Through the miracles of dollar cost averaging and compound interest, you might not even need to save $100,000 per day!!
…or you might need to save a whole lot more. Who can say?
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well, apparently no one except me thinks posting a picture of lil’yachty to the yacht size comparison thread is funny…
crickets chirping
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Fine example of the trickle down effect.
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Well, now I do.
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Still, gotta love the random Gulliver’s Travels references.
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THANKS! 
sometimes i forget to hold up the applause or laughter signs so that humans can tell i’ve engaged in the making of humor. 
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It was a good joke, and excellently explained. 
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…fuck it? 
You and Jeb Bush
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When I see these things, I think of all the people employed to build it and the sizable crews hired to maintain it. It is just another big vessel built with money paid to a lot of regular people that are raising families and doing normal things. While it doesn’t have a great purpose like some piece of infrastructure, its cost, compared to many more economically important things, is a mere fraction of the money spent on more socially acceptable and useful things.
The cost of this yacht applied to a highway in my state would build a couple dozen miles of highway with a bridge, and a few interchanges. I have no great faith in humanities ability to wisely spend money whether it is concentrated in a government or concentrated among the wealthy. Either way, it is powerful people deciding to do things that turn out to be wise and foolish with money.
While I am sure this yacht has a substantial set of weapons for defending itself, it will not start a war; its armament does not compare to what a government will do to equip a ship with weapons. I am not loosing sleep on how stupid rich people spend their money. I do lose sleep on how governments spend theirs.
If you can’t see the difference for society in utility between the tax dollars forgone and instead spent on a yacht like this and those collected and applied to a couple dozen miles of highway with a bridge and a few interchanges, I don’t know what to tell you.
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I think the points about this not being unique to capitalism is that, since Russia has existed as a nation, it has always been ruled by a cabal of thugs who engage in ostentatious displays while the masses are in poverty. That part is not specific to capitalism at all. Even the specific manifestation of of this ostentation in the form of giant yachts and navies as part of a dick waving contest between their ruling class and other ruling classes predates capitalism in Russia, as in the rest of Europe.
Capitalism is the mechanism that the ruling class uses to maintain power and engage in these behaviors now, but none of these behaviors is unique to capitalism.
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I very much doubt that, considering that guards on cargo ships entering dangerous areas pick up weapons from floating armouries in international waters and never take weapons into patrolled territorial waters.
I didn’t say it was unique to capitalism. I said:
Furthermore, the claim that capitalism has nothing to do with these two yachts is absurd.
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nice seeing all those working class people trickled down upon…
maybe i’m not quite as optimistic about the lives of families of those working aboard a russian oligarch’s mega yacht. 
even the workers on cruise ships don’t have it very good.
personally i’d rather have the interchange and highway.
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that’s reasonable, many systems of power allow for exploitation and inequality. not unique to capitalism and certainly predates it, but capitalism refines it in this case. a myth some people believe about capitalism that it is “fair” when it is anything but for sure.
i also agree with @gracchus that today’s mega-yacht scene is intrinsically capitalistic. whether owned by dictators or communist leaders or criminals. your point doesn’t preclude the correctness of theirs, think of it more as expanding the idea.
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The difference I see is a filthy rich person wasting their money on a yacht but employing thousands of people to get it built, and a filthy rich government spending a fraction of my tax dollars on socially useful things and a lion’s share on war machines and bridges to nowhere. I prefer the former; others prefer the latter.
My “raising families” refers to the yacht building company employees. Such an outfit employees a wide variety of highly educated engineers as well as highly skilled workers.
I agree with your pessimism regarding yacht staff and “raising families”, I’m guessing most gigs on a billionaires yacht would be a step up from similar on Carnival Cruise. It might be worse.
yacht building companies are full of smart engineers capable of building amazing boats…for much better purposes.
otherwise it would equally follow that:
the rich should also all live in palaces so that the palace builder’s families?
and of course they should all fly around in mega jets because the aircraft engineers families?
lets not forget the poor limo manufactures families?
real “job creators”…
the choices aren’t mega yachts for the uber rich or the workers families starve.
you might reconsider that they are not the providers you imagine them to be.
public roads are actually a good thing, mega yahcts not so much.
roads enable emergency services, kids getting to school, adults getting to work, travel, commerce, the payoffs are exponential.
with better wealth distribution the engineers are able to build better things for more people, and more people can afford them. everyone’s families benefit.
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