Topic: Billionaires keep losing billions of dollars why poverty rate is increasing (Read 220 times)

It's just like what Dickiy and the other ones have said. Their assets dipped in value. But in no way whatsoever does it mean that they lost anything. For instance, the biggest contributor to Elon Musk's fall from the top spot is Tesla's deprrciation in the stock market. Because a couple of people saw how poorly he carries himself on the internet. It made the people think less of Tesla and had therefore withdrew some of their holdings. But this in no way means that Tesla is no more, or that Elon doesn't have any hold snymore over Tesla.

Of course not, but do you think those that salivate all at Musk or Bezos's wealth are thinking of investment or paychecks?

And there are plenty of these programs, here are 30 billion! for food security
Development partners commit $30 billion to food production in Africa
As usual, coming from the evil and exploiting capitalistic west.


Not because half of the population growth comes from poor countries in families that can't afford anything, even basic education, sentencing all these kids to a life in poverty? Just a thought..

@Dickiy pretty much said it all, nothing much of  importance to add as the fact that people don't always plan for loses, loses just come, the people OP mentioned and talked about helping alleviate poverty from the world are probably doing their best, the fact remains that no matter how much the world billionaires invest into the world to alleviate poverty, the world will never arrive at a phase where every single person will be rich, poor people will always exist no matter what, so as a billionaire, you can only do the best you know you can, give to as many you reach and have to give at the time, don't get drown trying to free the entire world from poverty cus its not possible to do.

These billionaires lose that kind of money not in cold, hard cash. They lose these in the form of stocks that they own in a company or different companies. Not all those billions are liquid, and bulk of those are made up by stocks or derivatives and other assets that has the said value. And during those crashes, those billions are just redistributed among other traders so the money doesn't really go to just one place.

Even with that much money in numbers, helping the poor would require a lot more than money. You still have to make sure that it goes through proper channels, and even if all of those billions are exhausted, you can never be sure until when would the help last. That's why it's a lot better to give the poor some jobs that they need rather than hand outs or cash aid so they can be self-sustainable.

That is because they have made proper propagandas of money makes money! They are not working hard, but they are working really smart in the current era. Their investments are in the form of their own company shares and thus their wealth is defined by how much people are willing to buy and sell. The more we invest into their companies the more they earn in the profits net proceeds. One more important thing, they are not suffered from the losses because they have management team behind arrangements of their expenses and anything that has money into its matter. It gets properly taken care of! Thats why they would worry less about the losses and focus more on generating higher revenue in return.

problem number 1     you saw in the news.   << that's a problem

problem number 2  Faith in governmental programs.   <<  that's a worse problem 

Tech billionaires hold large quantities of stock in their respective corporations. The net worth gain and loss reported by the media is measured in fluctuating stock prices. Post 2020 we have witnessed several massive swings in stock price shift the net worth of tech billionaires by unheard of amounts of volatility. They "lose money" when stocks decline and "gain money" when stocks rise. Holding a majority percentage of stock in the company gives them certain voting rights and influence within the corporate structure.

Helping the poor is much more difficult than many might expect it to be. Many have drug and substance abuse issues. Which only multiply whatever spiritual, physical and psychological troubles they might have.

Years ago, there was a comprehensive study done in the united states which tracked the development of fetuses who were born addicted to crack cocaine. Their conclusion was being born and raised in poverty was a more debilitating and damaging condition, than being born addicted to crack. Being surrounded by negative mindsets, bad attitudes, substance abuse, violence, crime and other issues which plague the poor were damaging to people in ways that is difficult to measure. In which case, it may not simply be a matter of simply throwing money at the problem. There has to be some type of significant readjustment that has to take place. People have to work very hard to unlearn the environment they were born and raised in, to be able to live outside of it.

A billionaire who loses a billion dollars is not actually losing cash, but rather the value of their assets as a result of market fluctuations that lower the market value of their stocks and losses from investments. Be aware that we're talking billions of dollars here, not just a few thousand, so when the market isn't doing well, they lose a lot of money.

The reason why billionaires like Elon Musk are losing billions of dollars is they take risks and actually that's the reason why they are billionaires the more risk you take the more reward you get and surely they are not going to win anyone, sometimes they lose and since they invest huge amounts of the dollar they lose billions of dollar which is not something odd. Also, the recent pandemic and the economic crisis made the situation wort for people and due to the inflation rate the poverty rate is increasing all over the world and even in developed countries.

Here is the explanation. The billionaires wealth is a calculation of all of his assets. You ask why they did not help poor? Reason is simple, if they start to help poor, they will create even more poor people. Lets say Jeff Bezos decides to sell Amazon stocks. That will cause stocks value to drop deep, and an economical collapse. While trying to help poor, he will turn Amazon stock owners into poor. That is balance. You cant take money from somewhere to help someone, and not harm others. Printing money wont help either.

If you think that Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk have all those money, the amount of money states on Forbes or other tops, on their bank accounts/have a plastic card with billions, I suggest you to take pink glasses off.

That is just paper losses and so-called funny money, where they do not actually lose that money, until they sell those shares at a loss. They still own those shares, but it is just valued at a much lower price.

The majority of them do not have all their eggs in one basket.... take Elon Musk as an example..... He has money invested in several projects... Tesla / SpaceX / Power Wall / Boring hole ...etc. (He has an army of financial advisors to manage his global financial portfolio)

Even if the billionaire loses money, it won't make them poor because they can still earn more money. They still have a source of income that will give them more money and recover the losses so that it won't affect their portfolio. The billionaire has given his money to help poor people, but maybe they don't publish it, and we don't know about that. Many rich people think the more they give to others, they will get a lot of returns, and that is not limited to money but many other things.

There is no loss in practice, but only on paper, meaning these numbers are a result of the decrease or increase in the value of the shares, but that does not mean that they are actually losing, rather the value of the shares has decreased only, because they will not actually sell at a loss.

The same thing, when the value of shares rises, they make billions, but if they do not actually sell, then this profit is on paper only, it is just numbers that change.

As for your question why they don't use this money to help the poor instead of losing them, even if it is their actual loss they really don't care about the poor or their suffering. They may make some deceptive appearances and expressions in front of the press just to beautify their image, but in reality they do not care.

I agree with the previous responses, which I would summarize as the title is false. That the poverty rate grows has nothing to do with what it says about billionaires.

The poverty rate has increased basically because there is less money in circulation, and those most affected tend to be low income people who lose their jobs or have their hours reduced and therefore get paid less etc.

The billionaires issue has already been explained to the OP and I hope he understands it; it is not the same if you have a net worth on paper than if you had to liquidate that net worth all at once, which would reduce it.

If you are skeptical about the losses those billionaires are suffering why you are not more skeptical about how the news are reported by the media?

Those losses only exist on paper, it is as if you bought a house 10 years ago and then someone told you that now is only worth half of what it was worth the year before, unless you were interested on selling or getting a mortgage on your house the drop on the value is irrelevant, as the house still provides the same shelter it did a year ago, the same is true for the stocks of those billionaires, their companies are still as big and as influential as before, so they do not care they are suffering some short term losses at the moment.

Exactly, and hopefully OP understands this.  When the media reports that Elon Musk has lost billions in a day, they're basically using mark-to-market accounting based on how much Tesla stock he owns or some other yardstick.  It isn't as if billions of dollars suddenly went missing from his bank account--it's a "paper loss", not something the average person experiences or has to worry about.  Even Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other uber-wealthy people aren't seen crying about those kinds of losses, because things could go in the opposite direction within days or weeks.

In the case of Zuckerberg, I think he recouped a lot of his paper loss in the past few weeks when Meta stock rebounded from the big dip in October of last year (though it had been going down steadily long before that).  OP, if you want some solid advice: don't pay attention to 90% of what the media tells you, especially if it has to do with finance.

OP: It's not as if it's bad to help the poor, but what are the poor doing to help themselves? 
Some billionaires don't just own that title by chance, nope! Some of them came from poor backgrounds, but they worked hard, worked smart, disciplined themselves, and achieved great heights. They acquired a lot of assets that generated a lot of profit for them, which is always recorded, but once those assets lost value due to any factor, it was recorded as a loss. That doesn't mean they purposefully threw away the money. 

Was the loss they experienced something planned, or did they do a job to find a loss, not to make a profit. Everyone does any kind of work for profit, but if they suffer a loss it is an unavoidable fate.

I think they are ready with losses in doing any work, including what was done by Elon Musk. Have you ever thought what Elon Musk is developing the SpaceX project for, it's a big project, while the success rate is much smaller than the failure at launch. But Elon Musk continues to develop the project.

Regarding the problem of overcoming world poverty, of course it is part of the responsibility of the United Nations. The United Nations can invite world companies to take part in overcoming poverty. In fact, any world problems we can voice through international institutions, one of which is the United Nations. As for personal people, it depends on whether they want to help or not. Meanwhile, those who have the ability to speak at the UN level are leaders from countries. Meanwhile we can speak to the leaders of our own country.

Chinese Billionaire Hui Ka Yan, the Chairman of China Evergrande Group was once worth $42 billion, which made him Asia's second-richest person. Now lost almost 93% down from his wealth. Until 2021 it was in good position with employees count of 200000. Now think of the life of the employees and he even sold his house and belongings to overcome the situation, but nothing worked.

Chinese Billionaire Losses 93% Of His Wealth

There is a very simple question for you right now, why should you be skeptical of losing money to the billionaire now? If you feel compassion for people who are suffering from poverty, in fact you yourself can help them as much as you can without having to think about the missing billionaire's money. After all, Elon Musk himself doesn't really think about losing that amount of money either, as he can earn more than that in a matter of weeks. So you don't need to worry and also don't need to feel skeptical about this now.

There is always news every year and you won't even have enough time to read it if you are constantly looking for news like this. Even though you don't need to think about other people's lost money even that much, because all you have to think about is making money for yourself and using all your time to continue earning instead of wasting it by thinking about losing other people's money.
 
And what you also need to know is that they have never felt difficult or difficult in their life after experiencing the loss of that much money even though the advice you are offering is for the good. But if they want to help poor people in a continent, of course they also don't need to mention it in the media because it's not a business that should have a special level of promotion.

Billionaires use money to do business and losing money is part of the business risk that they have to bear so that everyone doesn't have to think about what they have lost in a given year. If you really want to invite them to allocate some money to poor people in the form of donations, I think you just need to contact them telling them the real purpose and see how they respond to that. Because no one may force someone to make any contribution if it is not born from his own heart to do so.

In many ways this wealth is an illusion, the total value of some of these companies is what all the individuals in the market think a single share is worth multiplied by the quantity that have been issued. However that value is constantly changing and if faith is lost in a company for whatever reason, it can disappear like the illusion it was. Elon's arrogance, self interest and now highly political viewpoints being spammed on places like Twitter have done huge damage to his net worth because his ego needs feeding. He (and many other shareholders) lost their money because they did not sell out during the peak time in their company valuation, but even if they started to sell it would have indicated to others to sell as well and push the price down in a vicious spiral.

Alleviating poverty might not necessarily mean sharing money or giving people cash. What it might mean is to create platforms where these people can be employed or acquire skills that would be beneficial to them. It could also mean assisting them to get better health services, good infrastructures or even quality education. I know Bill and Melinda Foundation is doing a lot of humanitarian work in Africa which has empowered the people.

As for these billionaires, they are not always satisfied with the wealth they have acquired. most of them only care about how to make more money and not how to empower the people.

When you get that big, billions become like thousands.

Elon probably isn't losing anything. His wealth was always on paper anyway. Let's say his TSLA shares used to be worth $10 billion. This don't mean anything unless he converts these shares to FIAT. Till then, he don't really owns $10billion. He only owns $10b worth of TSLA shares. His shares' dollar value might go down but he still has the same amount of shares. TSLA shares is just an example. You can think of any other asset he owns instead.

People don't really understand these CEO's aren't as rich as people think they are. There isn't enough liquidity in the markets to fill their sell orders if Zuck or Elon decided to dump their shares. The markets would just crash.

Haha the value of these losses is not realised loss. I'll tell you how it works. Most of the wealth that these people carry is in form of assets. Like Elon Musk has shared of Tesla and Jeff has shared of Amazon, it's the price of these shares which went so high and they had so much of them that they reached at top richest billionaires list. Now they don't actually have this money in liquid form which means if they were to sell it they might fetch a much lower value infact they selling this might in itself reduce the value of these shares a lot. So when you see that someone lost 4 Billion dollars it's not that they gambled last night and lost it, actually the price of the share went down which reduces their wealth it was anyways not hard cash money so it can't be used to alleviate poverty.

Ponder upon this - wealthy folks parting with colossal sums of money might raise eyebrows, especially when weighed against global impoverishment. Yet, it's crucial to recognize that these individuals amassed their fortunes through diverse avenues and, hence, hold the liberty to spend it as they desire. Be mindful that many among them, the billionaires of the world, channel their resources towards non-profit entities and engage in philanthropy, thereby serving society.

Quite a few billionaires have exhibited largesse towards charities. Take for instance, Jeff Bezos, who committed an astounding $10 billion to combat the crisis of climate change. Or Elon Musk, who has shelled out millions for various causes. Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, via the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook shares to charitable causes during their lifetime.

Without a doubt, we ought to extend our hand to help those in need. Yet, passing judgments on the expenditure habits of others might prove to be counterproductive and unjust. Let's focus on making a difference, rather than dissecting differences.

How can you give money you just lost to anyone? And it's not like you knew you are going to lose it beforehand. And if he doesn't sell the bottom he most likely make insanely much more in the bullrun again.

Better question would be just "why doesn't elon just give money to charity". And he has said he does it anonymously. I am not saying i believe him but it wouldn't be that weird if he spoke the truth, and i don't even like the guy.

And he has given it publicly as well, guite big sums actually: https://fortune.com/2022/02/15/elon-musk-5-7-billion-donation-weeks-after-asking-un-world-hunger/
Skeptics would say he is doing this to get tax cuts, which he obviously gets, but i think that was the single most coolest thing i've seen Elon done ever. And still elon makes me cringe when he tries to convince people he knows what he is talking about.

The way that a billionaire's wealth is calculated is far from accurate. If Elon owns 10% of all the Tesla shares out there. And Tesla has a market cap of $1 Trillion, it would mean his net worth on his shares is $100Billion. However keep in mind that is only based on the last traded price.

In a bear market there is no way Elon could sell $100B worth of shares without causing the price to drop. Which is what happened when he needed to sell shares to buy twitter. His selling caused price to drop by half. So he started with $100B and sold a few Billions and his net worth became less than $50B with only a few Billions sold. Hence why you should sell little by little in a bull market and never in a bear market.

The loss of wealth by billionaires and the rising poverty rate are most likely the result of a variety of interconnected issues, including economic inequality, global economic conditions, and government policies. In other circumstances, billionaires' wealth may be linked to specific businesses or markets that are performing poorly, resulting in losses. Poverty, on the other hand, can worsen as a result of factors such as unemployment, inflation, and a lack of access to education and healthcare. Don't judge billionaire's money because it isn't yours.

Alivitate poverty on a continent?
Let's assume both of them lost 80 billion, let's throw in Musk with 80 billion, and let's round it up to 250 billion, let's divide this to the whole of Africa and you have one insane paycheck of 200$ , that's one time 200$ and that's it. Do you think you can do so something with that?
Besides, it's just money in assets value at that sum, if would start selling them they would end with 3-4 times maybe less in overall value so let's not even go there.

Besides here is a new thought for you.
Bitcoiner owners lost between March and November 600 billion!  


For that, you first need to learn how the economy and how the stock market works, from what I read I feel tempered to assume you thought Bezos put 80 billion in a wallet and lost it while scuba diving.

Billionaires' wealth is not equivalent to the actual cash they have, but rather a reflection of the value of the assets they own. When the value of these assets, such as stocks, falls, it can appear as a loss, but it doesn't necessarily mean the money has gone anywhere. The money is still tied up in assets, but the valuation has changed.

Exactly because of what Dickiy said. There is no money, its value. So Elon Musk never "had" 300 billion dollars, it was his assets that worth that much but he never had it. If you think that those people "losing" billions means there was some money somewhere and now it moved and now its somewhere else, that's not true. It was just valuation, and that's why it dropped. If you want something similar in bitcoin, if NOBODY buys any more bitcoin, that would drop the price, nobody bought, so money never exchanged hands, but the price went up, so you lost value, meaning you are holding the same amount of bitcoin and yet have less money. Same thing, but with stocks instead.

In my opinion, why can it be said that a loss of billions or trillions of dollars is because the wealth he owns is the result of the accumulation of asset prices that he owns, such as shares which when the price drops it will be called a loss, we know that the Tesla company owned by Elon Musk's share price has fallen It started drastically when he sold his shares and bought Twitter, many investors sold Tesla shares too and the remaining shares decreased to the point of being called a loss.
So it's not because the money is gone or anything, but the assets they own have fallen in price, so that the wealth they have isn't real money but the total value of all assets.

I am always skeptical why billionaires are always losing huge amount of money in days while people are suffering. Last time I read in a new that Elon Musk loses upto 4 billions in just few hours and the other time he made close or more than that in days. Money that would be very hard for an employee or middle class business owners to make in a year.

If we take a look on the news we will see that billionaires loses upto 2 trillions dollar last year and this January we had been hearing about several loses from some of the world billionaires.

Last year I heard that Jeff Bezos loses up to 80 billion dollars and Mark Zuckerberg also loses close to that amount which is enough to allivate poverty from a continent. The cause of their lose is best known to them but I think the funds should have been used to help the poor rather than allowing the money to vanish in a thin air.

I have seen so many programs fro the masses especially to aid those that are in need. Some of these aid organisations do seek for donations from individuals, companies that are ready to help with funds. When we have billionaires losing huge amount of money every year, why not they use those money to help the poor rather than losing them