Why dislike the super rich? Envious? Jealous? That's what they think.

[SomethingFishy]

But the truth is more... sinister.. I dislike the super rich because they are corrupt and without any morals whatsoever. Their main value in life is money. Greed. What they don't seem to see is that greed.. never ends. There is never enough to satisfy. No matter how much you have you wake every morning wanting more. Does this sound familiar?

Yes the super rich are junkies. Worse than junkies. They are Super Junkies. A junkie just needs enough to get his next fix. The super rich already have more than enough but still keep accumulating more. More more more, until they have so much that more means nothing more than another zero on a bank sheet. Yet they can't live without those numbers, and they will steal from you to get it.

I support a lot of people, 6 to be exact, and I make decent money. At least I did by 2006 standards. That was the last time i saw a raise. 8 years ago. Of course I asked for one, every year and every year I'm told there is no money. Of course there is money for boats, private planes, and a third summer home. But not even a cost of living raise for me. The last time I asked I was told, "there is no money and there will never be any money, this is it, if you think you can get a better job go ahead".

What a nice way to say "fuck you" to a 10 year employee

[FSogol]

1. Joe Strummer sang it best:

"I don't want to hear about what the rich are doing
I don't want to go to where the rich are going
They think they're so clever, they think they're so right
But the truth is only known by guttersnipes" - Joe Strummer "Garageland"

[MicaelS]

2. When Donald Trump was asked how much money was enough...

He answered "One more dollar."

[rurallib]

20. yet he still can't get a good looking hair piece

probably won't pay the price for a decent one

[madokie]

40. I think that mat on his head is really his own hair

just rolled up in a ball. I'd think that any animal would scurry away if it got the chance

[rurallib]

41. you mean a barber would do that to him?

[madokie]

42. Money talks

[Warpy]

3. They just don't get it that we hate them because they've robbed us of the fruits of our labor

and now that they've got enough money for a million people to live on, they refuse to share by investing in the industrial infrastructure in the US or even pay taxes for the bloated military they insist on having.

[SomethingFishy]

4. Exactly...

I finally saw the second part of the Hunger Games series yesterday. There was a scene where the "rich" were drinking something to make them puke so they could be sure to taste all the different foods available, while the 12 districts that did all the work were hunting squirrel for meat. It was powerful and plausible.

[EC]

27. The Roman vomitoriums.

That's old the Romans and Greeks did it too. I'm sure the Robber Barons did too, since they often over indulged.

[ReRe]

28. Wow, I'm agreeing with you!

You're damn right. We need to look at this monster and name it. The super rich is The Corporation. They don't pay taxes. We pay for the R&D that they use to make billions from; they tear down our infrastructure, which we provide for them, so they can make billions; and the effing MIC and all of it's tendrils defends their interests all over the world, not our interests. We exist so they can prosper. And they think a pittance is supposed to keep us fat and happy. Ha! The People can't effing live on a pittance anymore. The wages HAVE to go up, because THEY keep raising the prices! I hate the injustice that is perpetrated on the 99%.

"If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning,
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land!"

[trotsky]

36. The productivity of the American worker has gone through the roof in the last several decades.

Yet our wages are lower.

They scream and whine that they shouldn't be "punished" for success, yet that's exactly what has happened to the American working class. They made it happen.

[Alkene]

51. +1 n/t

[deutsey]

62. I have no desire to be around them and certainly would never want to be like them

Their narrow devotion to wealth has poisoned their souls and their insatiable greed impoverishes millions and millions of people, inflicts untold suffering, and destroys so much potential.

[Warpy]

65. I have been around some of them

and while they're affable and generous, anyone who benefits from the generosity who has the audacity to tell them what they actually need gets the bum's rush. I saw that happen many times.

They are comfortable with their inherited and often threadbare furniture and their curiosity does not extend beyond that comfort. They hire people to preserve it and often those are the people you're talking about, the hired help, paid wages fit for a potentate but still wages. Their greed is unlimited as they dream about becoming members of the club, something they will never be.

[Bigmack]

5. I never envy sociopaths... nt

[Jackpine Radical]

6. It's really pretty simple.

They assume we're driven by the same base motives that they know within themselves. Filled with greed & envy of the guy who has a few million more than they do, they know nothing of empathy or compassion or caring for the welfare of others. We allow ourselves to be ruled by spiritually grotesque monsters.

[SomethingFishy]

9. Mmm. Some truth there for sure..

They live in "the bubble". Like Rand Paul yesterday claiming there is no war on women because his sister and nieces are doing well.

It makes me wonder what we are going to need to do to fix it.

[mac56]

25. Someone posted on FB yesterday

"Privilege is when you think something is not a problem, because it's not a problem to you personally."

[laundry_queen]

45. That's a good one. nt

[ladym55]

7. Why dislike the rich?

Let me count the ways ...

Their insatiable short-term greed is destroying us. We couldn't possibly invest in people, education, infrastructure ... then they control the message so that the poor turn on each other as they scrap over the leftover crumbs.

We deal daily with the results of their need to stay addicted to 19th century energy technologies. The "once in a generation" weather events happen with increasing regularity.

Apparently the very wealthy think that the consequences of their stupidity and greed will NEVER touch them.

[Raine]

8. I dislike them because they are takers with their hands in everyone's pockets, nothing but

thieves who refuse to pay their share. Everyone else has to make up for their refusal by paying more.

[gollygee]

10. They call it "the politics of envy"

when people complain about wealth disparity. It's their attempt to deflect attention from the problem. They say the problem is envy, not wealth disparity.

[Nye Bevan]

11. Wow. Lots of hating on Alan Grayson, Nancy Pelosi, the Clintons, the Kennedys, and John Kerry,

in this thread.

Or on reflection, is it more the rich sociopathic assholes that you hate, as opposed to all rich people without exception?

[SomethingFishy]

12. There is a difference between SUPER RICH and Rich..

I made sure to distinguish. Sorry if you took it wrong. I'm talking about the 400 people who are controlling everything and still whining about it.
I saw a poster on here yesterday that said that the 85 richest people on Earth have more money than the bottom 3.5 BILLION people. That is super rich.

[Electric Monk]

14. Oxfam's "Working for the Few" report, for those who haven't seen it yet

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/20/oxfam-85-richest-people-on-earth-have-as-much-money-as-half-the-worlds-population/

[juajen]

18. All rich people are not assholes, just the majority.

It does, however, make the good rich stand out. Yep, I said "good rich". We see them every day, and we should not "throw out the baby with the dishwater."

[Nye Bevan]

31. You probably know rich people without knowing that they are rich.

There are plenty of unostentatious rich people who drive Hondas or Toyotas and are not assholes.

[lonestarnot]

39. Oh bullshit. They just want to be unnoticed in their thievery.

[Quantess]

53. You mean upper middle class?

I doubt many DUers are all that offended by the people in our communities who are worth a million or three. Those people aren't the oligarchs who stole from the rest of us. I agree that most of them are not assholes. But then again, they are peons compared to the USA's owners. Nice try, though.

[Nye Bevan]

57. So the problem is the Nancy Pelosis? (net worth $100 million)

Or are you thinking even higher? Like Sara Blakely, who invented Spanx and is now a billionaire?

[tenderfoot]

64. Do they parade around calling Obama a Socialist, flashing their rolexes and claiming victimhood?

[marions ghost]

46. somehow

I don't think the good rich make up for the bad. If the good rich would put some of their money behind REALLY changing things, then I could think they'd earned it. But you don't see them doing that. They pretty much stick with the status quo, because of course, it protects their riches.

[ReRe]

30. Really, you can't differentiate between the ones you mentioned...

... and The Corporation? Seriously. Think about it for a minute and get back to me.
(Hint: it has nothing to do with party affiliation)

[hunter]

37. I don't respect that kind of wealth. Full Stop.

There ought to be a minimum wage and a minimum wealth, and taxes ought to be such that nobody enjoys more than twenty times that income or wealth.

Minimum wage $10 an hour, maximum wage $200 an hour. Minimum wealth a cot and a locker, maximum wealth twenty times that space.

You see how this works...

If the CEO of a company wants to own a big fat penthouse suite and be driven around in a limo, the lowest paid employees get comfortable suites in the same building, park their own utilitarian cars in the same garage, and ride the same elevator.

In this scenario those prone to hoarding wealth have a very strong incentive to make sure their own good fortune really does "trickle down."

The game playing stops. Everyone's kids go to the same schools, everyone shops in the same places, and everyone's lives are "real." Nobody exists in an insulated "bubble" of wealth.

What's that you say? It takes away "incentive???" Nonsense. Anyone who would pay an employee starvation wages while traveling through life first class is up to no good or has been corrupted by the system.

I can't respect that. They are all Justin Biebers, but worse, because they are not stupid kids.

[tenderfoot]

63. Interesting - I have not heard one of those people complain about having to pay higher taxes

Cite one that claims targeting the rich is equivalent to Kristallnacht.

tory.

[rickyhall]

13. Being billionaire is obscene IMHO

[Nye Bevan]

44. So you consider JK Rowling to be an "obscenity"? (nt)

[prairierose]

48. J K Rowling is no longer a billionaire...

She gave away so much of her money that she no longer qualifies for that title.

Stop trying to defend the indefensible.

There are rich people who are still human beings. J K Rowling is a good example, but she was on the dole when she wrote the first Harry Potter book. She has said that if her country had not had that help for single mothers like her, she would never have been able to finish the book.

However, most billionaires are psychopaths and have no concept of what most people think or how they live. But they also do not give their money away because they are too greedy and selfish to care about helping anyone. Many of the rich who do give any money away do it for tax breaks, if any of those are left. But there are some who still have a feeling for community and they give money to good causes. I know a very rich man who gives a lot of money to the arts here every year. He also drives a pretty small, high mileage car most of the time. The last time I saw him driving a car, it was a Prius.

So there are rich people to admire but the ones who hide their money overseas, avoid taxes and avoid real people are selfish, and greedy and care for no one but themselves and their bank accounts. Those people are the ones we want to pay their share of taxes in this country and pay their workers a fair and living wage. That is what made this country great but when the robber barons are in control, the country goes down hill.

[laundry_queen]

56. +1 nt

[heaven05]

15. succinctly put.

what they are doing to you at your workplace is wrong. They are sinister and to take it one step further, evil greedy snakes. Enough is never enough for the rich and super/mega rich 85 people with more money than 3.5 billion people hold in their hands/bank accounts. That really drove it home for me.

[Triana]

16. Their only God is money and they have no conscience.

In a word: psychopaths.

[ReRe]

32. +1

(listening to the Stones/Brown Sugar)!

[florida08]

17. It's because they buy our government

to skew things their way while giving us the finger. It's because they get away with destroying the economy with no accountability. And it's because they exploit the poor here and other countries to have more when they already have the bulk. It's because they have destroyed our democracy and corrupted what's left of it. The most egregious of these is their whining about us not paying enough of their taxes when we can barely pay for food and shelter.

[ReRe]

33. Exactly!

It's the usury of the whole thing.

[lumberjack_jeff]

19. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

I'm indifferent to them. The economic system which creates uber-rich is ineffective at doing what it's supposed to do.

The mega rich are a symptom of a fucked up system, not a measure of success. Rework the system so that the benefits of a healthy economy provides maximum happiness to the general population.

[LittleGirl]

21. see that's the thing

A 10 yr employee gets a "get a better job" attitude and THAT IS IT right there.

That. "Get a better Job."

Fuck that. You see there, I did it all the way you (Rich and Powerful) said we had to do it.

Education, Degree, Skills and then we'll be rewarded. check, check, check.

crickets...

Me: Where's the reward?
They just keep taking it and taking it away, from all of us. And I'm sick of it.
It's no wonder people just get cannibalistic when the world is fucked up like that.

The system is fixed.

[yourout]

22. Hoarders.......of $$$.

[Rex]

23. I love the super rich! They are going to fill up Hell one day

while all us poor people zoom up into Heaven! Their tiny amount of time here will be nothing compared to the eternity of torture and agony that awaits them in Hell.

The Bible ROCKS!

[frwrfpos]

24. rec

[cer7711]

26. Isaac Asimov was once chased down by an outraged 1%-er . . .

Last edited Wed Jan 29, 2014, 11:28 AM - Edit history (1)

. . . and cornered in the bathroom after having just given a speech that offended Richie Rich in the late 70s. (Or possibly early 90s; memory is hazy on the exact year.)

"Hey!" the guy shouted. "I just heard your speech! What the hell is wrong with you?! Aren't you rich? That makes you one of us. You should be on our side! You're a traitor to your class."


Asimov replied with serene calm, as only a child of immigrant parents (he was too poor to be allowed to touch the pulp mags and paperbacks in his father's drugstore when growing up; the periodicals were for paying customers) MENSA member and Renaissance man who'd written a book in every single category of the Dewy Decimal System could. (All true; look it up).

Anyway, dear Isaac said: "I'm one of you? Oh, you mean I have money? True. That's where our similarities end. You see, unlike you, I have a conscience and care about the rest of humanity--you know, those people who will make the world you and I have to live in tomorrow? Would you care for a paper towel to sop up that drool?"

And Asimov, after drying his hands, stalked past this clown and exited the washroom.

He said the guy stood there sputtering and reeling but couldn't get out another word.

THAT'S how a decent, intelligent, talented and creative 1%-er handles a sociopathic plutocrat!

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

49. Gawd, I hope that's a true story!

Good ole Asimov.

[cer7711]

52. It Is! Asimov Recounts It . . .

. . . in one of his autobiographies. (Or was it a past interview?)

Thing is, I never forgot it after I read it.

[undeterred]

29. Read about the junkie screwing a whole country out of its natural resources wealth

DRC mining billionaire turns 29,900% profit on oil deal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101683832

[deathrind]

34. I have no problem with how money one has.

As long as they earned it honestly and paid the taxes due not by lumping millions of mortgages together and selling them under false pretenses.

[Skeeter Barnes]

35. The High Priests of our national religion, Capitalism.

And their most devoted followers are the leadership of both political parties in the US.

Thanks for the great OP, SomethingFishy. Best I've read on this forum in a good while.

[lonestarnot]

38. Because I don't like liars and thieves and the big I little you syndrome that possesses them.

They're always full of themselves and only they and their shit matters to them.

[Iggo]

43. They're assholes and they're takers and fuck them.

[marions ghost]

47. The rich

are destroying this country and everything it stands for. They are thieves and exploiters, completely corrupt.

Should we respect that?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

50. I went to graduate school at an Ivy League university after graduating from a

very ordinary college.

The super rich undergraduates I met there mostly convinced me that I was lucky not to have been born in the 0.1%.

Their parents neglected them and didn't seem to want to have much to do with them, the families were full of substance abuse and pedophilia and incest and other toxic relationships. Multiple divorces--parents married three to five times each--were common.

One young woman told how she had trouble learning to read and her parents were ready to put her into an institution for the mentally disabled, when one of the teachers noticed that she was always bumping into things. Lo and behold, she was legally blind.

That was the attitude--keep the kid out of the way.

I must add that not all of them were screwed up. Some were wonderful, unassuming people who were rather embarrassed by their family's wealth.

[Puzzledtraveller]

54. I could care less about the super rich

as far as any human emotion goes. I work for state government, Kentucky. Our pay increases have been suspended since before I began working here over 5 years ago. Governor Beshear announced we may get a 1% increase, as if that will do anything, it doesn't even make up what we have lost since the automatic pay increases were suspended. My beef is with my own Democrat Governor.

[B Calm]

58. So do you think it would be better if Kentucky had a republican

Governor? I would be thrilled to have your Governor over Mike Pence.

[Puzzledtraveller]

59. I do not recall implying that.

Bottome line, we are over worked and underpaid and I am caseworker who is doing Kynect applications all day plus SNAP. If Kentucky is a model of the ACA we are the ones making it possible.

[B Calm]

55. My old employer didn't have the money to give us a decent raise, but had the money

to purchase the Jacksonville Jajuars NFL football team. Not including his 3 yachts, numerous mansions, and his fleet of personal jets!

[Jamaal510]

60. I personally don't dislike (super) rich people;

I just dislike money hoarders. There are a ton of people in the media, government, celebrities, etc. who are part of the 1% who side with us when it comes to closing the income gap. These people like Buffet actually have made a plea for their taxes to go up, and other affluent people like Big Ed and Elizabeth Warren drive the RW crazy daily.
It's not a matter of (super) rich vs. poor; it's a matter of those of us who want everyone to have their basic needs met vs. those who prioritize life's luxuries.

[booley]

61. Because so many have all the solipsism of your average abuser

It's like if I rented you a room in my house for a price that practically paid off my mortgage… and then also abused you and made your life miserable.

I let you into my Home (which you unintentionally paid for) so you should be grateful and stop complaining about how I took the car you need for work and smashed it while driving drunk.

They are so self involved, they not only have no idea what harm they do to others when they keep taking everything they can, they actually think the pittance they give back is MORE.

Now to be fair, for many it's simple ignorance. They have no idea, especially if this is the life they have always known. Taking is normal for them. And so it can be corrected. (warren Buffet apparently became more concerned about those in lower tax brackets after he married his current wife who didn't' have these blinders on. And JK Rowling came from a background of financial hardship)

But for others, this is willful ignorance.

No wealth does not automatically make you a bad person.

But it sure does nothing to make you a good person.