News How many yachts does a man need?

[Suzy]

Five apparently - obnoxiously ostentatious oligarch Roman Abramovich just got another one. Wish he'd put his ridiculously excessive wealth to patriotic use and fund the space program! (Personally, I hope he meets the same fate as the Romanovs...)

 

[simonpro]

Christ, no matter how dislikable you find someone it's a bit much to say that you hope they are shot.
Abrhamovic can spend the money however he damned well pleases, and he already ploughs a fair amount of it back into his conutry.

 

[Suzy]

Well, I'm...brutally honest (I have been saying that sort of thing since I was a teenager). He is one of those who deserve it!

 

[SiberianTiger]

This is merely a creepy policy of the post-USSR Russia under way: instead of conquering the world, let our moneybags just buy it.

 

[garyw]

Don't ask me why but Yacht's are popular for tax reasons. I used to work for a company that had a special division that just looked after high net worth individuals yacht's.

They had some interesting overseas trips...

 

[tblaxland]

Don't ask me why but Yacht's are popular for tax reasons. I used to work for a company that had a special division that just looked after high net worth individuals yacht's.

Better to ask why tax laws make yachts popular. In some way they are a bit like holiday homes (although the laws here have changed a little, shifting the balance in favour of yachts), you can rent them out for a large part of the year when you are not using them and legitimately claim their upkeep as a business expense (despite the fact that you would have most of those expenses whether they were used for business or not).

Suzy, I fail to see why Abramovich deserves such a fate. No doubt, he is not lily white but wishing assassination is too extreme - not brutal honesty, but more honest brutality.

 

[RocketMan_Len]

Well, I'm...brutally honest (I have been saying that sort of thing since I was a teenager). He is one of those who deserve it!

I find it rather troublesome, that you consider yourself to be the arbiter of what someone can and cannot do with THEIR OWN MONEY.

Keep in mind that, in buying said yacht, he is keeping several hundred labourers, machinists, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, etc., employed.

You may not approve of the manner in which he spends his dough... but to say he deserves death because of it is WAY over the top.

It's an apparently insidious disease - this idea that someone is not worthy of life, because the choices they make do not mesh with your own. (I see it on a LOT of other forums... and it disturbs me deeply...)

 

[simonpro]

In my experience those with no money don't like those with money...until they earn some themselves. Then - all of a sudden - the rich don't seem so bad

 

[Ghostrider]

Well, I'm...brutally honest (I have been saying that sort of thing since I was a teenager). He is one of those who deserve it!

Are you prepared to carry out the thing yourself?

 

[FordPrefect]

...Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasnt't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
...

 

[dbeachy1]

Since when is earning a lot of money and buying expensive goods deserving of a death sentence? As RocketMan_Len eloquently pointed out, buying goods and services creates jobs and keeps the economy working. The second thing to remember is that the government taxes high-income wage earners quite a lot: here in the USA the wealthiest 1 percent of the population earn 19 percent of the income but pay 37 percent of the income tax. And the top 10 percent of wage earners pay 68 percent of the total tax. [And I suspect it's even higher in more socialist countries.] The top 50% of wage earners pay 96 percent of the total tax. These "evil rich people" are the ones paying for the vast majority of government services and programs, and the money left over is spent on goods and services that helps create and keeps jobs. Hardly deserving of a death sentence.

EDIT:
@FordPrefect: LOL! I love Adams' books! :lol:

 

[Torgo]

Hmm... If I had the swag to buy 5 yachts, and wanted to buy 5 yachts, I'd love for someone like the OP to come up to my face to tell me I'm an evil person that deserves to die. I'd probably hire her to be a galley wench or barnacle scrubber.

Of course, accidents do happen out at sea all the time.

Or is it not OK to bring this full circle?

 

[Tommy]

Keep in mind that, in buying said yacht, he is keeping several hundred labourers, machinists, electricians, plumbers, mechanics, etc., employed.

For a while, yes. And a ship that size will require a fair sized crew on a long term basis. But for the same money he could have opened a children's hospital that would provide long term jobs for many more people (as well as the short term "construction" jobs,) and benefit society, rather than just benefit himself. If I drive my car into a crowd of 20 people, will you congratulate me for missing 12 of them, or condemn me for killing 8.

By taking far more resources (represented by money) than he needs he makes less available to everyone else, and is a drain on society. Not saying he should be killed, but if he were prevented from accumulating that much excess it would benefit far more people than it would harm. Killing him wouldn't solve anything, of course. The money would just go to his heirs and there's no reason to believe they'll be any more socially responsible than he is.

10 percent of the people in the world own 90 percent of the rescources, and this kind of disparity has always been an indicator of collapse. We're already starting to see it. GM and Chrysler are both bankrupt, and this is blamed in part on the Unions. The unions decreed that people in the auto industry deserved more pay/compensation than workers doing the exact same tasks in other industries. That's a disparity, and will hurt in the long run. The exorbitant salaries and bonus plans given to the execs is another drain on the company, and another disparity. In the heyday of US industrialism (the 1940 - 50's) Exectutive salaries were about 10 - 20 times higher than the average production workers. Now they are hundreds, even thousands of times higher. While the restructuring of those companies will eliminate the disparity between industries, it won't affect the disparities within the industry. The exec's will likely take a pay cut that's less percentage than the line workers, and the disparity of wages may increase. Especially since workers hired from now on will recieve a "lifetime compensation (includes wages, benefits, and retirement) about 40 percent less than workers used to. A newly hired exec can expect compensation about 25 percent less than before.

I guess what I'm saying is - while I don't think it's OK to shoot the guy, I think it's wrong to support this kind of excess. Actually, it's not impossible he does deserve to be shot, or at least imprisoned. For him to have come out of the collapse of the SU with this much money, there almost had to be some pretty shady manuevers pulled somewhere. You don't put a military grade missle defense sysem on your boat unless you know you've made a lot of enemies.

 

[Andy44]

Think about that. "He has too much money. I'm living a comfortable life, but his is too comfortable, so he should be executed."

Wow.

 

[willy88]

If I were him, I'd sell all those yachts and use the money to buy a nuclear aircraft carrier. Don't forget a few F-18s.

 

[ThatGuy]

For a while, yes. And a ship that size will require a fair sized crew on a long term basis. But for the same money he could have opened a children's hospital that would provide long term jobs for many more people (as well as the short term "construction" jobs,) and benefit society, rather than just benefit himself. If I drive my car into a crowd of 20 people, will you congratulate me for missing 12 of them, or condemn me for killing 8.

Are you saying that should you obtain the amount of money that this guy has, you have a kind of moral obligation to not use that money to benefit yourself?

You could think of it like this: He, by buying this ship, has given the people who worked on it money. With this money, those people can buy goods and services from other people, who can then use that money to buy goods and services from some other people, etc.

Pretty cool ship by the way.

 

[Tex]

I'd probably hire her to be a galley wench or barnacle scrubber.

heh, that's basically what I do, "barnacle scrubber". I dive yachts for a living and do everything from cleaning the bottom, to replacing/fixing things so the owner doesn't have to haul the boat out of the water. I certainly don't make enough money to buy a yacht like that, but one can make a decent living scrapping barnacles. I just wish he'd bring his new yacht here... I did the numbers and holy crap I'd make a ton of money cleaning that thing!

 

[Tommy]

Are you saying that should you obtain the amount of money that this guy has, you have a kind of moral obligation to not use that money to benefit yourself?

Nobody is expecting this guy to settle for a rubber dingy. The part that causes a problem isn't that the guy bought a yacht - it's that he has more yachts than he can actually use, and the newest is pretty over the top. Nobody needs a yacht like that. People aren't all that offended when a rich person lives an affluent lifestyle. when you go beyond affluent into ostentatious people start to get annoyed. When you get obnoxiously ostentatious some people will feel a justified anger at the wastefullness.

Why applaud him for providing a few jobs as a side effect of his owning a new toy, when that same money could have provided far more jobs and served the public wellbeing to boot? Take, for instance, Dale Carnegie. After his death, a piece of standard yellow legal paper was found in his desk. It was dated from when he was in college and listed his two goals in life. The first was to spend the first half of his life attaining as much wealth as he could, and the second goal was to spend the second half of his life giving it away. He funded arts, science, medicine and literacy. He funded over 2500 free public libraries around the world. He enjoyed his wealth, but believed that the purpose of gaining wealth was to enable him to better the world, not just himself.

 

[Suzy]

Reading his biography, he's no saint! (Forum where I got the original news) Little better than an opportunistic gangster (like the other oligarches).

 

[garyw]

Reading his biography, he's no saint! (Forum where I got the original news) Little better than an opportunistic gangster (like the other oligarches).

Are any of us? Are you saying that you are so clean that you have the right to sit in judgement over everyone?

That's scary.