Worst billionaire to have become even more stupidly wealthy since the start of the pandemic – a poll

But not the headline (these super rich people don't pay taxes!) that's making the rounds.

Like f'ing duh...they got to get something for those politicians they buy up after all they are 'smart business people'.

With interest rates being kept near zero forever, it's pretty much a license to print money if you got money.

When you have that amount of insane net worth in equity you effectively never need to sell, and you get taxed on the tiny yield of dividends, which is an tinier percentage of your wealth.

That tiny amount of capital gains can probably be written off with business losses, but I don't know much about that - I imagine there are many loopholes to make your effective tax rate 0%.

Buffett paying the least makes sense in this light - from what I understand of his philosophy he likely is a less active trader than other billionaires, so even less capital gains from sales are taxable.

Ah yeah, they go into it later in the article - Berkshire doesn't even give out dividends at all. I like this quick animated explainer on "Buy, Borrow, Die" too.

Hey, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates... What can you do to leapfrog over these other assholes as the worst people on this list? I know! Build nuclear reactors!

https://interestingengineering.com/bill-gates-and-warren-buffett-team-up-for-1-billion-next-gen-nuclear-reactor

Reminder that current estimates of wealth inequality are highly conservative, because of tax avoidance

Even Forbes (which researchers use for billionaires, due to the lack of public statistics) missed this... $5 billion (!) retirement accounthttps://t.co/WuK5OPTgPb

— Gabriel Zucman (@gabriel_zucman) June 24, 2021

I have a feeling if this poll were re-run today, Musk would win handily.

was gonna say

Zuckerberg's a weirdo but he's extremely philanthropic, Bezos buys yachts the size of cruise ships

Infuriating when I order something off eBay and it shows up in an Amazon box/bag, happened more times that I can count

I reuse boxes, what can I say?