this. the speculation around watches right now is completely unhinged. my Rolex Date 34mm sold for $3k in excellent condition three years ago. the same watch now sells for nearly $6k.
what a load of shit. you know what's wasteful? corporate tax breaks in the trillions of dollars that have no direct effect on working people or their families. fuck this org and their misdirection
I'm not disagreeing at all, and I don't know the details in this case, but it's entirely possible to be a billionaire on paper and be _wildly_ incapable of paying salaries to 900 people. 900 x ~150,000 = 135,000,000. If the company was losing 100M a year during the next valuation moment, it's very possible this CEO would no longer be even close to being a billionaire. Cash in hand and valuation are very different things.
Again, not excusing any of this, the video was extremely cringe and I can't believe he went with "for those of you in the US, we'll be doing the legal minimum, for everyone else, sorry!", but as someone who is "worth" almost a million dollars, and who cannot afford to hire even a single person, it's not always so simple.
All that said, 900 * (150000 / 12) == 11250000, so I have a hard time imagining it wouldn't have been worth 1M for a fairly well known tech company with loads of funding to avoid this horrific press and karma.
It's pretty egregious. Every time there is a discussion on HN that involves wealth (wealth inequality, trends for different wealth levels, intergenerational wealth, wealth taxes, etc...), people end here up basically redefining bourgeoisie and proletariat three levels down into the comment thread, and getting it slightly wrong in different ways each time.
That's because a bunch of people who have houses in nice school districts, drive nice cars, have plenty of PTO, can afford a maid/babysitter, etc, etc, would rather redefine bourgeoisie than acknowledge that they're part of the bourgeoisie per the standard definition. Current social trends toward redefining words on a whim for rhetorical and ideological convenience certainly exacerbate the issue.
American definitions of "class" are just a way to obscure the lines between the owners and the workers. Most middle class people are petite bourgeoisie or labor aristocracy proletariat
cursed late stage capitalism. let's reduce everything in our lives down to ROI. this article feels like a symptom and not an answer for the problem of a required college education and it's astronomically stupid costs for working families.
Other articles soon to come:
* Are friends worth it?
* Is family worth it?
* Is doing anything besides making money worth it?
It's happening right now with Facebook/Instagram and Tik Tok.