"mainly selfmade wealth"
That doesn't exist, let's stop fucking pretending it does.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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YSK that 158 families, the 0.01%, make up 50% of US Presidential Campaign Spending.
(www.nytimes.com)
What they really mean is that they didn't inherit their immense wealth, which means there was a time in their lives when they weren't obscenely wealthy.
they didn’t inherit their immense wealth
Except even that doesn't hold up under close scrutiny. A big component of the market cap of any Fortune 100 company stems from equity and debt held by the generationally wealthy, typically through family funds managed by private equity groups. Amazon and Tesla aren't worth $1T without the Vanderbilts and the Carnegies and the Adelsons and the Waltons bidding up asset prices. Microsoft doesn't exist today without Bill Gates's mom sitting on the IBM board of directors and handing her son the contracts for their 1980s OS. Hell, Berkshire Hathaway is owned by the sons of a Congressman and a federal judge, respectively.
What's more, the biggest source of market capital is inevitably government contracts. You can't tell me that Michael Dell is "independently wealthy" when the bulk of his fortune came via the Texas public school system buying all his company's computers. Particularly when the governors, legislators, and board members making these decisions are (a) big shareholders of the Dell corporation and (b) legacy scions of wealthy Texas families.
To them, poor is probably like just a few dozen million USD.
I get what they're getting at, but selfmade has that connotation with it.
They could say not inherited vs inherited wealth
Not inherited is also wrong. Because more than 50% of americans live paycheck to paycheck, one can assume that private schools, elite universities, etc are also inherited wealth.
They dont spawn with billions but they started at the top and just built exploitation empires.
The is no such thing as self made wealth and an insane majprity of it is already being very comfortable and just going full bore.
I'm not saying financial success has nothing to do with capabilities and discipline but surprisingly little.
Or to quote jay gould, who said it before:
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.
The is no such thing as self made wealth and an insane majprity of it is already being very comfortable and just going full bore.
There's basically one self-made billionaire I'm aware of. Wealth turned him into a right-wing asshole unfortunately, but the original creator of Minecraft, Notch, is the closest thing to a self-made billionaire I can think of. He originally built Minecraft on his own and it was already doing insanely well when other people got involved. He did not have a rich background.
Now where we can argue about the self-made part: 1) None of what he did would've been possible without prior work by others (same goes for ANYTHING to do with computers nowadays), 2) There's no guarantee he could've sold the game for over 2 billion dollars without help from others.
We're arguing on the assumption that living in western europe isnt "rich". Even the people living from state welfare with running water are better off then 50% of the planet because they even have clean water.
Notch btw started as a programmer at the age of 18 (wikipedia) and lived in sweden, one of the richest countries in the world. Having the time to learn programming at that age is already a sign of (white) privilege.
There. Is. No. Self. Made. Wealth. Period.
That on the other hand is not saying that notch wasnt successful, he undeniably was. But he is an unethical prick for keeping the money and engaging in debauchery. He does not deserve praise, neither does any rich person. You know who deserves praise? Dr. Ernesto "che" guevara does.
Very true as well. Directly exploitative vs indirectly idk man, but self made ain't it
I made all my money myself. After I graduated from private school with my personal trainer and one on one tutoring and my car I didn’t have to work for and my apartment I didn’t have to pay for I definitely earned my first job myself. I mean, my dad didn’t interview with his good friend from the country club, I DID! Give me the credit I deserve! I am a self made man!
They get to play in a sandbox designed for them. They're taught how to play in the sandbox, and are given the toys to play (roads, electricity, raw materials for example). We get to be the sand.
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Only two super wealthy people come to mind: Oprah and Rowling. Both are bastards (Oprah mostly because of who she endorsed and her increasing lack of connection to the average American).
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And this article is 10 years old. It has gotten so much worse.
Whenever I see the 1% or 99% numbers when discussing wealth inequality, this fact is the first thing that comes to mind. We need to use decimal points to get to the real ones in power. 1% contains a lot of people who have money, but are still out of the loop as the rest of us, or as Carlin said, "not in the Club". They are millionaires, but like they say, the difference between a million and a billion is about a billion.
And that's US - many Americans are in the 1% in worldwide numbers, with rough income numbers being around half a million income. Again, they may or may not be comfortable depending on their expenses, but having money doesn't mean you have power. It's the .1 that is the beginning of that, and the .01 is moving the pieces for everyone.
(The numbers are just estimates, there's gray areas everywhere, the point is the top people want us to be yelling at the top middle and ignore what they do.)
Bingo. My entire circle is 1-5%ers, we are privileged and comfortable and not saying we're not part of the problem. But we're powerless. Start by eating the richest, by the time you get to me I'm going to guess there won't be a problem any more...
“Powerless”, but how many sets of guns/armor can your circle buy? 1000? 10,000? They’re still astonishingly poor and closer to homelessness or kidnapping to El Salvador than being rich. Better to pick a side in the class war, and doing nothing is picking oppression. Eating the rich also includes non-rich wealthy class-traitors.
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Should figure out where they live and protest on their street instead of burning down the local 7/11.
The only access to them is media in the backroom or private event held by rich asking what do you think of protests on main street because you can't get close to their property and if you can they are probably in another house
People snuck into a military airbase and spray painted an RAF plane the other day and got away with it.
Rich people get complacent. They're so proud of themselves, so fat and satisfied. They can't imagine that anyone like us would ever get inside their house, walk their floors, spit in their food.
People snuck into a military airbase and spray painted an RAF plane the other day and got away with it.
They didn't get away with it (not yet anyway) - six people have been arrested:
BBC News
Two more arrests after break-in at RAF base
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjrln22e3w2o
The rich aren't accessible, but their property sure is awfully flammable.
Citizens United was the final straw in the downfall of America democracy.
It's been inevitable since.
Unless it's overturned it's over, and I don't think they can overturn it.
Citizens United
Corporations have been 'people' since the 1886 USSC decision in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad.
Yet somehow, unlike most people, they've escaped having to go to jail when they commit crimes. I'd call that an unfair advantage.
I'll believe a corporation is a "person" when Texas (or Alabama, Florida, South Carolina etc) executes one of them
An oligarchy is what America has been for over a decade now officially. Every politician is bought and sold, told to vote on every bill by the companies lobbyists that line their pockets. Every vote is controlled by mass propaganda on every network and every corporate social media.
But we're a democracy, right?
THIS ARTICLE IS FROM 2015 A DECADE AGO IT HAS ONLY GOTTEN WORSE SINCE THEN
If my math is correct 158 families would be around .00005%. They have no clue what life is like for the average person yet they have so much influence. Gross.
158 families isn't much to feed 300 million starving people. We need rules on who gets to eat the 0.01%
Fuck that. First come, first serve. Get it if and while you can.
And they all have addresses.
In the end, when Trump is certified as the modern day hitler, these families need to be held accountable…. Like the soldiers of the concentration camps.
There are only a few outcomes that would lead down that road, and while I hope for one of them, I am pretty convinced they'll all die happy and rich in their warm beds of old age after getting lots of plastic surgery and riding on lots of jets and jetskis
wasn’t there some billionaire that ran for president, spent hundreds of millions and got like <1% of the vote?
Yeah Michael Bloomberg bought his way through the rest of the primary debates then when it came time for the primary vote nobody wanted him.
That's the one!
Bloomberg spent nearly $1 billion on his three-month presidential campaign
So my next question is:
Just 158 families have provided nearly half of the early money for efforts to capture the White House
Just how effective is advertising in the presidential race when you can spend a billion and go no where?
Conservatives vote out of fear. They lie awake at night terrified of their son having to play sports agains a trans boy. Advertising these moron fears is a lot easier than advertising a plan to make things better. But also Michael Bloomberg had no plan to make things better, at least for us lowly constituents.
He was just dumb. He spent unwisely. The best things in life are free. Like the support of moguls like Murdoch from Fox News.
Perot did pretty well on his runs iirc. But I don't think he's the one you were talking about.
Yep sorry it was Michael Bloomberg
The way to return democracy to the people is to limit the involvement of money. First step is to repeal "Citizens" United, the law that officially sold the US government to corporations and the wealthy under the guise of Freedom (as usual). Second, organizations (including but not limited to corporations) should be outright banned from political compaign contributions. Organizations aren't citizens. They can't vote. They shouldn't be allowed to pour money into elections.
It's not enough to reform campaign finance. We need to destroy the class of people behind this. We need to really wage class war, a class war of annihilation.
We need a national wealth cap. 1000x median household income. Anything more is taxed at 100%.
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Fuck scotus. John Roberts is the most damaging traitor in American history.
We should eat them all
They visit each others mansions so they can make sure they are still keeping up with the other billionaires.
if the people went after the wealthy first, they could use the spoils to fund the revolution
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