other assets. Less if you live somewhere with reasonable pension and healthcare.
Enough they never have to worry about food or housing no matter how much they plan on working.
So little that they can never own something as expensive as a yacht or a company by themselves.
I think it should be percentage based, not fiscally based. That way it can adapt and grow with the times. I also think all income should be taxed, as it stands only certain types of income are taxed, and at different rates. Not surprisingly your W-2 taxes (taxes taken out of your paycheck) are one of the highest tax rates you can have on income. I also think tax breaks shouldn’t be a thing at all either. If the government wants to promote something they can offer a rebate so there’s a cap on how much they promote it, and it’s not an endless give away. Finally, expenses are the cost of doing business, and you shouldn’t be able to hide income because you paid money to make money.
The fact that I can buy a property, get a tax break because I’m paying interest on a mortgage, rent the property out for more than my mortgage, claim that as a business, then claim the mortgage as an expense for said business, and end up not paying any taxes on charging someone else to pay for my mortgage, is insane.
In my ideal world there would be no tax breaks period, you pay what is owed end of story. Anything below the median income (50%) isn’t taxed, anything above the median is taxed at 1.5% for each percentage point above the median. If you are in the top 10% and make more than 90% of the nation, you get taxed at 60% above the median and can take home 40% of that additional income after the median. In the USA this would be ($251,036-$80,610) x .4 + $80,610 or $148,780.4. If you are in the top 1% ($731,492) that would be a take home of $253,093.73. If you’re Elon Musk (est $400,000,000,000 last year alone) that would be “only” $100,000,000,000. Keep in mind in 2024 he didn’t pay any taxes, and in 2021, he was the highest tax paying individual in US history at $11 billion. Yes he would still be ultra rich, but there would be $300 billion going to taxes last year alone, or roughly 7.5% of all tax income.
This means rich people can still enjoy their money, while still paying their fair share, and if you’re just trying to get by, don’t worry about it, we got you.
$5 million is the threshold where you start to not need to work full time if you’re not old age. Like, you can basically have 40 working years of your life back and not sacrifice on milestones like owing a home, having a family, security in your elder years, and a comfortable life…
My number is between $2,000,000 and $3,000,000. It’s enough to live off investment income in a 4% down market, and that’s all I will realistically need to have a comfortable life without having to touch the nest egg itself. Psychologically, there is no difference between having $10,000,000 and a billion, so it would seem to me that the upper limit of need is $10,000,000.
As soon as I hit 2-3 million I will retire, no matter how old I am.
As far as ‘life changing’ goes, I was fortunate to have a few thousand to invest when the market tanked in 2020. Those few thousand turned into $35,000 when the market recovered a few years later, which I used to pay off my student loans and put a down payment on a condo. It wasn’t fuck you money, but definitely life changing.
