• peoplebeproblems@midwest.social
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    20 hours ago

    I heard about the wildfires yesterday, and thought: “ain’t it the rich people who have homes in that area?”

    :)

    :( to all the people who aren’t rich I’m sorry

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
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      20 hours ago

      There is like 6 fires, but one is a :) fire and the other five are probably :( fires.

      • hobovision@lemm.ee
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        18 hours ago

        All of the fires are :(

        While the palisades fire is showing a lot of very rich folks that their money doesn’t make them immune to fire, there are a lot of relatively regular people who were barely hanging on to their homes in a very expensive area who lost everything and could be financially ruined forever.

        Don’t get me wrong, vanishinlgy few of those in the palisades were poor before the fire. But a lot could be now if they were uninsured or if their insurance fucks them over.

        There’s a bunch of apartment buildings in the area that burned down too. Families who were protected by rent control lost their apartment and now where do they go?

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      Lots of actors whose work you appreciated lost their homes. I’m not defending rich people, but many of these folks actually earned it, not all inherited or squatted on wealth. Anthony Hopkins, Cary Elwes, John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Billy Crystal among others lost homes. I’m sure a lot of amazing Hollywood memorabilia went up in flames too.

      E: Why the negativity? Just generic hating on rich people with no nuance? I draw the line at when people use their wealth, personally or politically, to put downward pressure on people’s wages, benefits, and quality of life, doubly so if they personally benefit from it like getting a bonus for layoffs. I don’t hate on someone winning at life as long as they aren’t keeping others down to win more. If you want to hate on wealth save it for the execs trying to use AI to put these people out of a job. People like Goodman walked the line to support their unions. Show a little flexibility before you throw more torches on the fire.

      • naught101@lemmy.world
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        16 hours ago

        They all have enough to recover with ease, aside from a few lost artworks and memorabilia.

        • Delphia@lemmy.world
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          12 hours ago

          Except the things that cant be replaced with money.

          Your kids first shoes, wedding photos, family heirlooms, the funny thing about rich people is that they are still people.

            • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              Cary elwes is rich enough to you that you doubt his personhood? I have to assume his net worth is seven digits(according to those celebrity net worth sites, $6-8 million. Idk if those are at all accurate, but it feels reasonable for his career). Doctors, lawyers, dentists, accountants, plumbers, contractors, septic tank servicers, and a fuckload of other people are in that range.

              That’s a lot of people you’re not sure are people. I get that it was probably not earnest and I’m ruining the joke, but that’s too broad a dehumanization brush for me to find it funny.

              • Queen HawlSera@lemm.ee
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                5 hours ago

                6-8 Million isn’t considered rich, I’m talking about the Elon Musk “Vacations on the moon” billionaires.

                • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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                  4 hours ago

                  This is in a thread talking about how Cary elwes (and others ranging from $45M-$160M, but all of them are skilled actors who work a lot) lost their homes, so you might want to specify that.

                  I don’t know if that’s even true though, we can see Elon Musk’s super immature but definitely human emotions on display. He freaked out about his trans daughter and went on an anti-woke crusade, which is depressingly common. There are definitely some ways in which he does NOT think like the rest of us and I think he’s totally lacking morals, but sometimes people are evil.

                  Edit: that said, musk doesn’t need my defense. Maybe he’s got some humanity left, maybe not. Either way, he’s an active danger to the rest of us as it is. Perhaps he wouldn’t be after aggressive (99.99%, he’d still a multimillionaire) taxes or after going to jail for corruption. Hopefully we’ll see.

                • Delphia@lemmy.world
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                  4 hours ago

                  So you arent talking about the specific rich people who did lose houses and their irreplaceable personal posessions in these fires? Your talking about Elon Musk who is completely unrelated to the topic and has lost nothing in the fires for some reason?