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How about a real world case ... Zohran Mamdani vs Ken Griffin
been there...done that....
miamizsun wrote: 10 days ago
looks like mamdami may get his wish to raise taxes on new yorkers
according to this, citadel and its workers paid $2,300,000,000 in new york city and state taxes last year
and griffin personally gave/directed $650,000,000 in charitable gifts to city institutions
confidence in stupidity is no way to go through life...
While reading the quote and your comments, I kept wondering whether he could have spared some of that money to keep the Washington Post plugging along. He used to care about some good things. Now he's just behaving like some obnoxiously insecure jerk desperately showing off.
Now, sure, you can use arguments from Economics 101 like this guy does to say investment is a major part of the economic equation and that billionaires, almost by definition, are best at investing their money, which benefits everyone. That is actually true to some extent.
However, you can also compare the performance of economies that have much greater wealth distribution to laissez-fair economies and guess what?
It's complicated.
But societies that more actively pursue a redistribution of wealth don't actually perform that badly on standard metrics, like GDP per capita etc.
Or you could take my anecdotal evidence from my sample of 15 neighbours (including US citizens working for the US army stationed here) and there is really no comparison.
Life in Europe for the average citizen is simply way better than for the average citizen in US. We have fantastic public transport, great public media, 100% health coverage, great roads, public swimming pools in just about every village and several in towns (I have six in a short biking distance), low homicide rates, low crime rates (we barely lock our door), etc. etc. Freedom of expression, a functioning legal system with working checks and balances and protection of individual rights, etc. (yeah, I know, you used to have one too).
I also think that more egalitarian societies are more stable. History might prove me wrong on this.
Whatever, by way of comparison I lived in SF for six months back in the eighties. On my last stopover I was shocked at how litte investment had gone into public infrastructure in the meantime.
That is the difference.
(btw... billionaires are VERY good at wasting resources too.. not just governments.. in fact I would say accountability is the most important factor here, not private ownership)
Lots of good points I hope to come back around too. But a couple of quickies - the idea that "only billionaires" or the "uber successful" are good at it is bunk. They are often anticompetitive and protective of their position. If they were removed from the equation, the next guy would step up and take the opportunity. There is nothing that special about them beyond "they have all the money".
And one of their main problematic behaviors is their anti-competitiveness. They will often buy up promising competitors to keep them out of the market or to raid their IP. Once we let money become a coupon for power, the corruptness became self propagating. There is room for others to succeed, and if it means that musk/bezos/gates/ellison can only have tens of billions while many others get hundreds of millions, then that's a good thing. The hording and protecting that is going on at the top is insane. A long time ago, I interviewed fora job at Watermark (the Gates family foundation that takes care of their personal stuff), I didn't get the job, but I got far enough in the process to get to salary. It was good, but not great. There were perks, but a lot of hassle too. You would think taking care of the family of one of the richest guys in the world would get an above average paycheck, but it was pretty average. That guy could easily have tripled (or 5x, or 9X) the salary and made his employees very comfortable, but he thinks that everyone else is just a prole and they should be happy with what he doles out, market rate and all.
Where the focus should be is in reengaging the ultra rich in investments in education, infrastructure, healthcare, instead of just their private schools, private jets and cadillac health plans.
Wow, how incredibly naive. The rich, even - perhaps especially - those who have simply inherited their wealth - believe deeply that they are smarter and better, and therefore they deserve their riches, and the poor and working people are simply dumber, and therefore deserve to be poor, working stiffs. To them, it is basically simple Darwinian evolution.
And now, the rich, through their purchasing power over the same past 50 years, have bought control of the U.S. political system (through massive and continuous bribes laughingly called "campaign contributions"), and consequently now almost fully control the financial system and the judiciary.
And when is the last time you bought something and then gave it away?
We are in a new age of Robber-Barons. It will NOT fix itself. It took the great depression to force the ultra-rich many decades ago to face the fact that if they did not allow some reasonable level of regulation of the system, their own uncontrolled greed would destroy the goose that lays the golden egg.
However, in modern times, with Swiss bank accounts, Crypto , International real estate ownership, etc. the concentration of wealth is so extreme that they don't care if they destroy the U.S. economy anyway, because after your first $Billion, you really don't need the source system any longer.
The fact is the U.S. is done.
The new Robber Barons WILL eat their children, are well into the process, and it cannot be stopped. Just the yearly interest payments on the national debt now exceeds the total yearly budget of the military, or the total yearly non-military domestic budget. You think the rich are going to "give back" enough wealth to fix that? NEVER happen.
China is the future, and the world will be a much better place for it...
The New York Post reports that "Jeff Bezos is quietly shopping his $500 million floating palace, Koru â because itâs just too huge to manage."
In fact, the story says, the "417 foot vessels size makes it impossible to fit into some ports ⦠In 2025, the boat was denied a mooring in Monaco during the Grand Prix due to its size. The yacht was also unable to get anywhere near the lagoon during Bezos and Sanchezâs summer wedding in Venice ⦠In 2023, the New York Times reported that Koru was too large to dock in the Florida Everglades, instead hanging out around far less glamorous oil tankers and container ships."
The Post writes that "the jaw-dropping vessel also has a $75 million support ship, Abeona (which houses water toys and a helicopter), though it is unclear if this is part of the deal. According to reports, it cost $30 million per year to operate the two ships together."
Part of the problem, according to the story, is that "Koru â which features a wooden sculpture of Bezosâ wife Lauren Sanchez as a mermaid on the prow â has become too recognizable for the Amazon billionaire."
"Recognizable." Hard to imagine that Bezos sees this as a real problem, since he seems to be doing everything he can to raise his personal profile and establish himself as either a plutocrat or an oligarch - not sure he cares which.
Bezos's "recognizability," and the degree to which he has become a flashpoint for many people, became an issue this week at New York City's annual Met Gala. (To be clear, this is an event about which I could not possibly care less.) Here's how the New York Times reported on the Bezos-centric controversy:
"It is perhaps the worldâs most exclusive party, a spectacle of fashion and extravagance that draws a secretive roster of famous people, charges $100,000 a ticket and drapes a carpet down the steps of one of Manhattanâs oldest cultural institutions.
"But this year, the Met Gala is facing stiff headwinds, most notably for the decision to name Jeff Bezos, the Amazon founder and one of the worldâs wealthiest men, and his wife, Lauren Sánchez Bezos, as honorary chairs.
"Opposition to the Bezoses started almost immediately after they were announced as financial sponsors in February, and comes amid a surging anti-rich sentiment nationwide and in New York City, the eventâs liberal home ⦠an avid anti-Bezos campaign has erupted on New Yorkâs streets, in subways and online, where social media users have described the event as the 'Amazon Prime Gala' or 'Bezos Ball.' Reports of skittish stars and upset fashionistas have peppered tabloid pages, including rumors of some past guests steering clear.
"A guerrilla activist group called Everyone Hates Elon â a reference to another controversial billionaire, Elon Musk â has been calling for a boycott of the event, with a steady drumbeat of eye-catching campaigns around the city, including plastering posters on subway cars and bus stops. On Friday, in a nod to complaints by Amazon workers of having to skip bathroom breaks and urinate in bottles instead, the group placed close to 300 bottles of fake urine inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"Then, on Sunday, the eve of the gala, the anti-billionaire group projected video interviews with Amazon workers onto the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building and the Bezosesâ penthouse near Madison Square Park.
"'If You Can Buy the Met Gala, You Can Pay More Taxes,' read one of the projections beamed from the back of a van, along with a picture of a laughing Bezos."
A few things here. One, it did not appear that the calls for a boycott had much of an impact on the Met Gala. Two, the Times points out that "this yearâs event had raised a record $42 million, smashing last yearâs $31 million mark and dwarfing similar benefit events at other institutions." (The Metâs Costume Institute is financially dependent on the gala, the Times tells us.)
It may be that Bezos is getting a little tired of being demonized - the coverage indicated that while he attended the gala, he did not walk the red carpet, but instead sent out his wife to glad-hand other attendees and have her picture taken.
Seriously, I do think that Bezos seems to be investing in a lifestyle of conspicuous consumption at a time when many Americans are growing tired of oligarchs, plutocrats, and tech overlords. The folks breathing rarefied air won't easily give up their power and influence, but maybe they will find themselves less lionized.
And while I think there's nothing wrong with being rich - especially if it is the result of inspiration, aspiration and hard work - I think that's probably is a good thing.
BTW â¦I was curious about the difference between being rich and wealthy, especially because I was using these terms interchangeably, and where affluence fits into this ratio. Best I can tell, wealth is about net worth, being rich is about having a high income that makes it possible not to worry about money on a day-to-day basis, and affluence is having enough money to be comfortable but not so much that you don't have to pay attention. Which means that we may have to come up with another classification for people like Jeff Bezos - who has a net worth in the neighborhood of $250 billion.
The argument that investing in stocks, funds...creates jobs doesnt hold.
Most stock investing is valueless (doesnt create jobs), transaction based.
Even funds from IPOs do little to support investment, but rather make owners rich, which they then reinvest in valueless securities.
But, I dont think we should be targeting or killing the goose that lays the golden eggs either.
Perhaps some increased level of taxes on the "rich" is appropriate, as argued enough already.
Where the focus should be is in reengaging the ultra rich in investments in education, infrastructure, healthcare, instead of just their private schools, private jets and cadillac health plans.
Of course, there is already quite a bit of $ thrown at these items, so its not just about funding but also improving the cost side...how these funds are employed
that's because the people touting these arguments are focused solely on products, sales and consumption. They ignore the human element of finding meaning in work, which the economics ignores, because it doesn't have a parameter for something so subjective and personal.
This also explains why the AI guys think they have found nirvana, because they can remove the human element from production. That's not nirvana. That's a desert.
It is also why rich people automatically think they are doing something valuable for society when they actually aren't.
... and to continue my riff... it is simply not true that the government is inefficient and wasteful across the board like the video implies.
Think of all those people in public service who are in it, not for the money, but because they think they are doing something valuable. The National Park workers, the community workers, the "good" cops, the scientists, the public radio journalists, the kindergarten teachers, etc.
In fact most people have a core of altruism in them that has nothing to do with money they earn. And if it weren't for them, society would break down pretty quickly.
The idea that everything has a monetary value or can be ideally priced by one is one of the biggest fictions out there.
Where the focus should be is in reengaging the ultra rich in investments in education, infrastructure, healthcare, instead of just their private schools, private jets and cadillac health plans.
Of course, there is already quite a bit of $ thrown at these items, so its not just about funding but also improving the cost side...how these funds are employed
You nicely describe the limits of capitalism, to put it nicely too.
Now, sure, you can use arguments from Economics 101 like this guy does to say investment is a major part of the economic equation and that billionaires, almost by definition, are best at investing their money, which benefits everyone. That is actually true to some extent.
However, you can also compare the performance of economies that have much greater wealth distribution to laissez-fair economies and guess what?
It's complicated.
The argument that investing in stocks, funds...creates jobs doesnt hold.
Most stock investing is valueless (doesnt create jobs), transaction based.
Even funds from IPOs do little to support investment, but rather make owners rich, which they then reinvest in valueless securities.
But, I dont think we should be targeting or killing the goose that lays the golden eggs either.
Perhaps some increased level of taxes on the "rich" is appropriate, as argued enough already.
Where the focus should be is in reengaging the ultra rich in investments in education, infrastructure, healthcare, instead of just their private schools, private jets and cadillac health plans.
Of course, there is already quite a bit of $ thrown at these items, so its not just about funding but also improving the cost side...how these funds are employed
There are lots of ways of tackling this. A couple of years ago Lazy and I debated (ad nauseam he might say) about the moral framework behind wealth distribution..
tbh, I like the moral simplicity of the libertarian world view, where we all respect each other's property as an extension (or even integral part of) someone's natural rights.
However, this rosy land a) doesn't exist anywhere (i.e. it is not what you would call a working model) and b) is predicated on a level of self-awareness and mutual respect among all citizens that is utopian, to put it mildly.
Interestingly, Marx's idea of communism is just as rosy-eyed - his utopian vision of class consciousness is predicated on a similar vision, one where each individual internalises what it takes to be ideal citizens. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". Libertarianism is maybe more "From each according to his desire to help, to each according to his property rights", but it is just as utopian, because it de facto needs all citizens (including the destitute) to respect the property rights of all others (including the billionaires in gated communities).
Quite frankly, I'd like to leave all systemic arguments out of the discussion because I don't think they help. The fact of the matter is that people are
a) competitive
b) greedy, and
c) fundamentally insecure
countered by some other more positive traits, which, unfortunately we cannot always rely on.
I think we can just take this as a given. The real trick is to create a system that ameliorates the base side of humanity and provides an environment where all of us can prosper, heal, follow the pursuit of - what was it again?
Now, sure, you can use arguments from Economics 101 like this guy does to say investment is a major part of the economic equation and that billionaires, almost by definition, are best at investing their money, which benefits everyone. That is actually true to some extent.
However, you can also compare the performance of economies that have much greater wealth distribution to laissez-fair economies and guess what?
It's complicated.
But societies that more actively pursue a redistribution of wealth don't actually perform that badly on standard metrics, like GDP per capita etc.
Or you could take my anecdotal evidence from my sample of 15 neighbours (including US citizens working for the US army stationed here) and there is really no comparison.
Life in Europe for the average citizen is simply way better than for the average citizen in US. We have fantastic public transport, great public media, 100% health coverage, great roads, public swimming pools in just about every village and several in towns (I have six in a short biking distance), low homicide rates, low crime rates (we barely lock our door), etc. etc. Freedom of expression, a functioning legal system with working checks and balances and protection of individual rights, etc. (yeah, I know, you used to have one too).
I also think that more egalitarian societies are more stable. History might prove me wrong on this.
Whatever, by way of comparison I lived in SF for six months back in the eighties. On my last stopover I was shocked at how litte investment had gone into public infrastructure in the meantime.
That is the difference.
(btw... billionaires are VERY good at wasting resources too.. not just governments.. in fact I would say accountability is the most important factor here, not private ownership)
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." âJustice Louis Brandeis
Words spoken many years ago that are just as relevant today.
We must continue the fight to get big money out of politics. â Robert Reich (@rbreich.bsky.social) May 3, 2026 at 6:01 PM
