r/WorkReform • u/itsCS117 • 2d ago
✂️ Tax The Billionaires "The Day All Billionaires Died" by #noneofthisisok
MODS, this is not a post glorifying violence but shows how society can progress when there's nobody on planet earth hoarding a billion dollars.
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u/MeeksMoniker 2d ago
Like a Death Note comic where the user targets the wealthy. I wonder if the police would go after them....
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u/TantiVstone 2d ago
Tbf if I had the death note you know I'd be researching the world's richest and most vile people. Not that I could be trusted with that power of course
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u/ElektroBento 1d ago
But for a short time you would do good and it would had an lasting effect. Fear
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u/twitchMAC17 17h ago
I think you just summed up like half of the first arc of Death Note
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u/ElektroBento 17h ago
Lol you’re right. Didn’t even notice but I watched it as it aired so this is maybe where my brain has it from xD
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u/MeeksMoniker 1d ago
Lore wise, you could Note to manipulate people before they die.
You just gotta find someone in the know to send you a particular set of files...
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u/Sherris010 2d ago
going after this very specific version of "them" is why the police exist
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u/pichael289 🏛️ Overturn Citizens United 2d ago
That is not inaccurate sadly. Not necessarily law enforcement but actual police forces do have their roots in slave catching and union/strike busting.
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u/colorfuljellyfish 2d ago
It‘s my favorite daydream… If a Shinigami feels a bit bored, they‘re welcome to drop a book in my garden.
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u/fairydares 1d ago edited 1d ago
I thought of Death Note when reading this, too. The base concept is pretty similar. I quickly realized it's very different, though, actually almost completely inverse. Death Note specifically and intentionally had a cop's
soullessRepublicanson as the protagonist because Tsugumi Ohba was criticizing systemic police failures/police corruption in Japan. Because of certain details of the story, this isn't really controversial or debated, it's pretty on-the-nose. For instance, when a name is written in the notebook, it defaults to "heart failure"/"heart attack." Historically, this is exactly what Japanese police infamously do regarding suspicious deaths. To this day, Japan has one of the lowest autopsy rates among "developed" nations. For decades it was actually broadly believed the Yakuza had bribed Japanese police to lower the autopsy rate, or refrain from doing autopsies on their own victims.But yeah. Tangent aside, Death Note was entirely about the "them." With this comic, there is no "them." A lot of the people who Light punitively and unilaterally executed with the notebook would cease to exist in a world where billionaires all simply exploded.
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u/Saltysponge 1d ago
Dare to dream of a world without parasites
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u/The_walking_man_ 1d ago
WE could make this happen.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 1d ago
Dare to read Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds and start the revolution in our minds
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u/SpicyPepper_Pooper 2d ago
This doesn't 'glorify' violence.. but it shows what might happen to earth after the biggest worldwide revolutionary war. 🤯🫠
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u/AlcoholicPresident 1d ago
There are only 1200 billionaires. Doesn't have to be worldwide conflict. Could be quite tidy.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 1d ago
It depends on how many people we radicalize, how sloppy it needs to be.
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u/biggestdiccus 2d ago
I think realistically they would just decentralize their money. Enabling them to still be billionaire rich but not actually.
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u/ShadowAze 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think some unknown entity, deity, anomaly, whatever which knows to target billionaires and their inheritors, would know to target those trying to form loopholes.
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u/alwaysuptosnuff 1d ago
How did you draw the fantasy I have had for decades but never told anyone about?
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u/Inside_Mention_402 1d ago
Glad I’m not the only one! Except in my fantasy one billionaire dies everyday, in order of wealth. Once they start to realize it is very real, they race among themselves to get rid of their money. Some are too prideful; They don’t take heed, they beg and plead, and still die anyways.
Makes me smile every time.
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u/MisterSanitation 1d ago
Stop! I just realized this wasn’t real
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 1d ago
It's real in Marxist countries, some more than others
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u/MisterSanitation 1d ago
I don’t know about that, when wealthy countries move to any non-democratic system, either people keep their Lakehouse, mansions, or they simply change hands to higher a party officials. Claiming Marxism in end of itself is a silver bullet is a little dishonest. Let’s not pretend humans have found a utopian corruption, free governmental system.
I am sympathetic with Marxists since they seek equality and do believe Marx pretty much called the exact situation we are in. But to suggest that anybody has cracked the code on human corruption is a stretch. It’s likely the billionaires just don’t keep their heads up or flash their cash like they do here but I’m happy to be wrong if someone knows for sure. I’ll check out counter examples, I’m always able to learn.
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u/Winter_Persimmon_110 1d ago edited 1d ago
There's no reason not to know about that. Marxism is more democratic than a system where the people with the most money win the elections, and a Princeton study found that wealthy people get the policy they want and the voting public do not. The entire point of revolutionary socialism is the process of removing corruption from society.
The two countries that have free healthcare, education, no landlords and no billionaires are Cuba and DPRK. Those two countries are the most free from Western influence, despite the West's struggle to change that. Cuba's being forced into economic liberalization, China did by themselves, Vietnam was forced to do so for an IMF loan. Any poverty Cuba and DPRK had since the 1960s is due to US embargo and the collapse of the USSR. Despite the embargo, Cuba has a higher life expectancy than USA. In Cuba, DPRK, Laos, VIetnam and China, the billionaire class has little to no control over politics and they at the very least can be put in prison. Officials engaged in corruption are put in prison and/or executed, in contrast to the USA. Imagine what would happen to Jeff Epstein in China.
A socialist revolution isn't a switch that converts a country to utopia, but socialism is a process of transition to communism, which is also not utopia but a condition without a state, class division, or money. It's not equality either, but an absence of class division. With the eradication of capitalism, along with it goes homelessness, unemployment, deaths from lack of healthcare, oil wars, military industrial complex, illiteracy, imperialism and militarized police, as well as corruption.
The transition begins with a revolution and iterative changes are made to remove the wealthy from power, remove hierarchical, bourgeois and reactionary thought from the culture, and prevent the revolution from backsliding from revisionism. The transition cannot be made all at once because of the shock that would threaten, and also from an architectural standpoint the framework has to be built first. However, as the private ownership of capital is wiped from our society, the more corruption becomes impossible as people who have the money and people who are willing to take the money are removed from the system.
Read Blackshirts and Reds by Michael Parenti. It is a very thin book in readable American English that explains in broadest strokes what Marx's Capital was about, why Communists do what they do, why fascists do what they do, and the way that struggle plays out in our culture. Parenti's Yellow Lecture is a video equivalent, a sort of classic for Marxist-Leninists.
If you do a bit of digging you'll see from every angle how corruption favors a capitalist system. For instance, the CIA worked with the Mafia to try to assassinate Castro, because Castro kicked them out of Cuba. Or check out Operation Yellowbird, where the Triad gangs in Hong Kong helped anticommunist agitators flee China, or Operation Gladio where the US worked with the American and Italian mafia to fight communists in post-WWII Italy.
Capitalism is indisputably the greatest facilitator of corruption, and there is no viable alternative to capitalism in the history of the world that has ever worked other than Marxist socialism.
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u/commieotter 2d ago
"...and nothing happened because the relations of production hadn't changed, there was just a ceiling for the exploiter class to continue its exploitation."
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u/septic-paradise 2d ago
This comic feels really counterproductive. All it tells people is that the issue is with individual people, rather than with our economic system
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u/sweetheart_demom 2d ago
I think the point is that if being a billionaire makes you die (for some mysterious reason unrelated to direct action) then society would be better because that money would be redistributed to the people.
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u/septic-paradise 1d ago
That’s totally true. But what about in the real world, where there isn’t a divine being to police how much wealth you have? The alternative would be for a working class movement to reorganize our economic system, so that the factories, farms, and hospitals are democratically planned and managed by workers
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u/liukasteneste28 2d ago edited 1d ago
But nearly all of their wealth is tied to stock value.
Factual statements get downvotes...
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u/sweetheart_demom 2d ago
Yeah but they're still the ones pulling the strings.
Lobbying politicians and exploiting labor.
If we make it harder for billionaires to exist, we decrease the reward for such behavior.
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u/liukasteneste28 1d ago
True dat.
Someone smarter than me could come up with a way to remove billionaires but not fuck up the economy at the same time.
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u/sweetheart_demom 1d ago
Billionaires only harm the economy.
They exclusively remove money from the proletariat and hoard it for themselves, decreasing the health of both economies both macro and micro.
If I do work, and get paid for it, and pay you to do work, and the cycle continues with money exclusively being given to other workers, then eventually the money will make it back to me. That's a healthy economy.
If any of that money enters a bank account, it's removed from the economy and not doing it's job. Not changing hands, not making things happen.
The few trillion combined dollars sitting in bank accounts, in 40-car garages, in third and fourth houses, in multi-million dollar mansions, and indeed in the private equipment and the means of production of corporations, all owned by billionaires and multi-millionaires, is actively harming the economy.
Billionaires, and their pet economists and politicians, will tell you that we can't afford to remove billionaires because of the harm it would do to the economy. In reality, the opposite is true.
We can't afford not to.
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u/liukasteneste28 1d ago
We could Tax the loans rich people take against their investments.
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u/sweetheart_demom 1d ago edited 1d ago
We should get rid of the concept of a "Rich person" and give the wealth the laborer created by the laborer to the laborer, instead of to third parties.
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u/septic-paradise 1d ago
I think the solution is restructuring how ownership works. When we’re talking about billionaires, we’re talking about the tiny group of people that has majority shares in the world’s largest corporations and has exclusive control over how they operate. So the key to fixing that power imbalance is democratizing control over how corporations operate. We could accomplish this by making corporations publicly owned under a worker’s democracy
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u/MyUltIsMyMain 1d ago
When only a few people are the ones that shape the economic system yes thats a major factor.
If every single person is afraid of being a billionaire cause they just instant die they have to do something with the money. I doubt theres any kind of loophole. No secret money in offshore banks, if your assets add up to 1 billion you're dead.
People will still want to be rich but they know they cant get too rich so they have to put the money somewhere.
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u/PayaV87 1d ago
Yeah, in my country having milliona is pretty middle-class. A house cost north of 100M in our currency.
But having billionaires are still rare.
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u/Aksudiigkr 1d ago
If this were a thing it would for sure account for different currencies. Otherwise everyone in Japan, Korea, etc would be taken out
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u/TheTeaSpoon 1d ago
My first thought - there'd be money reform, where $1 now equals what used to be $1000.
Rich bastards just donating enough to be at like $500M and then if someone bothers them, they inflate the stocks owned by the other person and make him go pop, then sell.
Crypto replacing money altogether so it is impossible to be a billionaire.
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u/DapperChewie 1d ago
If they're just exploding because magic, I doubt the magic cares what form their wealth takes. If it's all crypto that can be converted into 1bil+ USD, they'll still explode.
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u/TheTeaSpoon 1d ago
Yeah but if you change the value of said dollar or remove it altogether, then what.
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u/DapperChewie 1d ago
I think you're thinking a little too hard about this, it's a silly comic, meant to show what we might be able to have if people didn't hoard wealth like dragons. The exact rules of how the magical billionaire explosions happen aren't really important.
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u/TheTeaSpoon 1d ago
I think you are missing the point of what I am trying to say. It would only kill once, then immediately you'd have workarounds. Just like they work around the tax system, using shares as collateral to get loans etc. These fuckers are incredibly resilient.
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u/Porch_Of_Geese_ 🏛️ Overturn Citizens United 2d ago
It’s bare liberal wish fulfillment masquerading as social critique. No actual connection between the premise and the consequences. A classic example of what lack of theory does to people.
Also made more depressing for how low it reaches. If we had literal magic and our entire political program were realized overnight without opposition or any semblance of reality… we could be average! Wow.
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u/Silly-Risk 1d ago
I don't think you're correct. I think this is a structural critique. It is imagining a society in which being a billionaire is impossible. It's using a silly premise to get past the capitalist realism to help people imagine a better world.
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u/septic-paradise 1d ago edited 1d ago
I think it’s doing the opposite. It isn’t challenging any of our ideas about what a better future would look like. It’s showing us that it’s impossible to imagine a future without private corporations. Without an economy that prioritizes profit over people. Without a police force or state apparatus that suppresses working people’s potential to govern ourselves.
If the wacky but “realistic” utopia the author imagines still has these things, it’s showing us that getting rid of these things is a pipe dream and is counterproductive to reform
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u/russsaa 1d ago
“Millionaires bitched less about paying taxes” explicitly implies the continued existence of capitalism. Capitalism at its core always has an exploited class, no amount of welfare programs or taxes can change that. Among many more reasons that capitalism the greatest obstruction to a better world.
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u/stone_or_rock 1d ago
Looks to me that the story shows if the individuals are removed, the system would improve somewhat on its own. But maybe read the entire story and catch the caveats.
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u/icey561 6h ago
Im not saying this comic is ground breaking or anything, but if that's is the come away you take from it, you just arnt getting it. It is very clearly commentary on a system that allows billionaires to exist. If they literly couldnt exist and everything stayed the same it would be a dramatically better world. By no means perfect, becuase capitlaism, but so much better. It is at its core a critique of systems not individuals.
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u/PunisherOfDeth 2d ago
Not trying to hate on the author, but it feels like their comics are made with the logic of a teen. Just a glorified billionaires are bad reel over and over and how much better it would be if their wealth was distributed equally. It doesn’t really raise any new ideas or talking points.
I also loathe that their premise is very often “well they’ll get what they deserve one day far far away in the afterlife!” Not good enough. I’m not content pretending justice will one day come. It needs to be delivered in the present, not in a fantasy.
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u/monkeybuttsauce 2d ago
Isn’t there a movie out where all the rich people get sick and die? I haven’t watched it
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u/unfinishedtoast3 2d ago
The military industrial complex existed long before billionaires.
It was the fall of the USSR that saw the military need less of a lions share of government spending, taxes dropped, billionaires existed
The military industrial complex would explode again the second tax revenue increased. We don't need billionaires to be assholes.
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u/captainAwesomePants 2d ago
Did it? If you consider the days after WW2 as the birth of the military-industrial complex, that sticks it well after John D. Rockefeller became the first billionaire.
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u/unfinishedtoast3 1d ago
The military industrial complex dates to before the civil war dude.
World War One was driven to its length BY THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. Bankers pushed politicians to extend the deadlocked war again and again, to continue manufacturing arms to sell to European governments. There were no billionaires then
It likely dates as far back as the Barbary Pirate wars under Andrew Jackson, when the government let military shipyards build vessels to sell to private individuals for piracy against the pirates.
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u/FeralFaoladh ✂️ Tax The Billionaires 2d ago
i mean they won't do anything but declare 1000 dollars 1 dollar and rename everything. money isn't a "real" physical thing, focusing on money misses the point about how the means of production are controlled
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u/ReaperManX15 2d ago
And then the elites just transfer vast quantities of money to the people they want to get rid of.
Uncooperative politician?
Transfer.
POP.
Employees trying to unionize.
Transfer.
POP.
A woman that tell them no?
Transfer.
POP.
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u/hikingsticks 2d ago
Much cheaper than a billion dollars to have someone killed old fashioned. Plus, if they have enough to transfer, they already went pop.
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u/ReaperManX15 2d ago
Multiple millionaires cooperated to keep quiet about a certain island.
So, a few conspiring to stay under the limit and combine their wealth to take someone out, isn't infeasible.
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u/TheRealMisterd 2d ago
Banks would start offering auto-transfers to a party of you choice if the amount would be too high.
Could be a charity or your arch enemy
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u/No_Gur_1091 15h ago
Of course, the first step is to tax the billionaires.
Step two: organize the US government into a true representative democracy.
Step three: Eliminate the economic system that allows billionaires to exist.
In other words an economy that controls large, privately owned enterprises,and encourages the emergence of a large number of worker owned and controlled enterprises, in other words socialist enterprises.
Step four: Iron out the kinks until the economy runs like a socialist enterprises dominate the economy, meaning the amount of wealth created in the US is mostly created by socialist enterprises.
Billionaires are bad, even evil at times, but they are the product of an economic system that can not longer provide the people with all the things they need and want.
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u/Shoong 11h ago
I really liked this. Had the similar idea but instead of all at once it was like 10 a day or something. But yeah same end result. If being a billionaire is suddenly a death sentence, then what does it mean to strive for that? What does it mean to amass that wealth? Our culture and leaders are built around the goal of amassing wealth. A world where that goal leads to your end is a completely different world.
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u/Animedingo 1d ago
Ok so, if anyone with a billion dollars or more dies, where does the money go?
Do the children instantly die the second they inherit the money?
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u/MyUltIsMyMain 1d ago
Well the money and assist dont imediantly go to the inheriters, theyd have to get everything transfered under their names first. The first few unknowing ones would for sure die but once its figured that happens then they'd probably have the money moved to other people in their circles first.
If thats not enough maybe tossing it into buisness is or charity works.
Or if its all instant eventually all that money would be spread apart enough to not kill people or go into limbo if legit everyone that could take it is dead.
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u/DapperChewie 1d ago
Yes, that's the whole point. Spread the wealth out so it isn't all hoarded.
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u/meikawaii 1d ago
The utopian version of trickle down, where it actually does trickle down. Guess it could work pretty well
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u/dipmeaning 2d ago
Stupid post. What's exactly the point?
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u/FlaMayo 2d ago
I think the point is for the reader to consider the idea that the world would be better without billionaires, and then consider how we could actually achieve that since billionaires obviously aren't going to all explode.
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u/dipmeaning 2d ago
What's the point of the blood, and where is it shown that the world become better after their explosion?
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u/viralust 2d ago
I love this comic. It reminds me of humanity's fascination with the powers of superheroes and gods. The idea that an unexplainable thing could make our hope for goodness prevail. But If we could simply retain the lessons of the past beyond generational experiences and focus on those things that have always yielded bountiful results: education for our children, seeing ourselves in others, and acknowledging the impact of our presence on this planet, then i think we could progress far beyond what our current systems have created.