#1 - I never said they were great people. I said your comment that they never worked a day in their life was a bunch of bogus. Now you are changing it to "without hard work" as if your job is so much harder than an office job just because it might involve physical labor. You have absolutely no clue. I've worked 20 hour days before with an office job. You don't think the stress behind that is hard? How does it make you feel when you have to work through personal finances all day, and then other adult decisions. Most people indicate it is tiring work that exhausts them. Welcome to the type of thinking required for many office jobs. Heck, most people pay somebody (who is ironically way wealthier than them) to help them with all of their personal finance decisions cause it is too hard for them.

#2 - I could list plenty of people that seem quite decent (Warren Buffett for instance), but it is quite clear you don't actually want to hear that at all. You truly just want to believe that their accumulation of wealth is evil.

#3 - And your comment regarding mansions and meals etc. You do realize that zero additional solutions to this have been proposed as a result of these wealth taxes etc. I would guess it has something to do with there are already programs in place for this.

As a general rule, I'd say many of our programs intended to assist the poor aren't very effective at all, largely because none of them provide any assistance whatsoever on how to improve going forward. How to actually budget, cook at home, etc etc.

I'm by NO means suggesting stopping these programs, but I think it's absurd that we just leave the people in the dust when it comes to truly trying to help them improve their situation (and just handing even more money to them DOES NOT WORK). It might get them a meal for another day, but it doesn't bring them out of poverty.

The problem with that mindset is that people wouldn't be happy until the billionaires have $0 left.

The billionaires give...billions to extremely helpful charities (and no, it isn't to just get a tax break. The math behind giving $2 to save $0.80 in taxes just doesn't add up as so many people seem to think).

Do they live more lucratively than they could? They absolutely do. Many billionaires are even for potentially raising taxes (Bill Gates himself isn't against a higher tax rate on the wealthy, nor is Warren Buffett).

But once again, you are constantly changing your argument here. This all started because you said rich people haven't worked a day in their lives (when other than the very few wealthy people who inherited enormous wealth, they obtained their very wealth by doing just that...working). You then converted this to they haven't worked hard in their entire lives.

Now you have converted to just saying the Billionaires could give more to help, but they give nothing. Not only did I never insinuate billionaires don't have money to help further, but you are once again wrong in saying they just don't help at all. They absolutely do.

Our problems I think boils down to a lot more of fundamental basics on how to get through adulthood vs just having the wealthy distribute even more dollars to the poor. Eventually, (and I know this is somewhat of a slippery slope), you could tax the wealthy with extreme rates (say 90%), but you will still have people in poverty. No matter how much you redistribute wealth, there will always be some people in poverty, especially when many people simply don't understand the basic mechanics of handling the money that they do have.

Look, I'm all for the betterment of society as a whole, I just really don't think this complete attack on the Uber wealthy (even if I do believe they should have SOME more taxes) will accomplish remotely close to what people seem to be envisioning.

Probably the biggest issue across society as a whole is people truly WANTING to work hard and get themselves something. I have no idea what the fix is.

But the amount of people that didn't care at all throughout school (grades K-12), then really didn't care in college (if they attended). Then they screw around all day at their jobs and don't take it seriously at all. But then they complain that they don't make enough money to function as they want to in our society.

They complain that their boss makes more than them...it just really comes off as this constant stream of complaints about those who are better off, instead of actually working to obtain something better for yourself.

Is this how it should be? I honestly don't know. Maybe those who jerk off in school should still just be able to get good jobs, live a lucrative life. I'm really not sure.

But it really seems like the general person I see who actually has SOME motivation in their life? They do decent. They might not be rich. But they arent in poverty their whole lives.

I think there are a lot of systemic problems within that large problem beyond just some innate individual level issue.

For example, part of the reason many people do not get by well in school is because our school system has failed to properly engage with them, or provide the resources (be it additional teachers or additional learning tools) to create students who are encouraged to engage with that system. Further, our schooling system in large part does not prepare individuals for life outside of school so they are unable to make the informed choices necessary to both find a work environment which is suited to them, and function outside of work. These improvements could create a positive feedback system which improves the ability of future generations to tackle those same issues.

This extends to issues in the workplace, starting with the actual process of career selection, and extending to the lack of unionization, and general attitudes which treat the employee as a tool and not a partner. Again, there are many missteps along the way which create this disillusionment with the system and create an environment where the employee cannot thrive.

All in all, while you can speak of things on the individual level which can be done to be better off, we have to face and acknowledge those systemic factors which create these issues. We cannot simply look at the end product as if it was inevitable. It is the result of interactions between all of those individuals systems.

And addressing these issues, more often than not, requires money. This may be money from taxes which go towards hiring new teachers in an underfunded district, or this could be money which goes towards providing additional paid vacation days to ensure that your employees don't feel as if they are being exploited. In most circumstances, the place this money should come from, is the rich.

Note: I am not directly disagreeing with you or arguing with the points that are being made. Just adding my two cents to this conversation, so don't feel like I am implying that you have been expressing the opposite of these points.

So you think he's going to blackmail Ivanka's mouth into blowing his brains out?

For what it is worth, I don't think Trump really belongs in the same discussion regarding a what's wrong with the majority of rich people.

For one, I'd hardly qualify him as extremely wealthy by his own means. He is one that inherited a fortune, and quite frankly, really hasn't done much of anything with it.

For another, there is huge discrepancy regarding how much he is really worth, and I'd say the lower end of the spectrum is likely much more accurate, knowing how much he acts like a bozo.

He also seems quite substantially more selfish with his money than many of the Uber wealthy, who as I've discussed have either donated billions already, or pledged to donate a substantial portion of their money towards charitable organizations.

There will always be super shitty people, no matter where you look...and you can't really judge an entire class of people just off of these shitty peoples actions.

I actually really like your discussion regarding further systematic issues in our education. What I find probably most interesting about this is I feel like we continue to get worse and worse. It seems like they only take more "real life" type education away from normal schooling each year, rather than adding more in. This is despite many people continually arguing that it is blatantly missing.

So why do we continue having education be less and less relevant? Is it really a cost thing? Something tells me it wouldn't cost anymore to teach personal finance to young adults than it would to teach Astronomy,

This problem is like a result of schooling being so based on centralized testing scores nowadays (and it's obviously relatively difficult to judge/score real life skills), and it quite frankly appears like a schools number 1 goal is just to get higher scores on standardized testing, which really aren't at all indicative of ability to succeed in life. I don't think money alone would really fix this, as money (and having tests dictate if a school has earned certain funding per pupil) already led to a scenario like what we have.

Source on where Jeff Bezos paid $0 in personal income taxes since 2017? I'm not aware of any info of the sort being released. Amazon may not have paid any, but that is a business. We aren't talking about businesses and their current tax burdens. We are talking about people who individually themselves are very wealthy and how much they as an individual pay in taxes.

And if you know absolutely nothing about taxes, you shouldn't complain about businesses paying no taxes when the inherent cause is generally carry forward losses.

It's really a pretty simple concept, but many people struggle to grasp it (as they only look at current numbers).

If Amazon lost $10B in 2015 (fictitious number), and then makes $2.5B in 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019. They've made in total $0 (therefore should pay $0 in taxes or else they would be getting punished by the government for not even making an overall profit). They, however, will pay $0 in taxes in 2016-2019.

They don't receive a gigantic refund from the federal government for losing $10B in 2015. Instead they get to carry these losses forward to offset gains in future years. It overall nets to where the company only pays taxes on true total cumulative income.

The news articles etc that want to completely misinform the population generally fail to explain this concept to people (which is a concept that makes perfect sense).

Amazon hasn't cheated on their taxes at all. They've simply followed the tax law as it was appropriately written.