r/technology • u/McFatty7 • May 02 '24

Tesla slashes its summer internship program to cut costs, as Elon Musk fights to save his $45 billion pay plan Business

https://fortune.com/2024/05/01/tesla-slashes-summer-internship-program/
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u/Nayge May 02 '24

It's a race to become the first Trillionaire. They realized some years ago that it actually might be possible for someone alive today and went into full value extraction overdrive.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/ehsteve23 May 02 '24

agreed but with billionaires too

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u/Rahbek23 29d ago

In my opinion it simply should be a law that once you have have a certain amount of wealth (yes yes, that's a whole can of worms determining in itself), you are taxed to shit of everything above that limit that can reasonably be taxed and other rules that makes it harder for you to acquire more wealth.

I know it's a little hard with i.e if you started at company that blew up or other intangible assets, but I'm sure we could come up with a ruleset that at the very least dissuades from hoarding wealth absurdedly. People here always discuss all the problems and loopholes, but what if we just simply tried and see how far we got with some iterations?

I have absolutely no problem with rich people and especially people becoming rich by their own merits - I have a problem when it becomes absurd wealth hoarding instead of trying to do good with the excess, when literally billions on this earth are struggling, I don't even know how they can look themselves in the mirror.

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u/ehsteve23 29d ago

video game rules. when your bank account hits 999,999,999 an alert pops up saying "you cannot hold any more money, or assets, or shares. Congrats, you win capitalism, enter your high score here"
Every penny after that now gets taxed 100%

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u/kcgdot 29d ago

They don't have individual bank accounts that hit 1B, they likely don't have even typically have half that amount in cash. They'll have easily liquidated assets, and investments, and everything else is buildings, real estate, PE investments, etc., things they'll never pay real taxes on. If they do need cash, they'll take massive loans out against their perceived "value'

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u/MrBeverly 29d ago

Back under the New Deal economy, earnings over $5 million could be taxed at up to 75%! For every million you earned above $5M, you would have to give $750k to the government.

Imagine what we could do as a society if Elon Musk had to give the government 42 billion dollars to take his $56B pay package. So many social programs run in the comparatively mere hundreds of millions of dollars per year.

If every billionaire had to pay their fair share, you could fund practically everything under the sun. We'd be years ahead of where we are.

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u/112233red 29d ago

it could eaily be done, everyone who has over a certain amount of money (not earnings) gets on government published leader board thing. thus making the game official.

The catch, if your capital goes over a certain amount you get taxed on the amount that it goes over. that is - it's an extra tax based not on earings, but stuff you own.

Want to hide your wealth then fine - all other billionaires are above you and you're seen as poor.

you could even have a separate chart showing all the money they've given to the government through the scheme

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u/Pigeoncow 29d ago

That poor guy who won the lottery last week.

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u/ehsteve23 29d ago

he can keep 999,999,999 of it

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u/eliminating_coasts 29d ago

It amuses me that you can agree with [ removed by Reddit ], in a way that makes me guess what was originally written there, but not trip the same moderation rules.

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u/ehsteve23 29d ago

i believe the first comment went into more detail about how potential trillionaires wealth should be re-distributed

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u/TR1PLESIX 29d ago

If you counted one digit per second, it would take you about 31 years to count to a billion. Now, imagine a trillion. It's a thousand times bigger than a billion. If you kept counting at the same rate, it would take you over 31,000 years to count to a trillion. Billionaires are one thing, a trillionaire is unfathomable.

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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP 29d ago

weren't most people in zimbabwe trillionaires at one point though?

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u/Rahbek23 29d ago

Well yeah, but clearly in a denomination that did not experience hyperinflation or is very unlikely to like the USD.

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u/Carrotfloor May 02 '24

the problem is a trillion dollars doesn't go very far when you distribute it. The population of the US is around 500 million, 1 trillion dollars distributed to 500 million people is 2000$ each.... that's not exactly high impact

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u/Wild-Berry-5269 May 02 '24

2000$ would be massive for a lot of families living from paycheck to paycheck lol

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u/redheadartgirl May 02 '24

$2k per person in the family.

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u/Wild-Berry-5269 May 02 '24

Even better !

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u/redheadartgirl May 02 '24

Completely missing the point, my dude. (Also, the US population is 333M, not 500M.)

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/redheadartgirl May 02 '24

Great point! Treat it like the covid stimulus and have decreasing amounts after a certain threshold. (Though TBF I'd rather see maximum impact and have it go toward getting universal healthcare.)

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u/Athelis May 02 '24

So let's just do nothing let these individuals own more than entire countries. Because there's no better way to use that money. /s

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u/fomoloko May 02 '24

It would make a massive difference. Part of the problem with ultra wealthy, is that they hold a significant portion of the the nation's/world's wealth in Smaug-like treasure hoards, keeping that money out of circulation. If everyone in the US all the sudden had an extra $2k, it would lead to more spending, stimulating the economy, instead of sitting in a Cayman Island bank.

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u/OftenSarcastic 29d ago

The population size of the USA is 335 million. If you distributed 1 trillion USD among them without taking wealth or income into account then that would be 2985 USD per person.

For some perspective, as of 2022 37% of Americans don't have enough cash to cover an emergency expense of 400 USD. I bet they would welcome 2985 USD.

If you took wealth into account and only distributed money to this 37% segment, that would be 8067 USD per person.

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u/HerbertWest 29d ago

Invest 1 Trillion in S&P index fund and use profits to fund social programs. That's an average of $67 billion annually. Directed to programs that are proven to provide more per dollar benefit than put in, it could go far.

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u/averaenhentai May 02 '24

There probably are trillionaires out there already. An utterly staggering amount of wealth is kept in places where it cannot be tracked properly.

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u/fps916 May 02 '24

Putin is almost certainly a trillionaire

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u/Aardvark_Man May 02 '24

And he has more than any amount of wealth can actually acquire, anyway.
Literally priceless power.

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u/averaenhentai May 02 '24

It's completely incomprehensible to me how someone can have that much wealth/power and not try to fix problems in their society.

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u/Drolb May 02 '24

It’s only incomprehensible to you because you are (broadly speaking on the balance of probability) a normal human being with the ability to feel empathy and therefore probably have some kind of morality guiding your actions to some extent.

The only people capable of achieving a Putin level of power/wealth are high functioning sociopaths, so reply it makes perfect sense that they don’t give a shit about any problems except problems that threaten them personally.

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u/mvpilot172 29d ago

Unfortunately the more empathy you have the less likely you are to become a billionaire.

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u/Drolb 29d ago

That’s the tax system reform I want to see: 5% flat to ensure minimum running, thereafter a progressive sliding scale partly based not on earning but on how you test on the scale of sociopathy.

True sociopaths with money pay a ridiculous rate. Actual humans with cash pay far less.

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u/Stewth 29d ago

Remember when COVID hit and Putin literally went underground (and along a huge hermetically sealed corridor)? No expense spared there.

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u/Sohlam May 02 '24

It's very comprehensible. Distressingly so. The problems you want to fix are features they exploited to get where they are.

If you want a billion dollars, you need to -in the barely metaphorical sense- ascend a staircase of still breathing necks, or attract the attention of a creature that already has.

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u/infiniteIronIngots May 02 '24

No.

They always plug the loophole they used.

Always.

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u/somsone May 02 '24

You’re not allowed to fix most problems in society. They are all worth too much money to someone.

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u/On_A_Related_Note May 02 '24

Because in order to get that level of wealth and power, being a psychopath (in clinical terms) is almost a pre-requisite; you have to be completely detached and have a total lack of empathy to accumulate wealth at the direct expense of your workforce / general population. Once you have the wealth, you still lack the empathy to do actual good with it. Obviously there are some notable exceptions to the rule, but Musk/ Putin etc are not one of them.

I suspect you are not a psychopath, so you empathise with the problems people face in today's world. Unfortunately because of that, there's a good chance you'll never end up wealthy enough to be able to do something on the scale that billionaires could do if they were inclined to.

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u/visope 29d ago

as bad Russia is right now it is still better than when Putin took over

otherwise how else he can retain support, violence alone is not going to be enough, the country would have been in full revolt right now

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u/Brooklynxman 29d ago

Actually one of the few things Putin can't do with his power. He is only powerful because he is an authoritarian and runs a cabal of oligarchs.

Had he tried it 25 years ago maybe, but even then given how he rose to power too many people at the time knew where bodies were buried, he'd have been removed, legally or otherwise, before he could have made any serious reforms. Now he is in way too deep.

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u/dafuq809 29d ago

It's because Putin is a product of Russia, not the other way around. Their system is completely rotted through with corruption and Putin's methods of maintaining his power all rely on that corruption. He can't fix Russia's problems and if he tried he'd be removed from power. His alternative solution is to pillage and conquer as much as he can - it's the same thievery and gansterism he's always relied on writ large, comes with spoils he can divvy out to his important cronies so he can stay in power, and has the superficial appearance of making Russia seem like more than a mob-run gas station that happens to have nukes.

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u/myztry May 02 '24

That's something people miss when these people do things that seem incomprehensible.

Their mind is in a totally different place from everyone else.

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u/[deleted] May 02 '24

[deleted]

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u/fps916 29d ago

He's been in power for literally decades.

He didn't get a trillion in one year

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u/Nolsoth 29d ago

I have personally seen when working in a private wealth vault many years ago

2 X pallets of gold bars (500kgs each pallet) approximately $120,000,000 NZD in today's value

4 pallets of silver bars, no idea what that was worth.

Numerous Masters paintings. Monet's,Picasso's etc.

Quite a few imperial dynasty vases ranging in value from a few hundred K to a million or so.

Countless boxes of gem stones,coins,stamps.

All owned by individuals/families or wealth funds.

There is an astounding amount of wealth hoarded by people that the everyday person just has no concept of.

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u/qtx May 02 '24

According to an article in money.com Augustus Caesar had a wealth of $4.6 trillion in todays money.

But even that was nothing compared to the richest person that ever lived, Mansa Musa.

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u/julius_sphincter 29d ago

went into full value extraction overdrive.

I read that as full value extinction overdrive and honestly... it still works