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143 points

Good. Need more of this.

I do think he’s quite wealthy though…

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64 points

The difference is that he isn’t exploiting the labor of others to make most of his wealth. I’m not a huge fan of most celebrities, but at least most of them are actually earning their money by generating demand for their “thing.”

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-15 points

Very true. I like Bill Burr, but he’s still on a lovely crested hill of property that is way out of scope of attainability from the average person.

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24 points

I don’t understand the obsession with wealth here. I feel like people are missing the point that utilizing wealth to advocate for those less fortunate is still based. Most everyone is richer than us if we know their name and chopping allies down to only poor people means that your convictions to doing what’s right is contingent on meaningless values rather than class values of levels of exploitation. He makes money through his labor, just like us, it reminds me of how the internet reacted to the dock union president making bank. Your convictions end up pretty weak if a CEO could remove them by giving a raise to one person.

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8 points
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This is a shit fuckin take. Bill Burr made his wealth from his own labor, and he’s 56. He’s been a relatively famous comedian for ~20 years, touring every single year, producing tv shows and shit.

Acting as though his 15-20 million makes him not like us is some mentally ill tankie bullshit. There are hundreds of thousands of boomer and gen x millionaires who made their wealth from cheap labor, slave wages, exploiting the poor, landlording, etc, and you call out Bill Burr? Get the fuck outta here.

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203 points
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His net worth is between $14M and $20M. That’s a lot for you and me, but he is nobody for example next to musk’s $400B (20,000 times more)

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181 points

One million seconds is a about 11 days, 1 billion seconds is just under 32 years. People underestimate the difference

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91 points

The one I’ve always liked is “the difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is… about a billion dollars”

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2 points

Yeah, people can’t seem to comprehend just how large 1 billion is.

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62 points
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I mean, he is still 980 MILLION dollars away from being a mere billionaire. He is WAAAAAAAAY closer to you and me

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9 points

I read the waaaay in his voice

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4 points

We need to define rich. To me, 14 million is rich.

Right now, Bill Burr could buy a house, cash, buy solar power for that whole house. And buy a new car every 5 years.

Then just sit at home, and not do shit. Ever.

I can’t do that. Nobody I know can do that.

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41 points

$14M is in the reach of normal people though. With a good job, judicious spending, and a little investment luck, it’s possible to get there.

The problem is that most people don’t have a good job.

No one person can make a BILLION dollars though, without exploiting others.

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28 points

$14M is almost exactly the top 1% of US households by wealth, around a million to million-and-a-half of them. There’s only 750 billionaires. The billionaires are less than 0.1% of the US 1%.

$14M is plenty to live very comfortably, but it’s little enough that you still have to consider costs of big purchases. You’re not going to own a jet. You can have multiple houses as long as you keep them normal-sized. $14M is rich, but it’s not Rich-rich.

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52 points

He’s rich, but only “American Dream” rich, not “controlling the media” and “funding anti-science think tanks” rich. It’s the latter that are the problem.

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17 points

You know the difference between 14 million and 14 billion?

About 14 billion.

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-11 points

$20M is 20,000x more than $1,000.

Someone living paycheck to paycheck to him is about the same jump as him to Musk.

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16 points

What comparison are you making? $20M net worth to another 56 year old’s net worth of a $1000?

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10 points

The way I always put it is the difference between $1 million and $1 billion is about $1 billion.

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20 points

20 million is what a rich person should be not 20 billion. the latter one is more akin to cancer, hoarding resources to the extent of the suffering of everyone else.

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12 points
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I’d consider this way; assuming the upper bound there (20m), Elon spent over 14 Bill Burr’s worth helping Trump get elected, and that was pocket change to him.

That’s the difference in scale. Musk could lose everything Burr has ever owned and he literally would not notice.

You can maybe argue that what Burr has is too much. Personally, I really don’t care at this point. I’ll ponder the moral rightness of the existence of millionaires when there are no more billionaires.

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-64 points

Bernie Sanders is out there talking about eating the rich…he always convienently leaves out that HE HIMSELF is rich.

I’m never sure if that’s meant to say like “Yeah, I’LL pay my fair share if we get all the other rich people to do it too”.

Or if it’s meant to be something that sounds good on a soundbyte that makes you angry at the rich…while you’re not supposed to know HE’S rich.

I never know what to take that context as.

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35 points

Bernie isn’t rich. He’s in the low millions, which pretty much can’t even buy a home in most places anymore.

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-44 points

If someone has even 1 million dollars they’re rich. That’s the thing about numbers. They’re infinate.

You say you couldn’t even buy a house with a few million dollars? I could buy a house for $70,000.

For another $10,000 I could fit the house with solar, and use the other 900,000 to live off interest.

How is that not rich?

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7 points

I think it’s possible to be ‘rich’ and humble.

It may depend on how you become rich.

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-11 points

Oh I never said he wasn’t humble. I’m just confused by his motivations behind saying to eat the rich…ya know…because that’s him.

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14 points
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He’s a pedigreed professional at the top of his field at the end of his career. Literally a world class statesmen regardless of if you favor his positions. Why wouldn’t such a person be worth 5-10 mil? He earned his position which can be with a strong salary… For decades. Even tame investments in the whole market would steer him handily towards that worth

That doesn’t even touch on the mountain of social good and enrichment and support of the poor that he has directly contributed to over his career

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-22 points

You’re missing the point entirely.

He could be adolph hitler, he could the most pure kind person who’s ever lived. Either way, your monetary value has no context on how or why you have the money. Nobody is argueing if he’s good at heart.

My comment was that I never know how to react to HIM saying eat the rich, when he’s rich.

You’re trying to bring politics and emotions into this. That was never the conversation.

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5 points

You needn’t be broke to want to end billionaires. Plenty of people clinging to their status as ‘middle-class’ want to end billionaires. They can be insulated AND correct.

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5 points

Class analysis is the only thing that matters. Read theory and stop being a wrecker.

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6 points

What a brain dead thing to say. Is your whole argument that only the non rich are allowed to mention that the system is broken? Does he have to divest of all his assets before making any observations about our economic system? What a weird thing to get hung up on. This cant be real.

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8 points

Bernie doesn’t say “eat the rich”, you’re saying that. Bernie makes specific statements about who to tax, and when and how.
He does pay his fair share. If the richest in the US paid tax like he does, there wouldn’t be a problem.

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2 points

Brainrot bot comment.

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10 points
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20 million seconds is: 11.5 days. 1 billion seconds is: 31 YEARS and 251 days. If you made $80,000 a year it would take you 12,500 years to get a billion dollars. Twelve thousand five hundred years.

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30 points

We need more from his class to speak up. This whole system is basically the Billionaires paying the Millionaires to keep the thousandaires hating the rest.

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7 points
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We need to stop acting like it’s the 1950’s and a million is “rich”. 1 million in 1950 would be equal to 13 million today, except in 1950 you could buy a fucking mansion for ~30k, with a < 30 minute commute (the official inflation figures are oligarch propaganda and off by a factor of 5-10).

In like 30% of developed world cities a million isn’t even enough to own a home without an hour plus commute. The minimum for “rich” in 2025 is a paid off home and another million in investments, which will net you about 50k a year without working (e.g. able to exit the rat race and live off capital). Even then, in the USA you need several million to buffer the likelihood of a medical condition bankrupting you…

The VAST majority of Hollywood — especially comedians and writers — are working class and poorly paid. Even the majority of the famous ones grew up relatively average/poor. Most are not nepo babies or even in the 1%. Most are allies that are silenced or neutered by studios and production companies (capitalists) out of fear of being sued or blacklisted. Only an extreme minority of them have anything near oligarch money, and none of them made that from their labor.

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1 point

Hell, I’m not even a hundredaire

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7 points

I don’t care about that. And this just feels like trying to discredit what he’s saying.

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10 points

You’re right, but I do think we’d see societal improvements long before we got to Bill Burr if we started slaughtering the richest from top to bottom. I bet after you take out the Forbes top 200 list, anyone with that kind of cash would be racing to give it up, or to disappear. Either way, sounds like a huge win for the world.

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4 points

Yes, like Elon Musk.

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5 points
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Number 2 on the list. I hope he dies painfully.

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2 points

200? I’m betting most charities would be set after the first 10.

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1 point

The first 10 would be a good start, but net worth and liquid assets aren’t the same thing, so that money will only go so far.

Though, the impact of removing that much rot from society could probably be felt pretty quickly.

But the real snowball effect would be every billionaire suddenly realizing they need to shed their ill gotten gains or suffer the same fate. Imagine that world, suddenly there would be so many employee owned corporations, philanthropy would reach record levels, large swaths of land and property would be gifted to countries and co ops around the world. And all you need to do is kill the first 200 and give it a few months to re-evaluate, and if needed pick the next 200.

I guarantee you each of these fucks are responsible for killing 200 a year on average. It’s only fair at this point.

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11 points

In today’s world a million dollars means that you’re successful at what you do. Not that you own massive swaths of society like billionaires.

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21 points

I’m not sure why that matters? Pretty sure he has profited off of the fruits of his labor unless he owns some kind of orphan crushing enterprise I’m not aware of.

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5 points

We’ll take class traitors of the ruling class. Not that he is one, but I’m just saying.

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2 points

There’s a difference between not wanting billionaires to exist and not wanting people to be able to be rich.

Billionaires ≠ rich, billionaire = too rich

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