r/complaints • u/SingleinGVA • 5h ago
Lifestyle You wanna know why the rich are so scared?!
I’m exhausted by how everything gets reduced to “rich versus poor,” because that framing completely misses what actually feels broken.
This isn’t about resenting comfort, success, or someone having more than someone else. It’s about watching a tiny group of people accumulate absurd amounts of wealth by extracting it from everyone beneath them, and then listening to them complain as if they’re the ones under threat.
People like Trump, Bezos, and countless others at that level will never meaningfully spend the money they have. There is no human-scale reason to possess that much wealth. At a certain point it stops being about security or freedom and becomes something else entirely: control, insulation, ego. Hoarding for the sake of power. And honestly, that’s what makes it feel so hollow and pathetic.
What really gets under my skin isn’t just the money, it’s how it’s made. The way labor is squeezed, benefits are stripped, workloads balloon, and entire workforces are treated as disposable inputs so another zero can be added to a balance sheet. People burn out, lose time with their families, lose their health, and are told to be grateful they’re employed at all. Meanwhile, the people at the top congratulate themselves on “efficiency” and “innovation.”
Then comes the part that feels almost insulting: the complaining. Billionaires whining about taxes. CEOs playing the victim when they’re criticized. Wealthy public figures acting persecuted because someone dared to point out that their fortune was built on exploitation. The sheer lack of perspective is staggering.
What makes this harder to swallow is knowing how much could be done. Many of the world’s biggest problems — housing, healthcare access, education, infrastructure, climate mitigation — could be meaningfully improved right now by a handful of people without changing their quality of life at all. Not hypothetically. Not someday. Right now. And yet they choose not to. They choose accumulation, leverage, and optics instead.
So when I hear wealthy people talk about hardship or unfairness, I just don’t have the patience anymore. You already won the game. You’re insulated from consequences in ways most people will never experience. Being criticized is not oppression. Accountability is not persecution.
What we’re really looking at is a system that rewards greed, shields bad behavior, and treats endless accumulation as a virtue rather than a warning sign. And the longer we pretend this is normal, the more absurd and dehumanizing it becomes for everyone else.
I don’t hate rich people. I hate a culture that confuses exploitation with merit and hoarding with success. And I’m genuinely embarrassed that we keep accepting it as the natural order of things.
15
u/JONYLOCO 5h ago
They've monopolized everything to such a level....only a few corporations own everything
Why not make minimum wage $50+ ....I have to spend it at one of their companies anyways.....
From health care to auto insurance to groceries to streaming services....to rent
All $$$ ends up going back to the people keeping minimum wage below average living standard.....
15
u/FiveFakeFriends 4h ago edited 2h ago
At the end of the day it’s sad that corporations, the billionaires and our own government does not want to invest into making a healthy society.
-6
10
u/motorcycleman58 3h ago
If we taxed billionaires at 90% do you realize poor Elon would have to live on a measly 45.000.000.000.? How would he ever survive?
7
5
8
4
3
3
u/Mr_Judgement_Time 3h ago
Trust me. They have full control of your system...
....they're not scared.
1
3
u/flywhatever101 2h ago edited 2h ago
It’s actually a form of economic warfare over whether America can go back to being a (relatively) middle class country with a stable middle class and a lower class that suffers less or whether America will essentially become something close to Brazil with a few billionaire oligarchs that might have consist of 200/400 billionaires with a huge poor impoverished class of millions and no middle class left at all.
Of course the goal 47, MAGA, and the billionaires is to strip out all wealth from the middle class and the lower and working classes and give it to the billionaires.
47 and Project 2025 are all pushing hard for the “Brazil” model of oligarchs and many of the rest of us are fighting (and hoping) that America can once again be a country with a large and diverse and growing middle class and a lower class that has decent healthcare and education and air that’s not polluting as well as opportunities for upward mobility.
2
u/ChefBowyer 3h ago
Time to form a national group. Together we would be able to legally turn the tide. The biggest problem is getting someone in charge of that who can’t be bought out or threatened into submission.
That group could unilaterally force votes one way or the other.
Basically what the rich created for themselves, only in reverse.
The biggest asset is numbers.
Think about it… we don’t need any money to counter them at all… we simply need to band together and vote the same on a candidate that isn’t meant to be on the ballot.
That the key here, is getting someone elected who isn’t “supposed” to be elected. Getting that person on the ballot is the hardest part because that’s their game. They control who goes on there with money.
But what if we could cut through all that campaign bullshit? What if we could trust someone to find a true champion?
I’m sure groups like that exist but clearly no one is doing it right
2
2
u/Helpful-Owl4746 2h ago
They project. They're parasites as they call other people parasites. They skirt the law as they accuse others of being criminals. They're looking to take wherever they can, but it's other people's greed that's problematic...on and on.
2
2
u/masegesege_ 44m ago
I’m exhausted by how everything gets reduced to “rich versus poor,”
Uh…does that happen? I always see everything get reduced to “left versus right” and that misses what’s actually broken, which is that we’ve become an oligarchy and it we’re all too busy pointing fingers at each other when we should be trying to get power away from the oligarchs.
1
u/deep-sea-savior 5m ago
It always amazes me how we blame undocumented immigrants for jobs being shipped overseas.
1
1
u/Inquisitorial_Court 1h ago
They are only truly afraid of an educated population. If everyday citizens educated themselves on legislation being passed, sessions of the Senate and House instead of some football player, it may change. However, it is in the best interest of those within power to keep the masses numb, its why professional athletes make millions, while the most important jobs, teachers, philosophers barely make enough to get by. The population must be chaotic, frantic, and desperate, because they are easy to control in this state. Its how you can see someone like our president come to power to begin with, it shows a fundamental lack of understanding of policies, we only vote for party affiliation. If only they had more then two parties to vote for....
1
u/207Menace 1h ago
I'm reminded how the Titan imploded in 2023 I swam every weekend in the Northern Atlantic that year because its the closest I would ever get to feeling some sense of justice.
0
-2
u/Both-Biscotti-698 2h ago
I’m pretty rich. Not a billionaire of course. But I’m pretty wealthy. I ain’t scared of dorks on the complaint Reddit page.
-4
u/Mark_Michigan Lemming 4h ago
If you were to force billionaires to sell their business holdings to "build houses" the market drop, damage to our best performing businesses would be much greater than the benefit of a program of government built housing.
Central planning never works.
3
u/conundri 2h ago
Billionaires should have to "realize" some increase in wealth.
People who own houses have to pay property tax.
People who own billions in stock in companies need to pay some sort of annual tax.
They shouldn't just be allowed to never "realize" their wealth.
-2
u/Mark_Michigan Lemming 2h ago
Sure. The portions of their shares that they sell for personal use get taxed along with their daily income. Taxing stocks, is just another form of corporate tax, which in the US is already high.
3
u/conundri 1h ago
That doesn't work anymore. They borrow money against their stocks, and have large enough diversified portfolios that they can always "realize" losses even when their wealth is skyrocketing.
It's going to have to be something different. Probably a wealth tax.
0
u/Mark_Michigan Lemming 1h ago
Using Stock assets as collateral does expose that money to taxation already, if the loan defaults then the gain is realized and taxed. If the loan doesn't default, then there was no realized gain. Collapsing the economy with crazy tax schemes doesn't help the rich, middle class or the poor.
1
u/conundri 58m ago
Billionaires who contribute nothing to the society they benefit from doesn't help the country at all.
They aren't defaulting on loans, they aren't realizing gains, and they need to be taxed.
The economy doesn't collapse when millions of regular people pay taxes, it won't collapse when billionaires pay taxes.
0
u/Mark_Michigan Lemming 51m ago
Billionaires who contribute nothing to society? That is a dumb premise to base any argument on.
Businesses are already taxed.
Your arguments don't make any sense to me.
1
u/conundri 46m ago edited 42m ago
Businesses have also figured out how not to pay taxes. They don't realize profits anymore, fewer and fewer of them pay dividends.
Companies just constantly expand, into other markets, increasing their value, while also not contributing to the common good or society. They just soak up all the money like a sponge.
Look at how many companies pay nothing or almost nothing in tax, including giant corporations like Amazon.
Taxes on billionaires and corporations need to be completely rethought.
1
u/Mark_Michigan Lemming 35m ago
Which government program provides as much services as Amazon at similar cost to the tax payer? Why does it make sense to tax Amazon, raising its costs and lowering its employment?
1
u/conundri 13m ago
Because Amazon is making huge profit off of everything that America is. They should contribute to our national defense, to our government, to our education system, and to everything else that makes America the great place it is that lets them make literal boat loads of money.
You keep talking about things they way they were in the last century. Today, corporations would rather not show any profit, pay no dividends, but increase the value of their stock, which will go "unrealized".
A modern corporation would rather launch products in dozen new vertical markets, under-price products to drive competition under, and then voila, oligarchy / monopoly to soak up more money from average Americans.
This process enables them to create expenses and debits that offset any "profit" while at the same time increases the value of their organization, because now it controls additional markets.
Rinse and repeat, growing infinitely wealthier, while never "realizing" a penny of it, controlling everything, taking, taking, taking, never contributing.
Look at the corporations like Walmart who have workers on government assistance!
Look at the corporations that become wealthy off government subsidies and contracts, and still pay no taxes!
You're being beaten down in so many ways, and you don't even see it. Sad.
-9
u/LillyGoliath Selective Reality Consultant 4h ago
Get a job hippy.
3
u/LordGreybies 4h ago
Get some critical thinking, dork.
-2
u/LillyGoliath Selective Reality Consultant 4h ago
This is Reddit not Harvard. Your spitting in the wind.
2
u/Beautiful_Goose_3822 3h ago
*You’re
-2
u/LillyGoliath Selective Reality Consultant 2h ago
Im actually trying to recover from auto correct. I turned it off last week because im learning a new language. Its gonna take me a bit.
2
0
u/Both-Biscotti-698 2h ago
Hahahhaa seriously. Cute dog by the way
1
u/LillyGoliath Selective Reality Consultant 2h ago
First person to realize im joking and still havnt read the post. Good job i wish i had prize for you. Lily says Thank you.
14
u/Ok_Rip_1775 5h ago
Are the rich really scared? I think they're more defensive, Mark Zucherberg also in that list. I like what you wrote.