No Stupid Questions

Increased portfolio yields.

Those in power and will money still did whatever they wanted during covid.

An intriguing question. I do agree that even the ultra-rich had an eye-opening time during the pandemic, but I don't agree that their wealth acts as a singular shield, which if pierced would herald their downfall.

When someone has the resources of tens of billions of dollars, the principle of defense in depth is both practical and is most prudent. For each of your points that suggest the ultra-rich were vulnerable, it might actually prove the strength of their fortifications.

they were conceivably vulnerable to the same indiscriminate illness as everyone else.

The thing with disease is that it cannot teleport: the transmission vector must convey person to person, through airborne particles, or some other physical means. What the ultra wealthy can -- and do -- buy are exotic islands or chalets in faraway places from other humans. Meaning that once there's notification of a pandemic, they are best positioned to flee to whichever of their overseas fortresses as they may choose. Meanwhile, the masses have to hunker down at home, which is their only refuge, and hope for the best.

the government can and will shut down your business

The ultra-rich leave the daily operations of their businesses to professional managers. It has been a staple of prudent management for decades to have disaster preparedness plans and business continuity plans. You may have seen some form of these through wildfire or earthquake notification systems, so that a company can confirm which of their employees are accounted for. But such systems also serve as a planning exercise, in case a natural or manmade disaster takes out an entire industry.

The businesses of the ultra-rich already plan for things like the loss of most of the world's hard drive production capacity due to flooding and the closure of EU airspace due to volcanic ash. These aren't as detailed as those specific situations, but are about the business impacts: what it products can't get to customers? What if required materials can't reach the factory? What if war breaks out domestically and the production line is taken over by the government?

Not to minimize the impacts of the pandemic, but the difference is that it activated multiple continuity plans simultaneously, an unprecedented scenario but otherwise not unrecoverable. Fortune favors those who make plans.

Indeed, a part of many business's plans during a catastrophic situation is to -- unsurprisingly -- beg the government for aid or a bailout. After all, if they can get the taxpayer to partially implement their plan, they will. And business lobbying for a bailout only requires a telephone and a contact list, so the ultra-rich's lobbyists were kept busy in the summer of 2020.

What is most telling is that the USA stock markets recovered in the latter half of 2020. The ultra-rich have plenty of resources to survive a few months of disruption, as they have more runway to wait things out than, say, a typical working class household that needs rent relief or faces eviction.

universal income model is not only possible, it is completely affordable and can be quickly implemented.

One of the most under-assessed aspects of the ultra-rich is that they find ways to make money whichever way the wind blows. Even in a UBI scenario, they can still make bank if they are the sole vendors of certain commodities.

In fact, a UBI system which automatically tracks inflation is essentially a license for vendors to also increase their prices with exacting precision, perfectly in-time with inflation. This is why a UBI system should not be implemented on its own, but alongside other social safety nets and regulation on the "demand side" of money. That is to say, business regulation (eg rent controls, anti-monopoly rules, banking reform) are all part-and-parcel of a long-term plan that defeats economic inequality. They are not separate pieces, but the ultra-rich can still take solace that not everyone recognizes this yet.

The war of information would still be on their side even if UBI were voted into effect today.

The luxury services that their money had always effortlessly bought could be quickly ended by decree, scarcity, and the loss of human labor to illness.

I didn't exactly care to track the happenings of the ultra-rich during the pandemic years, but did they actually suffer such scarcities? Their business empires recovered by the end of 2020, and it's not like rich people don't just find other intrigues to spend their time on. Rhetorically, what is a few billion here or there?

Were the ultra-rich terrified? Probably, but only for their paper valuation. They themselves would have been physically fine, and since there was no proletariat uprising during this time, they basically just made money during those years. Essentially, a financial blip but their lives move on. Maybe they'll build more bunkers for their holiday homes.

It did nothing of the sort for the universal income thing. In every country where they started printing money to hand out, inflation skyrocketed and everyone is still feeling those effects today, and likely will forever. Debt for those countries absolutely exploded.

I want a true universal income trial, long term, where all of the necessary tax changes are made as well. Covid didn’t do that. If anything Covid made people think a universal income will never work.

Throwing money around has never been a problem for the government. Doing it properly without negative consequences is the thing they never seem to be able to understand.

They lie and cheat more openly now because of the idea many hold/held that covid was a control psyop by billionaires and the government, testing how much they can push common citizens around et cetera.

I am neutral on that topic. But the first thing I think with regards to "what changed for the ultra rich, before and after covid?" is that they take less care being evil and manipulative.

It spooked them. Think of them like stunted teenagers who think they'll live forever and have no concept of consequences. Suddenly being faced with the potential consequences of their largess, and the potential for coordinated, distributed, non-hierarchical response, as well as the recognition of their own mortality sent them into a state of existential panic. Their retrenchment and consolidation in response to this panic has only accelerated the damage they're doing. They fully expect a mad-max style social collapse, and want to be sitting on a little slice of Eden when it happens.

The fact that we could avoid all of the necessity for recreating the most horrific dystopias mankind has ever envisioned by them simply... not being so damn greedy seems to have missed them entirely.

Money wise probably, but I think the internet is really damn authoritarian and all. I think they realized they have all the fucking power in the internet [world]. That's why we are all enslaved to their services. I have seen my brother use twitter, and literally everyone on there hates Elon Musk.