I was looking for more reasons to despise billionaires...

...and came across what I think is an interesting comment. Before continuing I want to clarify that I want this to be a discussion about society and economics, and not about politics. I'm including whole comment for context, but would like to focus specifically on the part highlighted in bold:

Socialism is a non-profit system in which people pay only for the cost of something, without paying extra to enrich a shareholder who didn't actually do any work. Imagine replacing corporations with nonprofit cooperatives. The workers benefit, because they keep the money they receive for their labor. The consumers benefit, because they get things at cost. We already do this for certain services, like public roads, police and fire departments, libraries, and public parks. Socialism is compatible with democracy and freedom.

Corporate capitalism is an insane system that adds a third party into the transaction who overcharges the consumer, underpays the workers, and pockets billions for himself. Those billionaires use the money they steal to bribe politicians and hire lobbyists who then write the rules to benefit the billionaires and harm you. Billionaires also hire armies of propagandists to get gullible rubes to vote against their own interests, and support policies that give the billionaires more control over the economy. (Some of the comments here are rantings from the brainwashed minions of Roger Ailes.) This is why capitalism is not compatible with democracy and freedom. It degrades into a plutocracy (or oligarchy of the wealthy) in which the masses serve the needs of the elite few. Workers in the US have steadily increased in their productivity since WWII, while their standard of living has decreased. All of the benefit of that extra productively has been siphoned off to create a parasitic class of billionaires. (Billionaires are not something to be proud of, but rather a symptom of a failed economic system in which profits are distributed according to authority, rather than contribution.)

Marx believed that socialism was a transition to communism, but he was wrong about that, and many other things. Communist movements have all quickly degraded into facist dictatorships. Stalin for example executed the communists and hijacked the Russian revolution. Communism is not a realistic system for any group larger than a small tribe.

Let’s pick on Bezos. He owns 54 million shares of Amazon. Amazon is $3284 a share. So Bezos has $170+/- billion in stock. He could give every single Amazon employee 40 RSU’s (restricted stock), so they couldn’t be dumped immediately, and still be worth $60 BILLION. He could change the lives of 800,00+ people that work for him and still be one of the richest people in the world.

Of course this is simple but even do it on a sliding scale with tenure. Increase salaries so you may not be as profitable but your entire company would employee well paid workers.

Now compare this to a company like Nucor. Fortune 300. Zero layoff policy. They have never had a layoff. All employees get profit sharing. They take 10% of the pretax profits and divide it among all employees (except upper management) and give it to them. It’s been as high as 20% of the employees W-2. The have what is called “ extraordinary bonuses” and when the company is having a good year they give out money. In 2019 everyone got around $2500. Every-single employee. Even if you were hired a week before.

Nucor did $20 billion in sales with a net income of $1.3 billion. There stock is at $45 and they employee 25,000 people. Amazon had sales of $280 billion with a net income of $11 billion with 890,000 employees. Basically 10xs the revenue with 10x’s the income and a fraction of the employees. The Nucor CEO made $19 million last year (all most all in stock and bonus) and his base salary is 1.9 million. Bezo’s salary is $80k but, look at the stock.