Let's talk about RICH people

[L A Woman]

This is a topic of great interest to me in general, but the threads last week about the "rich" mountain climbers being stuck on the mountain and having to be rescued by taxpayers like us, etc. really got me thinking about what it means to be a liberal when it comes to money. Are we all socialists at heart? Why is there a tone of hostility toward people who have more money?

Let's say Oprah Winfrey (or any rich person) has one billion dollars. Let's say Oprah gives $500 million to better the lives of poor people. That leaves her with $500 million. And there are still PLENTY of poor people in the world. Does Oprah have an obligation to live a more average/middle class lifestyle and give more money away? Or is it OK for her to live a life of luxury while there are still hungry people?

I'm not really offering an opinion either way - I'm just curious about what DUers think about the rich and their responsibilities or if you think there should be no such thing as a rich person or if perhaps you think it's possible that we could ALL be rich.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

1. I Have No Problem With Anyone No Matter How Much Money They Have. Not My Business.

I can only hope that someday I finally figure out how to get rich myself.

But nah, I have no problem whatsoever with anybody in regards to how much money they have. They can have as much as they want. The only problems I have towards anyone in this sense, deals with how they treat others. I judge people on the merits of their actions, not their finances.

[The Straight Story]

27. Rich can be quite relative

not to mention, some people spend their life working and saving and end up with a lot, should they be disliked or have it taken it from them?

Many people in the US could be considered rich compared to people in Sudan, should we sell all and send them the money?

I agree with you on this - as long as their gains are not ill gotten, I don't care who is wealthy or how much they have.

[Atman]

48. You said a mouthful

My wife grew up in a three-family tenement in Lowell, MA. Her dad was a barber. She had to share a bed with her sister until she was in her teens, and they finally managed a move to better circumstances.

Me? I always felt I grew up in a modest existence. Family had a few acres of land. We had a pony. We summered on Lake Winnipesaukee in a small (28') cabin cruiser. My father built his own business and eventually upgraded to a 44' custom built sport fisherman. It all seemed perfectly normal to me, but she tells friends that I was "rich" growing up. Rich? I never felt myself "rich." Rich guys had mansions and drove German imports and had servants and...

It is all relative. There is always someone "richer" than you.

.

[Hamlette]

85. how very odd. . .

your line "had to share a bed with her sister until she was in her teens" struck me. I "had to" share a bed with my sis until I was 14. I didn't think a thing of it, until I read your post.

I certainly did not think we were poor (but the stories I've heard about my early life make it clear we didn't have much, and I saw my parents first home once and it was a little shocking). Could it be that everyone accepts "their way" as being the norm?

[notadmblnd]

173. There were four of us girls in one bed

and we'd complain to my parents about my sister Jo taking up too much space. All we were ever told was to "pinch her butt, she'll move."

[jannyk]

184. Same here..

there were 3 of us girls in one bedroom - though I did get my own single bed when #3 came along. My 2 sisters though shared the bed until I got married at 21. We never thought we were poor either - and actually - except for a couple rough spots when my dad's union was on strike - we weren't.

[Xenotime]

125. What about the neighbor who is suffering?

They can't make ends meet and living paycheck to paycheck while others around them prosper. Is this fair? Do they deserve to suffer?

[The Straight Story]

126. I don't think anyone deserves to suffer (except maybe...bush and crew) (nt)

[hack89]

190. Doesn't it depend on why they are not prospering?

I agree in a liberal social safety net for the old, young and the ill but feel no obligation for those who do not prosper due to their own poor choices. There is nothing wrong with personal responsibility.

[lastliberalintexas]

214. But WHY did they make a bad choice?

Did we, as a society, fail to provide them with the opportunity for an education to enable them to make good choices? Did we, as a society, fail to remove them from abusive, neglectful home situations, leaving them to become part of a cycle of violence/poverty/despair? Did we, as a society, put them into some situation in which they felt so incredibly desperate as to think that the bad choice was their only choice? (with this one, I'm specifically thinking of a parent who needs money for their child's health emergency and decides to deal drugs, or the elderly person who can't afford medical care so he robs a bank in order to go to prison- examples of true situations in which a "good" person who knew better made a "bad" choice out of desperation created by society) Did we, as a society, truly offer them anything more than platitudes about personal responsiblity?

Yes, there are some people out there who screw up time and again, even when they are handed the world on a silver platter. Does it really matter to you what they've done in the past if the question is whether they'll eat anything for the next 5 days?

So many people seem to buy into the right wing bullshit lie that we all have the same chances and opportunities in this world, so that people "deserve" it when bad things happen to them. A la Bush's college era comment that poor people are that way because they ar elazy. Surely it must be something that they did to deserve such a situation, right? If we only believe that people get what they deserve, and not what fate hands to them, then we can believe that we will always be ok because we're part of the good side. Denial must be a wonderful state in which to live for many. Because we can't bring ourselves to admit, but for the grace of god/fate/whatever, there go I.



Bullshit Randian Libertarian economic tripe that would have made Friedman tickled pink to see it espoused from the "left." :eyes:

(that last part was aimed at several posters, not just the one to whom I responded)

[Dude_CalmDown]

80. I just lose respect intellectually for people who need to horde money to be happy.

It's not hard to figure out that money does not bring happiness. I've barely had any and I know it's not even close to what would put a true smile on my face. Yes I love the engine in my car but I, like everyone else, would give any piece of material possession under my name to have whatever it is that truly puts the smile on my face. That's why I lose respect for those who hang on to money like it's true love - they need to get their shit together.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

84. You Shouldn't. It Isn't Any Of Your Business. It Also Isn't Your Right To Dictate To Others What

should or shouldn't make them happy. Happiness is relative. To me, happiness is simply having the ability to think. To others, happiness might be something completely different. It is up to each and every individual to define for themselves what happiness means to them and it isn't anyone else's business, least of all yours, what that turns out to be.

If some truly believe happiness is hording money than that is their right, every bit as much as it is yours to choose your own method of happiness. We might not agree with their opinion of what 'happiness' means and they might not agree with ours. But since it's a relative, subjective and personal opinion to begin with, it isn't any of our business either.

To each their own. In my opinion it shows a lack of spiritual awareness on your part to claim you lose respect for those hording money, as it shows a limited thought process along the lines of 'they don't believe the same things I do and don't view the world in the same ways I do, therefore I lose respect for them'. You have the right to think that way, but it isn't righteous to do so. We all have our own paths and our own desires; our own lessons and our own choices; our own understandings and our own individualities; and we all have our own definitions of what life means and what happiness means. It isn't honorable nor right to judge others for theirs, it is only wise to judge your own.

[fishwax]

89. where did he say anything about dictating anything

If some truly believe happiness is hording money than that is their right, every bit as much as it is yours to choose your own method of happiness. We might not agree with their opinion of what 'happiness' means and they might not agree with ours. But since it's a relative, subjective and personal opinion to begin with, it isn't any of our business either.

That seems true enough, but that doesn't mean we don't have the right to come to an individual judgment about the values and/or priorities thereby displayed.

You said the other poster demonstrates a lack of spiritual awareness because of how he formulates and evaluates intellectual respectability. And it seems to me that he has the same right to assess his respect in the same way you're saying others have the right to assess their own happiness. I don't see any fundamental difference between what you said about him and what he said about those who care only about money.

I have a few relatives who care about very little in life other than acquiring possessions. That I find them shallow is no impediment to their right to pursue happiness in their way.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

148. Huge Difference.

One is judgment of others while the other is judgment within ones personal self. There is a huge difference between those ideals.

And there are concepts in this world called learning and acquiring wisdom. It's called enlightenment. Though the poster can choose to judge however he or she likes, that doesn't mean that it isn't the right thing to do to approach somebody and attempt to offer them deeper wisdom and understanding than they currently have attained. That's what I set out to do, by explaining in a wise sense what a more enlightened position might be. It's up to anyone whether or not they choose to use such enlightened advice when it comes their way. But there is nothing wrong with offering such wisdom. If the concept of the levels had inherent in it some rule that everyone can think whatever they want and no one perception can be wiser than another, such as you claiming that my attempt at giving awareness to the unfairness of the poster's judgment is equal to the judgment itself, than nothing would ever progress and there would be no need ever for further learning.

But that's not reality. In reality, every single one of us has many things to learn and have many perceptions that in fact are unwise in their premise and in need of further enlightenment. We should all be welcome and open minded to receiving such wisdom when it comes our way, and should always look into such wisdom with deep self inflection in an attempt to further ourselves down the path to awareness and righteousness.

So no, the judgments are not the same. One was limited in its understanding, and the other was enlightened and wise.

[fishwax]

171. as much as I appreciate your willingness to offer your wisdom

you still haven't really differentiated the two situations.

One is judgment of others while the other is judgment within ones personal self. There is a huge difference between those ideals.
Okay, so which is which? Because I saw him judging others and I saw you judging him. There isn't anything wrong with offering one's wisdom, yours or his--but there is something intellectually dishonest about responding to his post as if he were unfairly dictating other people's behavior, when that isn't at all the case--anymore than your post was an attempt to dictate his.

such as you claiming that my attempt at giving awareness to the unfairness of the poster's judgment is equal to the judgment itself, than nothing would ever progress and there would be no need ever for further learning.
I didn't claim that your "giving awareness" was equal to the judgment itself, I pointed out that your "giving awareness" relies on the same judgment mechanism that his post did--a perception that some "other" lacks awareness. He thinks people who are only interested in hording money lack awareness, and you think he lacks awareness.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

207. But He's Wrong And I'm Right.

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[marions ghost]

107. LOL

you're gonna have a hard time preaching "spiritual awareness" and acceptance of the rich criminals in this country. If we lived in a country not sinking from greed and corruption you might have a leg to stand on. It's importan to ask ask how a person got rich and what they do with their money. It does matter. Scratch the surface of a lot of rich people and you find they use every loophole, scam and trick in the book to avoid paying their fair share. They support Republican values. What more is there to say. The rich do not have a benign or neutral effect on the rest of us.

[Boogie]

113. You are wrong on so many levels. We are all a part of a global community.

If somebody is hording riches to the detriment of somebody else's well being then it damn sure is EVERYBODY's business. Through your logic the American revolution should never have happened. I mean, hey, it's none of our business how much money King George III has and it's his right to do with it what he wishes, right? Bullshit. People with your MIND set found themselves on the wrong end of a very sharp blade during the French Revolution. Your argument is infantile, selfish and ill-informed.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

144. No I'm Not. You Just Lack The Level Of Understanding Necessary To Realize I'm Right.

[Boogie]

154. Haha! :"I'm right because I say that I'm right."

Sounds an awful lot like "Let them eat cake."

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

208. Nope.

I'm right because in reality I'm right. Not because I say I'm right.

You can say you're right too if ya want, but that would be nothing more than wishful thinking; as it would carry no legitimacy in reality. Sometimes, someone can be right in the realm of reality while someone else can be wrong. In this case, reality is on my side. Sorry pal LOL

[Thothmes]

218. King George III

I think the issue was not with how much money King George had, rather how much of our money the British Parliament was trying to extract.

[dogday]

119. It is if you believe they have received their "ill gotten gains"

by shitting on other people, and I can tell you that a lot of them have, down to the small business owner. Many of these rich people have done something wrong to the poor at one point in their lives to get more money... The ultra rich are still doing it, why should we think different?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

145. Not Talking About Whether They Shit On Other People. That Wasn't A Parameter.

Just talking about rich within its own terms and boundaries, what I stated is spot on. Now of course, shitting on other people or treating others poorly for selfish reasons is wrong. But I got news for ya: Non-rich people do that as much as rich people do. That's just merely one's character. But to me, that's a separate discussion. I don't think anyone should sit on anyone and most definitely shouldn't abuse others for their own gains. But that's not what I'm talking about here. I'm just talking about the concept of wanting to amass money due to their belief that doing so is the key to their happiness. And within those terms and those boundaries without any other assumptions, that is their right to do so and isn't really our right to tell them that they are fools for thinking that's what happiness is. That was my only point: That each one of us has our own right to determine for ourselves what we consider happiness to be, and it isn't up to anyone else to tell us that our perception of it is or isn't right or not.

[dogday]

211. I was talking about how Rich will deprive the poor

of their money if it gets them more... They are in positions everyday... One in particular is Prison Industries stock... Making money off the misfortune of the poor... I rest my case...

[barb162]

90. It may have nothing to do with "happy" but rather a feeling of safety

Some people don't feel comfortable without a big safety net because lots of negative things can happen financially

[Common Sense Party]

98. Well, there's a HUGE difference between "hording money

to be happy" and trying to amass wealth for an unpredictable future.

I've never known anyone in the first category, so I can't speak to how many people there may be like that.

But I've known, and helped, many in the second category as they sacrificed and set goals and saved and took prudent risks to try to grow their money and assets, because you just don't know what will happen 15, 20, 30 years down the road. Long-term disability, major medical expenses, taking care of extended family members, unexpected death of a spouse...those are all things that nobody wants to experience, yet many do. It's good to be prepared, if one has the ability.

No, money does not bring happiness, and I think most people (excluding the odd Paris Hiltons of the world) understand that.

But money CAN bring some measure of security and a sense of control in a seemingly out-of-control world.

[koopie57]

106. On the surface I agree with you

but in all actuality, a person of means has the luxery of health care, healthy food, a safe and reliable car, knowing they will have a roof over their head, and many other things that let them sleep more easily. They also might have many extra troubles, but that is due to decisions they make, not the amount of money they have.

I grew up poor and today, when I'm cold and after much thought when I decide to turn the heat up a degree, it still amazes me.

Money isn't necessary to survive and to enjoy life, but it does make things easier. I do tend to save and hang on to my money, cuz I know it is scary when I don't know how I will pay this bill or that, or what will happen if my kids become sick. But that is just how I think and what works for me.

[Xenotime]

123. What's the difference between rich and wealthy?

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

149. Who Gives A Shit?

:shrug:

[JerseygirlCT]

130. I agree. I do think we ALL have an obligation to give back, to

help others. And I will admit to some frustration with people, especially those who are financially secure, who have no sense of philanthropy -- either on a formal level, or a private one. They've been ill-taught, IMO.

But it's not mine to judge. And as others have pointed out, "rich" is a very subjective term. What it takes to feel secure will differ wildly from person to person. And it's always easier to spend other people's money!

As with so much else, we're better off examining what we can do and do do, than what others are giving and doing.

[Nimrod2005]

2. She can do whatever she likes with her money, all I ask is she pays her taxes

and other obligations required by law...etc. What she does with her money is her business and it is ok with me.

[Bill McBlueState]

3. and that the tax rates be fair

The wealthy need to pay their debt to the society that makes their wealth possible. The tax code should reflect this.

[Nimrod2005]

6. My personal opinion is that taxes do not go over 40%.

[Bill McBlueState]

21. where do you get that number?

I don't know enough about the economy to come up with a precise cap. But if some income needs to be taxed at 41% in order to provide universal health insurance, I'd be okay with that.

[Nimrod2005]

108. Just my perosnal experiences with taxes and other economic issues

40% at the top is more than enough to handle all our needs.

[hfojvt]

133. my qualm is that many of those people at the top

are not earning as much as they are taking. 70% at the top is a disincentive to take more. 40% is much less of a disincentive. I do not think it is an accident that CEO salaries have sky-rocketed since Reagan cut the top rates from 70% to below 40%. It's simple math. The more they take, the less there is for the rest of us.

[Auggie]

15. Exactly. Businesses too. These trillions of dollars we spend on defense

protects free enterprise that enables the rich to get that way and stay that way. Give something back.

[Common Sense Party]

99. Define "fair." A few decades back, the top marginal tax rate was

90%.

Now it's 35%.

Where is "fair"?

[blues90]

4. A rich person could be one who loves life .

I do feel there are many people who do make far too much money for what they do such as actors , sports figures .

I don't feel it's a rich persons responsibilty to help the poor .

If I were wealthy I would help all that I could and live a simple life . But that's just me .

I don't feel it's possible for everyone to be rich .

[Warpy]

5. Most people don't define "rich" very well.

To people making $30K a year (or less), rich is as little as $100K/year, an amount that is barely middle class in today's dollars.

Others think that a million dollars in assets will make one rich. The truth there is that it will allow one to retire in a trailer park in Florida and be reasonably comfortable (but worried about storms).

The admission fee to get into the exclusive clubs of the truly rich is a bare minimum of $10,000,000. Consider that some of those people hold TEN TIMES THAT. That's is what is RICH is, folks, not the docs and lawyers with big houses and big mortgages.

When one realizes how obscenely rich the rich have become while the rest of us have slowly sunk into desperation, that's when the resentment comes in. It is entirely justified, IMO, as the root cause of poverty is wealth concentration.

As for the rich themselves, I've known a few socially. They are affable but clueless, caring very much for the orderly comfort of their own situations and uncurious about everyone else's. They are hard to dislike but easy to despise.

[OPERATIONMINDCRIME]

9. Well, It's Definitely Subjective.

To me, when I talk of desiring to be rich, I'd say I'd required a salary of about 400-500k a year.

As far as lump sum, probably about 7 mil or so.

[sandnsea]

13. $166,000 = Top Five Percent

You can use whatever word you want to describe being in the top 5% of income earners - any word EXCEPT middle income and most certainly not BARELY middle income. God fucking damned the top of the heap had better fucking wake up and realize that if it's tough for them, how in the HELL do you think the rest of us are surviving.

http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/histinc/h01ar.html

[Karenina]

25. These threads always amuse me

insofar as Americans' incredible naivete about the realities of wealth is revealed. IF YOU ARE DEPENDENT ON A SALARY, be it 30k or 200k, to maintain your lifestyle, YOU ARE NOT WEALTHY. That 166k is considered "top 5%" should be a HUGE red flag to anyone in touch with the dynamics of wealth and power.

[HappyWeasel]

29. Then again, professional blondes have a salary...just a very big one.

The local independent carpet cleaner is independent, just has a really slow business.

[Nederland]

58. That makes no sense

Doesn't it really depend on what type of lifestyle you are "maintaining"? Seriously, it takes Elton John (a notoriously extravagant spender) a lot more money to "maintain" his lifestyle than it does for me to maintain mine...

[Karenina]

105. Elton is NOT dependent on a salary.

[Nederland]

111. Missing the Point

My point was that you don't seem to distinguish between maintaining an extravagant lifestyle and a modest one.

[Karenina]

114. And you seem to miss mine. Two words:

Passive income.

[Nederland]

117. You completely lost me

...and I think it was around the point where you made the ridiculous claim that someone making 200k a year wasn't wealthy.

By your reasoning, a person making 200k a year who spends it all every year (to maintain their "lifestyle") isn't rich, but a person who saves and invests half of that money for ten years (thereby acquiring $1+ million dollars in assets that generate "passive income") is. See how silly that is? You are basically endorsing the consumerism that is the root cause of many of our problems.

[Karenina]

122. The only silly thing

is that having processed my point well enough to illustate it, comprehension still eludes you. :shrug: Where you get the bit about "endorsing consumerism" is beyond me.

[Nederland]

212. Nice try

I noticed that you simply avoided my example. Let me give it again. You got two people that live in the same place and make the same salary:

1) Person A makes 200k a year, but lives very modestly and saves 100k a year.
2) Person B makes 200k a year, but lives extravagantly and spends it all every year.

Now, after 10 years Person A will have accumulated $1+ million dollars in assets that generates significant passive investment income. According to your definition, Person A is rich and worthy of some disdain, but Person B is not. Why? Shouldn't we, as a society, encourage the type of behavior the Person A engages in, not Person B?

[Karenina]

215. Hä?

I made no mention of disdain and have NO IDEA where you got that idea. :shrug: I said IF YOU ARE DEPENDENT ON A SALARY, YOU ARE NOT RICH. Although wealthy is probably a better term. Shaq is rich. The guy who signs his checks is wealthy. If Shaq is gets ill, has catastropic medical bills, has not taken proper care of his assets etc, he will NOT be rich for long. The club owner, however, who has a steady stream of income from his investments will not face the same fate under the same circumstances. What's so hard to get?

Elton John DOES NOT WORK FOR A LIVING. His publishing royalties generate much more income than year-round tours ever could.

[JacksonWest]

121. Winner winner chicken dinner.

Rich is just a term used by poor people.

[smirkymonkey]

209. Agree completely.

If you have to work to make a living, you are not rich. Many of the "Nouveau Riche" - those taking in a huge salary, yet accumulating massive amounts of debt (in order to maintain a lifestyle that they need in order to convince other people that they are rich) are getting in way over their heads in order to keep up with the Old Money "Joneses".

I know a lot of people who define themselves as "rich" who are barely liquid.

[hfojvt]

137. barely middle class

$100,000 is more than about 90% of the rest of this country. As a single guy with a 1200 square foot house on a double lot, two bathrooms, two bedrooms, two trek bicycles, two laptops, and 3 dogs I think I have a fair amount of superfluity and I have never made more than $25,000 a year.

It does depend where you live though. In a major urban area $100,000 a year could easily be sucked away on standard housing expenses.

Shoot. With a million dollars I could put siding on this house, build a garage and a driveway, buy a car and still have $900,000 left over. If I spend that at the rate of $25,000 a year by living large (my income is $10,000 a year now) it would last 36 years, but that is assuming no interest income. 3% interest on $900,000 is $27,000 a year. Considering that no FICA taxes are paid on interest income, that's a working equivalent of $29,000 a year. So, yeah, making that kind of money without working would definitely make somebody rich. It's called being in the top 20% of either assets or income. I am not sure where the asset cut-off is, but for household income in the US it's $90,000. Although from DU discussions I wonder how many of those over $90,000 are not so rich because they live in a major urban area where housing costs are rifu$%indiculous.

[Warren DeMontague]

7. I'd like to see society take care of its obligations. Infrastructure, a SPHC system

a decent social safety net. I actually think these things could be accomplished without tax increases, if we would stop pissing away more than half our discretionary budget a year on a massively bloated Military Industrial complex, along with expensive, idiotic boondoggles like the drug war or Alberto Gonzales's war on consenting adult smut...

Once the taxes are paid and the community responsibilities are met, I have no problem with people being rich, wanting to be rich, making money, enjoying the money they make, etc. etc. I don't believe wealth should be redistributed just because some college students with Che Posters think it should.

[jhrobbins]

8. AN interesting Query, LA Woman. First, I don't think that Oprah

has an 'abligation' to give away more money - it is up to her and her own sense of morality. Jesus did say that there would be poor always. (Just a tidbit for the religious in here). I don't hate rich people because at one point in my life, I was one of those folks, but because of a number of events in my life, that is no longer the case. ( I drove my family's Rolls Royce my junior year at college). And many of my family members are still very wealthy (VERY). And I don't think that they are obligated to pass it to me or anyone else if they choose not to. It's a complicated question, but one that I certainly ponder on occasion.

[Lars39]

10. Thinking that there will always be poor people among us is the biggest

excuse for the wealthy and/or religious to do nothing about it. I find that immoral.

[jhrobbins]

16. Perhaps, but I also don't find that supposition and then charity

(or whatever you want to deem it) to be mutually exclusive either. I know a number of very wealthy people and they do a great deal of philanthropy. So it doesn't necessarily follow that believeing that poor people will always be on this planet supplant the notion of helping one another and that is not what my friends and family believe either.

Capitalism sorta reminds me of that quote by CHurchill,
'It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.' It isn't ideal, but what is? What shall we replace it with?

[cyborg_jim]

17. There always will be.

It is necessary to drive the economy - it is an unfortunate fact.

The goal should be to ensure that nobody is so poor that they suffer for it. This is certainly achievable.

[blonndee]

62. So do I.

It's very conducive to reich-wing talking points. I personally find it immoral to be obscenely rich, no matter how hard one may have worked to "earn" such wealth. Certainly hard work and ingenuity should be rewarded; however, why is it that celebrity "work" is considered to be more valuable than cleaning the filthy toilets of the obscenely wealthy, or building their houses, for example?

[rockymountaindem]

75. This might sound like a stupid interjection to some

but one of my favorite parts of the Bible is where it says that there will always be poor people, therefore we must always be ready to help them.

[Bill McBlueState]

20. "Jesus did say that there would be poor always."

If someone's religion allows him to be more comfortable with other people living in poverty, maybe he should be persuaded to abandon his religion -- or at least that particular aspect of it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

26. That statement has been taken out of context more often than any other

except possibly the prohibition on homosexuality in Leviticus.

The context is that a woman comes into a room where Jesus and the disciples are and anoints him with fine perfumed oils. The disciples protest that she should have used the money to give to the poor, but Jesus says, "The poor you always have with you," and since this is just before the crucifixion, he goes on to tell them that she is in effect anointing him for burial.

The message is NOT "There are always poor people, so it doesn't matter whether you help them or not." It's "Don't use the poor as a convenient excuse for not doing something or liking something when you haven't lifted a finger for them before."

[Bill McBlueState]

31. good, I was hoping someone could provide the context

I suspected it wasn't an excuse for ignoring the poor. It's unfortunate that it can be so easily presented that way.

[jberryhill]

216. Actually, it was a bit more pointed than that...

...the comment was personally directed at Judas.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

34. See my post #26

for an explanation of "the poor you always have with you."

[Bronyraurus]

11. This will be unpopular...

But I think that if a wealthy person made his money honestly, he has no responsibility to anyone else aside from the taxes that he has paid on it. If that means that Bill Gates and Warren Buffet want to give billions to better the world, that's great. If that means that someone else wants a fleet of helicopters, a castle in East Hampton, and a string of unfulfilling marriages to dingbat showgirls, God bless him.

[jilln]

37. How do you become a billionaire honestly?

I'm sure it can be done, but most of them make it off the backs of others, who are not nearly as well paid.

[GreenPartyVoter]

39. Indeed

[NotGivingUp]

42. exactly. eom

[Bronyraurus]

52. "Off the backs of workers"

If by "off the backs of workers" means "by employing people," then I would say that that's not only honest, but a public service in giving people jobs. Even if the head of the company makes 2000x more than the guy who sweeps the factory floor, so what?

Take Bill Gates. Of course, he's ruthless with his competition. That's kind of his job. He has also employed millions over the years, paid billions into the treasury, and pushed the limits of technology beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

Ditto Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs, Ross Perot, the Waltons (ooooooh! The Waltons!), etc...

[jilln]

57. I meant more by exploitation

like using sweatshops to produce stuff.

But your examples could still work for my point. The Waltons for example are well known for exploitation. How many things do Bill Gates and the others have manufactured in third-world countries, how many tax havens do they use and how much tax money have they used to make themselves richer?

And 2000x what any of their workers make is just obscene.

[Bronyraurus]

64. Anything that's not illegal is fine with me

And as for the Waltons, I don't buy the general anti-Walmart sentiment among the left. I read an interesting article in the New Yorker last year that essentially argued that Walmart treats and rewards its workers about as well or often better than other stores of its kind. I wish I had saved it or could find it. In other words, the Wal-Mart craze is more a little bit of scapegoating than a substantive criticism of one company that screws people more than the others. If you don't accept their terms of employment, then don't work for them.

[jilln]

153. a race to the bottom, eh?

WalMart puts smaller stores out of business, making it the ONLY place to work in smaller towns. There's illegal and there's immoral, and the two are often very different.

Do you really think it's OK to have more money than some coutries, more than you could POSSIBLY spend in a lifetime, and yet have workers who are below the poverty line and on welfare? Are you OK with having to pay taxes to subsidize WalMart workers because WalMart is too greedy to pay them a living wage? And then we're supposed to fall all over ourselves in gratitude when WalMart does something charitable? Better would be to stop CREATING charity cases in the first place.

[Bronyraurus]

164. Yes.

[jilln]

186. Then there's not much to say to that, except it's sad

people accept such low standards.

[Hippo_Tron]

159. IMO, there should be standards and sweatshops breach ethical guidelines

And personally I wish we would refuse to trade with any country that doesn't have reasonable labor standards.

You can still get rich by not exploiting workers.

[mitchum]

63. Geez! Why didn't you just say...

No poor man has ever given me a job"?
Ughh...

[Bronyraurus]

65. What do you mean?

[mitchum]

67. Oh, I think you know what I mean...

yes, indeed

[Bronyraurus]

70. Buddy, I have no idea.

No poor person has ever given me a job? No poor person has ever given me a job. What's that got to do with anything?

[mitchum]

72. That's the traditional way the talking point is phrased

However, I do applaud your variation on the theme

[Bronyraurus]

76. What are you yammering about?

If by "talking point" you mean the opinion that businesses create jobs, then that's not really a talking point so much as it is an indelible fact of life. If you want to live with your head up your butt, I suppose that's your business, but I doubt you can refute what I wrote.

And that cute little debate tactic of accusing someone of mouthing a preformed "talking point" is as lame as it gets.

[mitchum]

82. Oh, I don't think I'm the one with my head up someone's butt

[Bronyraurus]

83. Well you're a funny man

Are you going to actually say anything worthwhile, or are you going to just hurl meaningless innuendo at me?

[MadHound]

131. There is a huge difference between employing people, giving the well paying jobs

And exploiting workers worldwide, employing them at below poverty level wages, all so that you can get another million in profit.

Very, very few of the rich and wealthy in this country get where they're at without committing some sort of crime, be it legal or moral. And then, once they are at that level of wealth, they go ahead to further break the law and exploit the society and nature.

For example, you speak of the Waltons. I used to live next door to some the Walton spawn, the Lorries. They have a large estate on what was formerly the outskirts of Columbia Missouri. When the population growth of the town finally started putting pressure on the road system, the city, rather than doing what they normally would do, that is widen the main artery than ran in front of the Lorries place through, bowed to the immense pressure that the Lorries wield in town. Instead of seizing their land via eminent domain and widening the road, the economically and ecologically sound practice to do, instead bulldozed a whole new five lane artery through the edge of a wilderness area, creating a whole new artery. They also dead ended the previous arter that the Lorries continue to live on, making their domicile nice and peaceful. We the taxpayers got to pay for this, both through the money wasted and the enviroment trashed.

There are millions of ways that the rich bend and break the law. From tax havens in the Bahamas to undue influence they exert, to the conditions that they subject their employees to. Sam Walton made his billions through violating the spirit of the monopoly law, creating a vertical monopoly rather than a horizontal one. In the process he and his heirs have trampled the dreams, desires, laws, and bodies of untold numbers of people into the dust. And now that they have acquired this wealth and undue influence, they are able to buy their continued dominance. Whenever any law maker dares to bring up the notion of specifically outlawing vertical monopolies, the wrath of the Walton spawn descends, either buying them off or breaking them.

Very, very few of the wealthy don't engage in this sort practice. Even those who receive massive riches out of the blue generally tend to exploit the enviroment with their new found wealth. They load up on large cars, boats and other gas guzzling toy to spew ever more pollution into the atmosphere, thus exposing us all to the increased perils of climate change all for their own selfish pleasure.

Frankly, if you would do an honest, all inclusive comparison between what the rich have cost our society and our enviroment as oppossed to whatever they have given back to the society, I think that you would find that the rich actually take much more than they actually give back.

[Bronyraurus]

155. I doubt much of what you've written

Do you have any info to back up these claims specifically:

"Very, very few of the rich and wealthy in this country get where they're at without committing some sort of crime, be it legal or moral."

And who is to judge moral crime?

"In the process he and his heirs have trampled the dreams, desires, laws, and bodies of untold numbers of people into the dust."

That's a cute rhetorical flourish, but it doesn't sound true. Bodies? Sam Walton has had people killed? Business is tough, no one doubts that, but being a tough businessman isn't morally or legally wrong.

"Very, very few of the wealthy don't engage in this sort practice."

Like how many? Or is that just a guess, based upon no information or knowledge whatsoever?

[MadHound]

161. Sure, I've got all of history to back my claims up

Go do some digging into the history of the rich, how they got where they are, the laws they broke along the way. Everything from petty theft to murder. Sorry, but this forum is not the place to give a full and complete bibliography of what I've read, but the record is out there, and I would suggest that you go down to the library and start looking. A good place to start with would be Howard Zinn's " A People's History of the United States". You can go from there. I'm not going to spoon feed it to you, if you are truly interesed in this topic, then it is incumbent upon you to educate yourself.

As far as the Walton spawn goes, my knowledge comes from both reading and personal knowledge. I used to live in a town, Columbia Missouri, that contained two branches of that family, the Lorries and Kronkes. Plenty of the dark side of how they, and Wal Mart operates is common knowledge throughout the town. I mentioned one example above, do I really need to go into the many instances of lawbreaking, both major and minor, that these two families have gotten away with? The DUIs, ecological laws(storm water run off, hazardous waste disposal, etc.) If you wish, go to the web site of the Columbia Daily Tribune and do a little digging through the archives. You'll find plenty.

As far as their cutthroat business practices, there are many books out there detailing WalMart's illegalities and immoralities when it comes to doing business. Everything from use of slave labor, forced, unpaid overtime work, substandard pay( requiring we the people to pick up the shortfall in terms of foodstamps, etc.). and the devestating effects that WalMart has on small towns throughout the country. Much of this has been documented in newspapers around the country and world, and there are a great many books concerning this subject. I suggest again that you go read them. A good one to start with is "How Wal-Mart is Destroying America and The World and What You Can Do About It" by Bill Quinn

You think that I don't speak the truth then? Then prove me wrong. I've given you places to start, information to find, the rest is up to you. Go do your research, as I've done mine, and then come back and tell me that I'm wrong. I'll be waiting. Oh, and since I've given you some sources, please do the same for me.

[Bronyraurus]

165. I've read Zinn

And I'll concede the Waltons to you, up to a point. Who knows how many roads have been diverted from their third cousins' estates?

But you can't offer any hard evidence that speaks to the number or percentage of the wealthy that have committed crimes. Or can you? It's a positive charge you're making, and if you can't back it up, the charge fails.

[MadHound]

167. Like I said, I'm not going to spoon feed this to you, you've got to get up off your ass

And do your own research if you're so interested in this. The material is out there and waiting for you, if you would bother to schlup down to the library.

History is full of the criminal rich in this country and others. Hell go read about Hearst, the Vanderbilts, Morgans, Rockefellers, etc. etc. Even Gates isn't immune, since he himself ripped off his OS from Apple way back when.

Why is this so hard for you to accept? Frankly for most people it is common knowledge, stuff that is taught in high school and college. This isn't revisionist history, simply the truth. I would suggest that you go find out for yourself. Go look into Standard Oil, or the Tea Pot Dome scandal. Look up the subject of industrial espionage. Price fixing, worker exploitation, hell go read about Karen Silkwood, there's a fine corporate murder.

I'm not going to spoon feed this to you friend, it would take time that I simply don't have. I've given you some leads, go do the follow up yourself OK.

[Bronyraurus]

168. You're talking about 19th century robber barons

I'm talking about your average, everyday millionaire in today's America. You cannot back up your statement. You have failed! Good day sir!

[MadHound]

179. LOL, rather quick on the trigger there slick

Where in the hell do you thing a large part, if not a majority, of today's millionaires get their money. *Gasp* could it be that it is inherited from those 19th century robber barons? Wow, what a concept.

Let's look at a few shall we. The Rockefellers, the beneficiaries of their great grandfather's monpolistic practices, are still a force in our government. Same with the Tafts in Ohio. Let's look at the Kennedys, who not only made their fortune from bootlegging and organized crime connections, had a son of their go on and kill an innocent young woman in a drunk driving accident. And gee, let's look at the Bushes, who made their money this century from financing Hitler and the Nazis. And I've already listed, and you've conceded to, the crimes of the Walton family. And what about Gates, what, no rebuttal for him?

And as I said earlier, even if a person suddenly becomes wealthy through fortune such as the lottery, these people tend to go on and pollute the earth with their many, many energy sucking toys. In addition, their new found wealth, like any other wealth, will and has gotten them out of jams that persons of more modest means would go to jail for. Our justice system make express the sentiment of equal justice for all, but in practice the more money that you have, the more "equal" your personal justice will be. One has but to look at professional athletes, or various entertainers to see this in action.

You seem to wish to deny reality, why is that? I've given you places to start, and a multitude of examples, none of which you have refuted. I think that you're being a bit over-eager to declare this discussion over. Perhaps you should take the time to go do some research and then get back to me.

[Bronyraurus]

188. Perhaps I'll just defeat you again!

I've already posted an article stating that 80% of American millionaires made their money in their lifetime, which is to say that their parents weren't millionaires.

You list a bunch of other robber barons... what else...

You imply that people can only become rich by winning the lottery or being entertainers...

You introduce a non-sequitur about Hummers...

Nope, not much there. Again, the vast majority of millionaires made their money in their lifetimes. Some didn't.

You are vanquished!

[MadHound]

196. Wow, just Wow

First of all, the fact that you bring the notion that our discussion is some sort of combat to be won or lost says a lot about yourself, and your own personal morality. This is a discussion friend, not combat.

Second, while you have referenced an article stating that today's millionaires made their own wealth, does that really have any impact on my original point, that the wealthy have, to an overwhelming degree, perpetrated illegal and immoral acts in their pursuit of their lucre? In fact I would venture to say that those who are desperate to acquire such wealth are perfectly willing to perform acts of dubious legal or ethical value. In fact the sampling I gave of twentieth century wealth all did just that. Or do you consider Bush, Cheney, Gates, et al to be fine, ethical, upstanding citizens.

As far as the lottery and entertainment goes, I was simply providing an example of those who acquire wealth without using the normal channels to get it, thus circumventing their need to use illegalities and immoralities to acquire wealth. But apparently this point went right over your head, doing a double back flip along the way. Please, read for comprehension OK.

Oh, and I didn't mention Hummers specifically anywhere. But since you brought them up, they do indeed consume an excessive amount of oil, while spewing an excessive amount of pollution. Frankly immoral in my opinion, and in the eyes of most other people. After all, we are fighting a war for oil right now. That's one sure fire slogan, War to Fuel the Hummers:eyes:

Now then, if you continue to insist on making this into a combat rather than a discussion, I must insist that you do as I've done throughout, cite sources, books, links, etc. Otherwise all you are doing is blowing hot air with nothing to back it up with. Oh, and please keep on topic, OK.

[cyborg_jim]

136. I disagree

and pushed the limits of technology beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

Really, he hasn't. Not even close.

MS has a history of swallowing smaller companies, taking their products, and integrating them into MS world, taking other's innovations and passing them off as their own and generally acting in a predatory manner.

If you want to talk about big companies that have pushed technology then you want to be thinking IBM - about 100x more important in their heyday than MS will ever be for pushing technology forward.

[Bronyraurus]

156. Hey, I can dig IBM too

But even when Microsoft swallowed, borrowed, bought, etc... different technologies, they still pushed those technologies under their own name, no?

[cyborg_jim]

177. That's the entire point

They may be adept at branding, marketing and labelling but the relationship you implied that the amount of money MS has made is directly proportional to the advancements in technology they have enabled.

Never forget that the goal of profit driven companies is profit - the basic point that people seem to forget with capitalism is that the product/service is merely a means to an end. R&D is expensive. MS has mostly stagnated the computer industry rather than cause a flourish of advancement.

The capital reward MS has got has mostly been from playing the capitalist game. The simple fact is that when you get to a certain mass it's just a lot easier to do that then to try and compete 'honestly'.

[Bronyraurus]

180. I didn't imply any such proportional relationship

And I'm not enough of a techie to refute what you're saying. You've won this round, Cyborg!

But generally speaking, capitalism, though allowing people to make money for themselves, encourages innovation and better, more varied products. I like that.

[cyborg_jim]

183. Not really

That only works in competitive environments.

Innovation is expensive and pointless if you own the market - MS is proof positive of that, hell, it's easy to see that the most productive areas of MS are the one's where they DON'T own the market and those where they do are where they drag their heels.

You can't apply a generalisation to a specific instance where it doesn't hold!

As ever one cannot forget that the product/service is a means to an end, not the end in itself. As such innovation, improvement and variation are side effects and can easily evaporate in the wrong environment.

Capitalism is more than capable of being destructive as well as constructive. It is unwise to pretend otherwise.

[Bronyraurus]

189. If MS is such a monopoly

the why is Apple still a viable force? My parents don't buy anything else. They're still the standard for artists, musicians, and academics. And they dealt with the competition by creating the iPod and many offshoots, enjoying vast success.

[cyborg_jim]

192. That does not prevent MS from being a monopoly

Not to mention you are conflating different industries when you bring hardware into the discussion. MS certainly has no sort of dominance in any of its hardware products. You will find however that Windows users outstrip Mac OS users by an absolutely massive margin.

That Apple still exists is neither here nor there. MS has the properties of a monopoly. In practise monopoly doesn't mean that the company is the only one operating.

[Bronyraurus]

193. Sure, but there are plenty of Apple users

not to mention Linux or Unix or whatever it's called these days. If you don't want a PC, you can buy an Apple and basically do everything you want to do with it, and in many arenas, do them much better. I personally use both of them.

[cyborg_jim]

205. Yes the number of Apple users is significantly greater than zero

But as a proportion of the total they are tiny.

This ain't an argument about quality or alternatives - the simple fact is that Windows is massively dominant in the home market.

Now if you want to talk about servers then *nix solutions come into their own - not surprisingly because they are simply better than the Windows equivalents and there is no sense in which server admins need to care about the Windows software set because playing games ain't a priority. And frankly if you're not playing games you probably don't absolutely need Windows.

But again all that is irrelevant to the nature of the beast being discussed here.

[Nederland]

59. By coercing no one

So long as every dime you've got was given to you freely by people looking to buy your product or your services, you've earned your money honestly. In the case of Bill Gates, it just so happened that he had products that billions of people wanted. Good for him.

[Porcupine]

100. Starvation, homelessness.... that's coercion.

The wealthy give you the choice to work or starve. Work or freeze. Always on their terms. Take a good look at your paycheck and you will notice a list of taxes applied to it.

When the wealthy sell an asset they pay a single tax; maybe. Many pay no taxes at all.

[Nederland]

116. Wrong

The wealthy don't give you a choice between working and starving, reality does. The reality of life is that it requires food, clothing and shelter to continue, and those things are the products of work.

[Bronyraurus]

157. No

Life gives you the option to work or starve. And not even that. You don't have to starve if you don't want to.

[RB TexLa]

45. Agreed

[JanMichael]

74. "Honestly" according to whom?

There in lies the greatest divide in humanity. If the environment to allegedly grow wealth is created by those with wealth and power what does that mean to the rest i.e. everybody else? Which is 98% of the rest of the planet?

If we want to acknowledge that the playing grounds are man made (which they are undoubtedly are) then why not accept that they can and should be changed to benefit all?

[Bronyraurus]

158. I doubt that the playing ground is man-made

Much of what contributes to the playing ground is ingrained in human nature: competitiveness, ambition, cleverness, etc... What do you have in mind?

[demgurl]

12. I can only speak for myself and the way I try to live.

I believe that if you are lucky enough to have an abundance of anything then it is incumbent on you to help those that have less than you. We are not wealthy by any means but I know how to shop and I do share the 'wealth' with people I know who can use it. I do that through the food bank, friends and family as well as the kids at my children's school.

I believe with any sort of 'wealth' comes responsibility. That is a responsibility to help others, not to boast, judge or somehow put these people down.

A couple of weeks ago a student asked me about people on sidewalks begging for money and if I thought most of them were scamming. I told him the way I live my life is believing that everyone is honest. I told him that when I look in the mirror I must be proud of the person who stares back and know that they do the right thing. I went on to explain that if someone 'dupes' me that it is not a reflection on me as much as on them and that is something they must find a way to live with. I will not have scammers take away my desire to help people and do good. I do what I must and live with that as they must live with what they do.

Do I think we all should live this way? It might make the world a better place but I had a long journey before I arrived at this place in time. I remember being a teen and being so proud of the fact that I gave money to a street person. Someone who owned a bar said they offered the same guy a couple of hundred dollars to perform in the club for a night but the street person turned him down because he could make more on the street. I was so jaded by that and then I read an article on the guy and it said he collects money and gives a lot of it to a church. That jaded me even more because I felt I was helping the guy, not giving to a church. But I did get over it and now I trust one and all because you just can't pick and choose based on some whim.

I do think there is a responsibility but I truly believe it is something you must come to on your own and then do what you must with that revelation.

[sandnsea]

14. I don't care what they do with their money

As long as they don't try to pretend they're more deserving of it than anybody else.

[Prophet 451]

18. If there is resentment

...I suspect it is because of the way many rich people earn their fortunes. Now, some rich people become rich perfectly honestly but there are far more whose money is made by exploitation and profiteering. One of the USA's earliest presidents (I think it was Jefferson) once said that anything proposed by the business class should be examined very closely as their interests were not the same as and were often contrary to, the interests of the general public. This is not to discount the free market system. The free market works well but the problem is that people cheat. Price-fixing and corruption are no longer the preserve of the Santa Fe Ring.

Example: On last year's Fortune 500 list, there were ten pharma companies. Those ten companies made more profit than the other 490 companies combined and that's profit, not turnover. That's from selling drugs to sick people (and Viagra to people who just want a little more bounce in their hard-on). The basic rule of economics as espoused by Henry Ford no longer applies. The new basic rule is that companies will employ as few people as they need for the work that needs doing at the lowest wages allowable, charging the highest price they can get away with.

All things are about class. The reason New Orleans drowned wasn't because of the colour of it's occupants, it was because of their economic class (and voting behaviour but that's another subject). Europe is a bit better. Here, while the average wage is not much better than the US, the tax structure means that very few are very rich and very few are very poor but in teh US, the tax structure has been tilted in suc a way that wealth and therefore, power (because money talks and politicians listen) has been concentrated in the top 2 or so percent. My favourite statistic ever is that around 80% of teh US considers itself middle class but about 60% are also earning below the avrage wage. This isn't rocket science or even Economic 101: The more money controlled by the people at the top, the less left for the people at the bottom. Money is a finite resource and while the paper wages of everyone might be up, when you adjust for inflation, the average US worker is earning between 4 and 15% less than they did fifty years ago (in the same time frame, productivity has boomed, see Greg Palast, Armed Madhouse). Where is the additional money going? You guessed it.

Yes, it is entirely possible to become rich honestly; by offering a better product at a better price, that was mainly how Henry Ford and his contempories became rich (which is not to offer support for Ford's batshit-insane racial theories) but the way the system is currently set up, it would be very difficult and very unlikely to do so now.

[badgerpup]

19. This is probably the 'wrong' point of view...

I didn't follow the mountain climber story...just saw some threads on it here.

I thought it was rather good thinking for the climbers to have actually realized that something COULD go very wrong and to have
brought the personal locators or whatever the hell they were, as well as the dog.
Yes, it's nice to be rich and able to afford hi-tech equipment...
I was just struck by the forethought that went into this venture.

I suppose it would have made everybody much happier for the taxpayer's dollars to be spent on a much longer search that resulted in a couple of corpses that used to be rich people? :shrug:

[Pavulon]

22. Going to get a beating for this

but rich is a inflammatory term. There are people who have done nothing but be born to be rich.
However there are people who compete, save, and innovate and have become rich.

Accumulation of wealth is an ancient thing and while almost never fair serves a purpose.

I DO NOT believe some ones financial status should deprive them of health care or housing.

My thinking is as long as they act within the laws of the United States they have done nothing wrong.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

Legal is not the same as moral

I have no problem with rich people who

1) Acquired their wealth in a non-exploitative, non-criminal, non-cynical, productive way

2) Realize that they're rich not because they worked harder than anyone else or because they were smarter or talented than anyone else (plenty of hard-working, smart, talented people stay poor all their lives, even if the Republicans choose not to believe it), but because they were in the right place at the right time with their hard work and smarts and talent.

3) Realize that there's more to life than acquiring Stuff and indulging themselves.

4) Pay their fair share of taxes.

But people who get rich by doing things that are technically legal but actually immoral are lower than pond scum.

[Ron Green]

95. "as long as they act within the laws of the United States"

The problem, of course, is that they make the laws of the United States, often in such a way as to move wealth from less fortunate to more fortunate people.

[mainer]

23. Many rich Americans actually are very thrifty

If you read "The Millionaire Next Door" it turns out that many of American's wealthy are just tight with a penny. Yes, maybe they bring in a really nice salary, but they also scrimp and save and invest. They don't buy fancy cars or big homes or mink coats. They simply save, save, save. It is possible to become rich in today's America.

I know a number of people who, in contrast, spend, spend, spend. They have to have the latest car and the golf club membership. They max out their credit cards. And then they whine that "it's just impossible to make it."

So it's not as if every rich person is rolling in luxuries. Some of them are just really careful with a buck and they don't treat themselves to a lot of indulgences. That's how they got rich.

[HappyWeasel]

28. Rich people suck. They're REALLY "gay" and gay as in not homosexual, but just "gay".

For an average community where inflation is at the national average, I would say that-

30,000,000 yr- SUPER RICH (your CEOs etal.)
3,000,000 yr- VERY RICH (your celebrites and eugenics expirements)
300,000 yr- RICH (your law partners and very specialized doctors)
80,000 yr- Professional, "upper middle" "true middle" class- (union jobs,management law associates,family doctors, top of the ladder for "vanilla" jobs)
50,000 yr- Lower Middle Class-(most expirenced college grads, technical jobs, most salesmen and entrepanuers)
30,000 yr- working class- your starting salary after graduating 4 year school, most jobs.
Under that- Struggling.

[Bronyraurus]

51. What the hell are you talking about?

Eugenics experiments? Rich people are gay? Are you insane?

[HappyWeasel]

88. oh nevermind....

[Nederland]

118. Rich people are happy?

I suppose so, but many of them that I've met are miserable.

[JDPriestly]

124. Depends on where you live.

I would guess that the average house in California sells for around $350,000 - $400,000. That's maybe three bedrooms in a not great but OK neighborhood. At 5% interest, the homebuyer will pay about $1,900 per month for the mortgage plus insurance and taxes = over $2,000 per month. So just to buy an average house, a Californian probably needs at least $24,000 per year. Californians pay the same federal tax rate on their salaries as people who live in small towns in the midwest where the average house costs $85,000. Therefore, a person earning $50,000 per year in California has less discretionary income than a person living in a small town in the middle west. If you define "middle class" as homeowner who can save a little for retirement and put the not absolutely brilliant kids through college with the help of loans and scholarships and maybe even afford a family vacation and/or membership in the golf club, then $50,000 per year is not middle class in California.

It's not a matter of hating the rich. It's a matter of equal opportunity. When a few are very rich and the rest are considerably poorer, it's harder for an ordinary person to rise up in society. The person who controls more money also has more control over opportunities for himself and others. This is not an absolute, but generally if you have more money, you have a broader range of choices. If you have money in the bank, you can quit a job and start your own company without missing your house payments. If you don't have money in the bank, you can't quit your job.....

In its early years, our country had lots of virgin land to settle. Land could be bought for very little and with a lot of work, a person could become survive. As long as you weren't a slave or indentured as a servant for a very long time, you even had a real chance to become independently quite well off.

As for the obligations of the rich v. the obligations of the poor when it comes to taxes. From the simplistic view, flat taxes appear to be more "fair." If everyone paid, say 10% of their income, flat taxers say, then we would all be equal with regard to bearing the tax burden. Unfortunately, that does not work well when the differences between low and high incomes are tremendous, say $30,000,000 a year versus $18,000 per year ($9 per hour for 2000 hours per year - probably more than minimum wage for someone who is working full-time but not paid for holidays or sick leave). Ten percent of $18,000 per year is only $1,800, but the person earning $18,000 per year has only $346.15 per week before taxes, so asking that person to pay any taxes at all is a real hardship. Whereas, the person earning $30,000,000 per year is drowning in money after paying taxes of 50%. 50% of $30,000,000 is $15,000,000. I think that just about anyone could manage to get by on that.

And it is much easier and more practical to pay for the things the government pays for (like wars and Karl Rove's salary) by collecting the $15,000,000 from the person with $30,000,000 than by collecting it $1,800 at a time from folks who are earning $9 per hour.

I think that wealthy people should pay a higher percentage of their income for taxes not because I don't like them and not because I don't like wealth, but because it is really a practical necessity and because I don't want to live in a society in which some people are starving while others have all the opportunities and all the comforts.

As for taxes versus philanthropy. I'm very familiar with the way charities work. I say just the government should make sure that everyone has the necessities of life -- however that is defined in society -- food, shelter and a certain amount of money each month from the government and let us earn our wealth -- our discretionary income as we wish. Do away with as much of the corruption and social jockeying that makes philanthropy work as possible. Private charities pay a lot more to raise and spend their money than do government hand-out programs. The waste and superfluous spending by private charities is shocking. Trust me, I've been there and done that. If you doubt me, look at the tax returns for foundations. They are filed publicly. Just flip through them as I have done. You will see all kinds of vanity projects like the Cornfields here in Los Angeles, California (look that up on the web while you are at it) and books written on the donor family's ancestors. Philanthropies just shelter income for rich people.

Personally, I don't begrudge wealthy people what they have, and I don't know what I would do with $30,000,000 per year income, but I realize that wealthy people are in a much better position to pay for what the government does than I am. If the government had to pay for everything based on taxes on my income -- it would have to borrow an awful lot of money. Woops. Isn't that what's happening now that the rich aren't paying their proportionate share?

Sorry for the long diatribe. It felt good to get it off my chest.

[Bill McBlueState]

38. this ignores a key fact:

The starting line is not the same for everyone.

You can "save, save, save" all you want, but if you had to take out loans to get through college, the result of all your saving is going to be somewhat different from one whose parents could afford to pay for his college. If you had to buy your first car, it's going to be harder to save than if you got a new car for your sixteenth birthday.

The truth is, the wealthiest among us were born into their wealth. Probably, the people profiled in the book you mentioned were generally born into families that were at least middle class. We can't explain the entire socioeconomic ladder just in terms of personal saving habits.

[Bronyraurus]

50. That's not true

The vast majority of wealthy people in the US made the wealth in their lifetimes.

[Binka]

104. Bullshit Buddy Most Wealth Is Inherited

Please do not respond to this post as you are now on ignore.

[Bronyraurus]

135. What in God's name for?

[Bronyraurus]

139. That's not true

This article claims that 80% of millionaires are self-made. Where do you get your statistic?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/millionairenextdoor.htm

[JDPriestly]

128. You mean like Richard Riordan, wealthy ex-mayor of Los Angeles

Yes, he made a lot of money, but then his parents could afford to send him to Princeton and gave him a certain amount of cash to start his life with. It wasn't millions. If I remember correctly it was may $25,000 to $50,000. That may not sound like much today, but it was about $25,000 to $50,000 more than my parents could give me. I worked in high school, in college, in graduate school -- and not at lucrative jobs. I had no money to invest in anything. Neither did my husband. Truly self-made people nowadays are few and far between. Most of them are gifted engineers and inventors - and very lucky. A lot of people make a lot of money and then lose most of it. Most people end up in the salaried or at best at the professional end of the middle class. Most people in their 60s are not much better off then their parents were at that age. In fact many of the baby boomers will be much worse off than their parents when they retire because they have 401(K)s but not pensions. And the 401(K)s are invested in the stock market --- and not making much income. When baby boomers start selling their stocks (and/or homes) to live off their savings, there will be a buyers market on Wall Street (and Main Street).

[Bronyraurus]

138. Check it out

80% of millionaires are first generation wealthy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/books/chap1/millionairenextdoor.htm

[JDPriestly]

147. These people do not earn a million a year.

They have a little about $1.6 million in assets. That includes a lot of Southern Californians who aren't rich at all. They just have houses that are worth $1 million (because of market increases -- the houses would be worth a lot less outside California or New York City) and a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank or in the stock market (precarious). Such people (and I know a number of them) are comfortable, but they wisely live below their means because their "wealth" is very precarious. By your standard, two married retired teachers with a house in Santa Monica, a couple of hundred thousand in the bank left from when they sold their deceased mother's house and pensions and other retirement income of of $7,000 a month each would be wealthy because their old house that they have lived in for over 40 years is now worth $1.5 million. You've got to be kidding.

They are not rich not only because they don't have real wealth but because THEY DO NOT HAVE THE POLITICAL CLOUT TO PASS LAWS TO PROTECT THEIR WEALTH. The truly wealthy (and I know some of them too) have a lot more unearned income and POLITICAL CLOUT BY VIRTUE OF WHO THEY KNOW, THE CLUBS THEY BELONG TO AND THE FACT THAT THEY HAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY FOR FAVORS.

I would define a rich person as someone who is not yet of retirement age and who does not have to work for a living -- a trust bum in short. I know really such people. If you have one million dollars and quit work and decide to live off you money, your income assuming you can actually get 10% will only be $100,000. That is not a lot of money for a person who is used to making over $200,000 a year in a city like Los Angeles. It might sound like a lot if you are thinking in terms of a salary of $30,000 a year, but people who are used to earning $200,000 a year would have to cut back drastically to live on $100,000 a year.

There is another huge catch to your article. It is unclear to me how the income of the people they are talking about is figured. If you have a sole proprietor of a small business, the business income is attributed to the owner for tax purposes. The owner deducts the business expenses on his tax return. Money that has to be plowed back into the business to cover basic costs like the lease and the secretary and the computer equipment is considered to be the owner's income. The owner can't really spend that income. He has to save it for a rainy day. An employee on the other hand can count on a very small amount of disability insurance (state) and things like Worker's Comp and unemployment insurance to help a little on a rainy day. Also, the small business owners described in the article can be wiped out by lawsuits. So they have to keep reserves for that too. These are not truly wealthy people. Just "having" potential access to $1,000,000 does not make you that wealthy. It's your annual income that makes you wealthy. It's how much money you can spend on an annual basis that makes you wealthy. If you want to measure it by assets, it's what you can get for your assets, your house and your business if you have to sell it in a hurry. You need more than a million in assets to be a wealthy person nowadays. Dick Cheney would scream with terror if you told him that his assets had fallen in value to only $1.6 million.

The safe investments that people who have $1 million in liquid assets can reasonably invest in without losing their safety cushion are only paying 5-7% right now. Think how much money you have to have invested at that rate to get an annual income of $1,000,000 at 5% yields only $50,000 - $70,000. I could live quite comfortably on that as a retiree. Maybe you could too. But the people I know whom I would consider to be wealthy would laugh at that kind of annual income.


Think Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now he is self-made and rich. But his wife is not. She is third generation rich. That is a common phenomenon.

[Bronyraurus]

150. His wife is a Kennedy. Not a lot of those.

And I didn't make any claims about dollar amounts. That article discusses millionaires. That means people whose net worth is 1 million and upwards. That includes the people making 10 million a year. The fact is that, according to the authors' calculations, 80% of them are self-made, and that was the only point I made. It was contradicted by posters above, but I have shown that there is evidence to support it.

Thanks for your thoughtful reply, though.

[JDPriestly]

172. And my point is that 80% of people earning $250,000

may be somewhat "self-made," i.e., they work for their money. But, many of them had parents who paid their ways through college and got them started. If they are Russian or Hungarian, they may have gone to school on the government's dime in one of those countries. Those countries do not saddle the poor and middle class kids with huge student loans to repay when they finish their degrees.

As for the Scottish-- I have pretty close personal knowledge about the pennypinching Scottish. Again, they work hard. As long as a person is working and investing in a business, they can enjoy tax deductions that increase their wealth. But, as I point out, if they suffer set-backs in their business or even in their personal lives, they can lose out very quickly. The people who are really secure are those in the very, very upper echelons -- the Waltons, the people who live off their grandparents' trusts. They quietly enjoy modest incomes and work at what they want to do without worrying about income. It is that kind of unearned wealth that is not wrong, but that should pay its share. People with that kind of wealth are not taking the risks that the small business owners are taking. We are not talking about family farmers whose land may be worth a couple of hundred thousand plus machinery worth a couple of thousand but who are just one freeze or one drought away from trouble. They may be worth a million as are some in the construction industry and similar industries, but their "wealth" is very precarious. And the article you cite to includes a huge number of people who aren't really "rich" and who know it.

As for the Kennedys, the grandfather made the money, the children invested the money. There are a lot of grandchildren. Most of the grandchildren don't earn fabulous salaries I would imagine. I don't know what kinds of trusts they have or how much income each has from the trusts. Certainly more than I since I have no trust. You really have to know the specific facts of the specific situation. It is likely that the Kennedy grandchildren have generous trust income. There is no guarantee. But they grew up in wealthy homes with a lot of advantages, there is no doubt about that.

[Bronyraurus]

175. I think we generally agree

But there really aren't too many billionaires. Hug a millionaire; he ain't rich!

[barb162]

92. I know a few people like that

and they very steadily became rich. Though rich, they are still extremely frugal, never take vacations, etc.

[Nikia]

115. I have not read that book

I don't know how rich the people are in those books, but yes I knew a number of older millionaires with modest backgrounds and lifestyles in my home town. They grew up during the Depression so they were always saving so they had something in case something bad happened. They saved and invested in reliable things. Many of them saved over half their salary even making middle income wages. In a way, I feel sorry for some of them who are now living in nursing homes or assisted living homes or are homebound and never really got to enjoy even a middle class lifestyle even though they could have.
In contrast, I saw people, who made about the same amount of money that the old millionaires made when they were working, live as "rich" of a lifestyle as their credit would allow. These people will never get out of debt and will be in real trouble if they ever lose their job and probably will have to work until they die. I feel sorry for them too.
I think that there has to be a middle way. I also think that being rich whether in having a large amount of money accumulated or an expensive lifestyle, isn't really as great as most people seem to think.

[BoneDaddy]

24. I typically find a hostility

towards the rich that is undeserved. while there are certainly people who have no altruism whatsoever who have money, there are plenty who do. Money, like anything, is neutral. It is what you do with it that matters.

[HappyWeasel]

30. Yeah, but it is really testing when someone has it so easy...

and you are struggling even though as a law student, I have chosen to struggle.

[BoneDaddy]

54. I think we make assumptions

that everyone who has money has it easy. I have worked in the field of counseling for almost two decades and money doesn't make you happy. It does up until basic needs are met, but beyond that, rich people suffer as well.

Many rich have worked hard for it and many have not. I have little sympathy for those in the latter group, but for those people who have earned it, I hold no ill will.

[HappyWeasel]

94. Well, I guess wealth can be made from being at the right place at the right time and doing the right

thing...or just be being ambitious,ruthless and competitive with a bit of an ability to fair, compasionate and reasonable at the same time....over time....its like that Hip Hop song from a few years ago "It Doen't Matter".

Me? I am happy if I get 50k or 60k when I get out of school and make 100k withing 5 years. I hope to be making 200 k by the time I'm 40. Im in law school, so I hope I am able to do this when I get out.

[Nikia]

32. When I grew up in a small town

There were a few millionaire families. They belonged to local churches where middle class or even poor people went to church. They tended to belong to the Y and the golf club that the upper middle class could afford. The only private schools were parochial and weren't much higher class institutions than the local high schools. These people belonged to and gave generously to local organizations. They were not snooty. It was the upper middle class people who were snooty and less charitable.
Reflecting on all this, I realize that I am welathy to the poor because I now make over three times the amount of a full time minimum wage worker but yet struggle to pay my winter heating bill. I think that the trap many American fall into is that we aspire to wealth. We aspire to have the nice things advertised on television or in magazines. We aspire to join health clubs and other recreational clubs. We aspire to have as much of our leisure time for leisure, not doing lots of housework or cooking.
The truly rich have all those things. It isn't as hard for them to give it away. I think this is especially true for the rich that are more isolated from other rich people. I think that in places where there are larger numbers of them, they are more likely to engage in competitions of displays of wealth.

[redacted]

47. In Wisconsin?

Just wondering.

[Nikia]

110. Actually, I grew up in Ohio

I am 29. There are less rich people there now due to less locally owned business, especially manufacturing companies.

[Indy_Dem_Defender]

33. If a person can become rich the honest way

I'm all for it.


Notice I didn't say "and old fashion way," because there's really no nostalgia involved, the crooked things people do today for wealth are just the same as 100, 200 or 500 years ago.

I honestly have no problem with a person if they made their money the honest way, via not screwing anyone over in the process or making their wealth at the expense of others.

Example
Take a athlete who is paid 20 million dollars a year salary, If this athlete plays for a team who's owner also owns the arena/stadium the team plays for damn more power to them, do what they want with the money this the way capitalism is suppose to work. If say the arena/stadium is paid in part by the government funding, aka taxpayer's money. I personally feel this person hasn't earned this money and if it was up to me they wouldn't be getting it. If the owner can't afford an arena/stadium on their own then they shouldn't be playing athletes these high salaries. Tax payers shouldn't have to foot the bill, that's taking money away meant for the general good of society whether going as funding for something more noble or being returned to the taxpayer.

I'm not picking on pro sports, I'm just using this as a simple example anyone can understand. Major corporations and high paid executives can attribute much of their wealth from subsidize from government in the form of tax breaks and incentives for relocating their business to an area.

Take a walmart store as another example, If walmart opens a store in smalltown usa, the local government might have given them an incentive in the form of property tax breaks for opening said store. Say the deal is the for 8 years walmart pays no property taxes. Now lets say taxes on this property would be a million a year if they did pay, so 8 million dollars in 8 years walmart just saved. The talking point is spread around town by the politicians and walmart that this is a good investment for the town it will create jobs for the community. I think I hear this every time a company gets incentives from the government, but you never hear good paying jobs being apart of the talking point, it's service jobs at 6-7 dollars an hour, these jobs aren't going to produce enough money from income taxes to off set the cost of giving this walmart a property tax break. Now fast forward a year in to the deal with walmart, The store is doing great business and walmart ask the local government to widen the road out front of the store from 2 lanes to 4 due to increased traffic. So town agrees and performs the widening, the cost of this project is lets say 5 million dollars, this is paid for by local property taxes. This town is short on funds to meet their yearly budget do to the cost of this project, so they have to raise property taxes. I see this as a double whammy, company doesn't contribute to the community in the form of paying their share of taxes to maintaining the upkeep of the town and then they contribute to making those cost for other skyrocket in the process. As an outsider looking I see simply see a company taking advantage of a town by making their wealth of the expense of others.

[TahitiNut]

35. We have a 'broken' economic system.

I reserve the vast majority of my ire for the system and those who use their power and influence to 'break' it more and those who, not satisfied with its bias, break the rules (laws) of that system.

Let me take one example: Intellectual Property.

Intellectual Property is an entitlement, not a natural human right. It exists due to legislation and the law enforcement systems that enforce that legislation. It's also supported by a vast array of public services and systems that track and record these entitlements and their transfer. The public does this under a philosophy of "the good of the people." In most cases, that "good" is the public availability of the products, whether those products are art, literature, medicines, software, music, or whatever. The idea is that without some public system that assures people who create such products are fairly compensated for their creative efforts then they won't put their efforts into it or, just as bad, keep them secret or locked up for narrow use.

So, the fundamental notion of "the good of the people" should be assessed against the manner in which the system functions. Are medicines, for example, optimally available to the public? Or, is the system being manipulated in some way contrary to this fundamental rationale?

Furthermore, it must be noted that the public is footing the bill for the legislation, its enforcement, and for the systems (e.g. patent office, stock market regulation, FDA) that support the product, the titles to that product, and the sale and exchange of such titles. So, the question there must be: Is the general public receiving value in return for these costs?


The simplest way of determining whether a system is 'broken' is to ask the question of whether it's behaving in ways that match the legitimate objectives for its existence. One need not have a great deal of expertise in automotive systems to know that a car that runs off the road and into trees even when steered properly is broken. When someone tampers with such systems to cause them to behave in ways contrary to their legitimate objectives we call them 'saboteurs.'

Personally ...
When I see a few people amassing enormous wealth while others they're working with are denied an equitable share of that wealth, and some are impoverished, I have to say the system is broken. I can see no possible justification for a single person to amass wealth that exceed the combined wealth of the least well-off 60% of the households in this nation. That's not just a 'tuning' thing - that's broken. The system belongs to everyone - not just those who benefit the most from it.

[karlrschneider]

61. I don't disagree in principle but absolute economic equality is neither possible or desirable

in a functional society, at least of humans - our nature wouldn't permit or even want that. As long as people want 'stuff' (including power, for some or many) aspirations to have them are innate. It may well be a legacy of our hunting/gathering beginnings and 'survival of the fittest' but whether that's
the genesis or not doesn't much matter because we're stuck with it.

Altruism is a lofty and maybe desirable goal but so is free beer, it just ain't gonna happen any time soon. That said, there must be some achievable equilibrium point that satisfies a significant majority of citizens (if it doesn't exist, we're screwn regardless of any other considerations.)

It may well be a fact of nature that the 'food chain' extends beyond the simple consumption of nutrients, but an inexorable factor in every facet of existence. In which case there's nothing we
can do about it.

[TahitiNut]

71. Who advocated "absolute economic equality"??

Have we entered the "fallacy zone"? There's a BIG difference between 'equity' (which I advocate) and 'equality' (which I recognize in terms of human rights).

I find it interesting, in a society that espouses democracy and egalitarianism, that we so blithely accept the perpetuation of people with acquired (rather than delegated) power - as some lind of entitlement, like a Duke, Baron, or King. We beat our chests and declare our meritocracy but we blithely accept not only inherited wealth but inherited political power. Corruption has become banal and the excesses of greed even more so.

Our systems, both political and economic, are entirely man-made. To proclaim "there's nothing we
can do about it" doesn't say much for global warming, does it?

[karlrschneider]

73. Corruption has passed banal and become desirable, it seems.

I was attempting, in my own poorly-stated way, to recognize the distinction between equality and
equity in essential agreement with your points and thus bolster them. Obviously I didn't do it well.
I'm not so sure, however, that our society ever REALLY did espouse egalitarianism. Early American history doesn't appear to have that particular goal in mind given the plethora of laws and conventions (prior to the Constitution, at least, but also for some time afterward...in some cases up until this very moment.)

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with a meritocracy, per se, but that isn't (as you somewhat obtusely point out) what we have. And I have no serious problem with the idea of inheritance (fiduciary, not
plenipotentiary), but then who gets to decide how much is enough?

As to my "nothing we can do about it", I stand by my comment. SOME of us will do (or promise to) "something about it" but the majority just simply won't...until there's no choice. Or they starve or drown, whichever comes first. It's damned difficult to get TWO people to agree and/or cooperate on an issue, let alone 6.5 billion. When the rubber meets the road, "look out for number one" trumps every
human action with damn few exceptions. I would love to be wrong.

[TahitiNut]

77. I think it's a "Mr. Goodwrench" condition.

We'll either pay now, or pay later. Later, the price (in blood) will be even higher. Over the past 30 years, we've left the 'neighborhood' of European (and Japanese) economic equity and have taken up residence in a far more brutal neighborhood: that of the "banana republics."

I remember the apologetics (rationalizations?) for the highly inequitable economic conditions of banana republics. It supposedly had to do with a large "underclass" of mostly indigenous people without primary education or even literacy. Supposedly. What I find fascinating is how the same advocates for "greed is good" (mostly the GOP) are replaying those same tunes: "get education." Yep. We've become a nation with an "underclass" (untermenschen) that's purportedly too illiterate to partake of the abundance. (Then there's Smirk.)

To some degree, there's truth in it, I guess. We've become a nation of political and economic illiterates.

[karlrschneider]

79. Indeed. Procrastinating has progressed from a personal vice to a national virtue.

I interact with a lot of very wealthy people, most of whom lack the common sense to pour piss out of a boot. How the hell did it come to this? They're so busy spending their money (most of which is credit with not much real backing) they don't even recognize it's just imaginary (but it's usable for now.)

The thing about a banana republic is this: they actually have a renewable product that people are willing to buy. Whatever else we can say about them, they do possess a tangible resource. Most of the people I deal with (and who, I confess, pay me well) don't do anything truly productive...they manipulate virtual money that belongs to other people and live (well) by doing it. The whole thing
is a house of cards, glued together with trust that will only last until its true nature is grasped by the 'marks.'

You wanna see some economic and political illiterates? Come to Oklahoma. Actually, don't, you'd lose whatever modicum of faith you might still have in the 'electorate'. ;-)

[TahitiNut]

86. My stepbrother lives in Tulsa, in the shadow of Oral Roberts.

He's a Kool-Aid addict. I've lived all over the country (WA, CA, MI, AL, CT, NY, TX, MO)... and I'll stick to the edges, with the exception of anywhere 'Dixie' doesn't mean paper cups. I've worked in the banking industry, federal contractor, high tech, and manufacturing. Banking edged out the federal contractor as the worst. When I worked there, it was said that the reason the banking industry was regulated was because the executive management was too stupid to do it right without those rules. I think they were right.

[karlrschneider]

120. Don't get me started on Oral Roberts. I grew up living a block from him,

his youngest son was a friend of mine, was in their house many times. Ronnie committed suicide
not long after we got out of high school. So sad, he was the only decent one of the bunch.

[InkAddict]

174. Then came GOP de-regulation and

shadow governments (in my lifetime, anyway). Now all those idiots don't have to abide by any rules but the ones THEY make and change as whimsy take them, and the rest of humanity suffers an unhappiness of the spirit that alternately begs in vain for relief and/or acts out like spoiled delinquents rushing headlong to be the leader of the pack.

The balance has been severely disturbed. Ever hear a washing machine out of balance. It makes quite a racket and vibrates like an earthquake. Unattended, the machine breaks down.

[WHAT]

87. That's what I stumble on, the inequity of gatekeepers...

in the sense that an inherited position implies a sense of entitlement in the form of standard bearers.

I want a level playing field because of the wealth of enrichment that talent can bring to life. I do wish for a base-line of shelter, nutrition, health to be met, but, after that I think a person's passion, care, ability should be compensated. My own satisfaction would be met by good literature, good art, good music, good ideas, etc. as an enrichment allowed to be brought forth by the exceptional (which is not an exclusive trait of the rich no matter how tight they weave that spell that calls forth acclaim as an entitlement of class rather than talent).

I don't think I would want to be rich because I suspect they might be more brain-washed that the "sheeple" as a necessary part of class up-bringing/protection. It seems there are a lot of (exceptions to) mores so there is an inbalance in perception that serves to heighten and conversely diminish a person's value with the rich. I enjoy that there are pockets of care and discretion that may be furthered in a sheltered and directed focus that, sometimes, only the rich can sustain. But, I still want all parts free to express which gate-keeping seems to reduce.

Class seems to permeate our culture but no-one seems to be able to be honest about it; that makes it impossible to be objective. Status seems to be more by decree than consensus, anymore, so that it's a false culture...not true.

I want a level playing field, I want a true culture without the extremes of beast or saint. People should not have to overcome their culture in order to be mature.

[Lurking Dem]

36. One thing I think gets overlooked

in these conversations is it isn't just what somebody like Oprah "gives away".

I am considered wealthy and, yes, I give money away to various charities.

I also employ a lot of people and funnel money back into the economy in investments in start up companies and real estate ventures. I have a full time and several part time employees at my house.

Oprah employs a crapload of people to maintain her lifestyle and business ventures.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[mondo joe]

41. If people become rich without violating others' rights and pay a fair tax rate, I'm not

otherwise interested in deciding what they should do. That's their call.

[L A Woman]

43. fantastic responses...

It gives me something to think about. I grew up in poverty in West Virginia. I once heard Rush Limbaugh say that no children went hungry in the U.S., at which time I immediately recollected sharing a piece of cheese with my sister. That was our dinner. Now - although I am middle class - I work in an upper class area of L.A. and deal with very wealthy people on a daily basis. It's fascinating to me...the feeling of superiority that money gives some people!

[redacted]

46. Beverly Hills? Brentwood? Orange County?

Just wondering where since I'm in town a lot.

[L A Woman]

49. Calabasas, actually...

more of a suburb, i guess...and now famous for banning smoking everywhere, even outside. :-)

[redacted]

101. We just banned smoking here in Sonoma County too

Excellent. Although enforcement hasn't yet caught up with the new law, especially at outdoor coffee bars like Starbucks.

[cgrindley]

44. Balzac

Behind every great fortune is a crime.

The rich get no sympathy and they should be taxed as heavily as possible.

[mitchum]

66. I'm with you and Honore, my friend

[BlackVelvet04]

53. I don't think the rich are obligated

to give any money away, but I would HOPE that they do. Not just for those they give it to but for themselves.

[mondo joe]

55. Personally, if I were rich, one of the joys would be influencing issues I care about,

which would mean making meaningful contributions.

[BlackVelvet04]

56. I agree.

How much shit can you buy? There would have to be more than accumulating more money in the bank, buying more crap to find a place to put in order for being rich to be satisfying IMO.

[BlooInBloo]

60. Jealosy/inferiority of course - Just like Nietzsche said...

... If you can't beat em, change the game in such a way that losers become winners.

[mitchum]

69. I believe Alice Rosenbaum also said the same thing...

but I daresay I need to tell you that

[BlooInBloo]

78. Not familiar with her - I'm only familiar with Genealogy because I had to teach it....

... I only referenced it here because my preferred proponents of essentially the same thought (Hegel, Kuhn, and Lakatos) aren't well-enough known in a place like DU.

EDIT: "preferred" = "well-studied by me" :)

[mitchum]

81. She was a wretched "philosopher"...

"novelist" and cult leader who was better known by her ludicrous made up name- Ayn Rand. I would imagine she first scrawled that name in purple ink :)

[BlooInBloo]

93. Ah - pen name - gotcha!

[HappyWeasel]

91. Well....yeah.

[Truthiness Inspector]

68. Why aren't you offering an opinion?

Are you afraid of backlash?

Most of us here have more than the poor the world over, or we wouldn't even have the privilege of posting here in the first place even if it's from a public library.

So anyone who says they would give it all away to the poor is lying. Do we give money, time, clothes, food? Yes we do, and we should. But do we keep a little more for ourselves? Obviously. And that's ok, it's okay for us to want to survive too and enjoy the fruits of our labor.

[hogwyld]

96. I personally think that the wealthy should be heavily taxed

To help the less fortunate. What can you buy for a billion that you can't buy with a 100 million? After WW2, the highest tax rate with 92%. http://www.workingpeople.org/taxhistory.htm
We need to force the rich to help the less fortunate as the majority of them will not do it on their own. I'm sure there are nice rich people out there, but the majority are blood sucking leeches.

[Xenotime]

140. agreed

[noamnety]

97. I'm not impressed with Oprah's philanthropy

She's taken more from the system than she's given back - she has a surplus of $480 million (even with a ridiculous $20 million to survive on).

As others have said, she's made that money by exploiting others. If she's hired people to serve her, she obviously paid them only a fraction of what she was getting paid, showing that she places her worth above theirs.

Is it legal? Yes, of course.

Is it moral? No, of course not.

The folks saying it's good she's rich cause the money trickles down in the form of jobs spent too much time listening to reagan when they were younger. It's quite obvious it doesn't benefit the poor to have wealth concentrated in the hands of the rich, and I'm always surprised when people try to argue that it does.

[mondo joe]

160. It's immoral for her to pay people less than she earns?????

Are you serious?

[noamnety]

162. I used the word "exploiting" (n/t)

[mondo joe]

163. You used the word "moral". Oprah made her fortune by investing in her own

company and then by making it big.

Is she supposed to pay a gardener $1,000 an hour or be labeled immoral?

[noamnety]

170. Yes, I did use the word moral, you're right.

I'll stand by it.

If I make $30 per hour, and I need a babysitter in order to make that income, it's not moral for me to pay the babysitter $2 per hour, if that's his main source of income. It's exploiting him; it's exploiting the fact that he is at my mercy, cause I'll pay him something, and something's better than nothing. It's sweatshop logic. Why should he live in poverty while I live in middle classdom, when I am dependent on his services to support my lifestyle?

The gardener is an example of who she exploits directly - the visible exploitation.

Who else does she exploit? Remember those poor people who she gave all the cars to? She exploited their poverty as a tool to promote herself.

Part of the reason she earns so much is that she brings in advertising dollars, from companies like Slim Fast, Honda, Target and JC Penny. So part of her income is from exploiting the self-image problems that the media dumps on women's backs, and Oprah has in fact been part of that process. The money from Honda exploits everyone who is damaged from the harmful effects of auto pollution, and those who are affected by oil wars. The money she earned from advertising sales from Target and JC Penny came from exploiting people as well - both of those companies have a history of buying products made with sweatshop labor.

Capitalism, by its nature, is exploitive. Those who profit most from it have done the most exploiting.

[mondo joe]

176. So if you make $30 an hour that's what you have to pay everyone?

For goodness sakes.

A physician who goes through med school and residency and assumes significant liability has to pay her babysitter $65 an hour or she's immoral?

[noamnety]

178. Nope, not quite.

If I'm living on $30 an hour ($28 after daycare expenses), and my baby sitter is living on $2 an hour, that's not equitable.

If I make $30 an hour and give him all $30, then in effect I have nothing; he has all the profit from the labor we each contributed. Also not equitable.

If we are dependent on each other for our mutual success and survival, and respect each other as equals, the situation would be set up so we are supporting ourselves in equivalent lifestyles, not so I am living in a mansion and he's in a tin shack. If I am the sole person he's babysitting for, then half my after tax salary would be equitable. However rough it is for me to support myself on $15 an hour, it's the same amount of hardship for him.

Ideally, he can watch more than one kid at once, so my contributions to his salary - to maintain his lifestyle at a level equivalent to my own - would be lower. That's how you do it without exploiting other people for your own gain - you put equal value on people that help you get where you are, instead of treating them like peasants and like you're the nobility, and they should be grateful to have the crumbs you toss their way.

[Nikia]

181. If you own a business though, that equality might be hard to practice

The truth is that the market rate for some professions is higher than others. For example, you might get pleny of people applying for your janitor position for $15. You may not have well qualified candidates for your more technical and professional level positions. What if you cannot afford to pay all your workers any more than that?
With the example of a doctor, if a doctor was paid the same as the receptionist, either health care costs would be even more unaffordable or there wouldn't be very many doctors under current standards.

[mondo joe]

182. I don't know how you do all that without ever taking into account relative

value of service or product.

I never confused my pay with my value as a person, with with the value of the service I am willing/able to provide.

[noamnety]

185. "service or product"

that's a nice way to dehumanize what we're really talking about, which is human labor.

[mondo joe]

191. Nothing dehumanizing about it. I provide a service or product in exchange for money.

I also buy services and products for money.

I'm happy to pay more for an hour of a fine carpenter's time than I am a dogwalker, because the former has greater value and is less available.

I expect a rate of pay from my employer based on the market value of the skill I provide.

What's wrong with that?

[noamnety]

194. How does it have less value?

Going back to me and a babysitter, how does anything I do professionally have greater value than taking care of my child?

I notice people here are more comfortable discussing the disparity between what a doctor makes and what a secretary in her office makes than they are discussing the disparity between what Oprah makes, and what a child working in a sweatshop makes, when Oprah is making profits on top of her existing millions indirectly off the backs of those children.

[gravity]

195. Its comparative advantage

If you are a doctor, you can use your time more wisely saving people's lives than watching your child. Chances are the babysitter doesn't have the same oppurtunity to work somewhere else higher paying, so she is taking the best job she can get.

Cost to the babysitter for babysitting is giving up a similar paying job.

Cost to the doctor of babysitting is giving up a much higher paying job, and the lost of lives.

[mondo joe]

198. And again, it's about thhe value of the service or product - not of the person.

I know when I take a job I am not being paid for my value as a person, but for the value of the service I will provide.

Similarly, I know I'll pay a talented, experienced carpenter more than I'd be willing to pay a kid who barely knows what he's doing. The value of the product provided by the former is greater than that provided by the latter - but that has nothing to do with the value of the person.

[gravity]

202. Thats what you get paid for

In the economy, people are paid the service they provide. You pay a carpenter for his service, an employer pays you for your service to him.

How do you pay someone as their value of the person? Well the easiest way to figure it out is the value of the service they provide, which is what you get paid.

[mondo joe]

203. Precisely. I don't know how referring to products or services could be dehumanizing -

it is, after all, only humans who provide services or products.

[noamnety]

200. I NOTICE

people here are more comfortable discussing the disparity between what a doctor makes and what a secretary in her office makes than they are discussing the disparity between what Oprah makes, and what a child working in a sweatshop makes, when Oprah is making profits on top of her existing millions indirectly off the backs of those children.

:)

"Chances are the babysitter child in a sweatshop doesn't have the same oppurtunity to work somewhere else higher paying, so she is taking the best job she can get."

and thus it is moral?

[mondo joe]

201. I'm willing to talk about Oprah.

How is she earning more on the backs of sweatshop children in some way other than all Americans do?

[noamnety]

206. Use some critical thinking - you don't need me to figure this out for you (nt)

[mondo joe]

210. It's your charge - you back it up. NT

[mondo joe]

197. Simple: supply and demand.

As a percentage, there are FAR fewer people who can do the job I do than can adequately and safely babysit for 2 hours. Similarly, there are far fewer people with the necessary training and skill to be a physician than to be a secretary. That's a simple fact.

It should not be hard to see that Oprah Winfrey has a singular ability to do what she does as well as she does - one only need look at the many failed shows to see that. But more importantly, in her case, Oprah invested the money to make a go of it herself. She took all the risk, she reaps all the benefit.

I'm not clear on how Oprah makes money off of sweatshops (except to the degree that everyone in the US does).

[demrabble]

199. Exactly Right!

The fact that Oprah (or anyone else who is rich) attempts to hide the fact that she has obscene amounts of money while others suffer by giving a little bit of their money to charity does not impress me at all.

She may be trying to salve her own conscience and guilt by contributing.

It does not work.

She is still guilty.

[Porcupine]

102. The rich maintain their wealth by force.

To leave your second or third house empty while people in that town are homeless means that an armed force is willing to punish those that might seek shelter.

To secure food supplies against the hungry while the wealthy grow fat means that there are armed men willing to kill the poor should they press their demands for food.

To secure energy supplies against those who are freezing or who don't have the means to cook thier meager meals means armed men are willing to kill to keep the poor from getting warm.

To secure water supplies against the poor who need clean drinking water or water for their gardens means that armed men are willing to kill to maintain the thirst of the poor.

The penalty for resisting the armed men is always death.

When the poor in your community have shelter, food, housing, adequate water supplies and energy to cook food and keep from freezing then you can consider yourself morally right to be rich.

Until then you are a thief.

Your community is one planet. Earth.

[BayCityProgressive]

103. yes I am a socialist

and yes it is wrong for Oprah to have the money she has. Your analogy is incorrect. the rich hardly, if ever give 50% of their money to the benefit of society, they make the money off of things that usually but not always hurt society, and even when they do give money it usually funnels through lots of corporate interests before getting to its intended place. I am proud to be socialist. That being said, I wouldn;t want anyone to die on a mountain...but if they really are rich then I would have no problem with them reinbursing the state for the money it takes to rescue them.

[mondo joe]

166. How much money does socialism say Oprah can have before it's wrong?

Thank you.

[Nikia]

112. How do the "rich" make sure that people get what they need?

We all pay taxes for the services of armed men (the police/military). Some people or organizations have armed security.
How does any "rich" individual make sure that all the poor are getting what they need? In smaller towns, they can make sure that they donate enough to the local charitable organizations that they will be able to serve all the poor people's basic needs, but they cannot be sure that all the poor are being served. In such a town with sufficient resources, if a truly needy person breaks into a "rich" person's home or business, why did that person consider theft a better option than accepting locally provided services? For that matter, are most people who steal from homes and businesses in the United States poor to the extent that you described? I realize that some people are, but how should the potential break in victim distinguish between the types of burglars? For that matter, how does the potential victim distinguish between burglars who only intend to take what they need/want and those who intend to hurt the occupants of the house or cause other damage?
If the entire world is all our community, how does an individual "rich" person make sure that the poor in far away places get what they need? In some places because of societal unrest, the "rich" person would have to hire their own army to make sure that the local poor are protected. You do realize that there are nastier rich thugs in some parts of the world than most of the United,
don't you?
If someone were breaking into your house, would you simply quietly leave and return when you think that they have taken everything that they need? If they took up residence in your home, would that be alright with you?
I agree that we should all help those who do not have their basic living needs met. I don't think that there is anything morally wrong about having personal property or protecting it though.

[MGD]

109. Redistribute the wealth now or be a slave to it forever.

The consolidation of wealth in the pockets of entrenched elitist powers is, IMO, the single greatest threat to our democracy.

[B Calm]

127. Someone asked me once to define rich. I said its anybody who

never ever flies coach. All laughs aside, I don't have a problem with someone with lots of money. It's the rich bastards that acquire their wealth by exploiting the working class that piss me off.

[MindPilot]

129. Chris Rock defined it quite simply: Shaq is rich...

the guy who signs Shaq's paycheck is WEALTHY!

[LeftishBrit]

132. I have nothing against some people being rich; and am quite aware that I'm rich compared with most

people in the world.

However, the rich don't just have a right to get richer and richer with no contribution to the state. Rich people should pay high taxes.

My view is really that there should be no such thing as a POOR person; and if this means that richer people have to sacrifice some of their wealth to enable the state to ensure this, then so be it.

[WorldResident]

134. If anyone advocated stranding the climbers and leaving them to die, I would be offended

n/t

[WindRavenX]

141. I can't believe the whole mountain climbers = rich association

When I was growing up, my family was lower middle class and because we couldn't do things that our other more well-to-do friends/neighbors did (like go to the movies, eat out, etc) we spent our weekends in the wild of the cascades in Oregon. We hiked all day with a backpack lunch and had a swell time.

We hiked some of the Sisters mountains, and we weren't rich. I know many people like this.

I don't think the association of mountain climbers as being wealthy is fair at all.

[demrabble]

142. It is NOT OK

It is definitely NOT OK to lead a life of luxury while there are still hungry, unclothed, people in this world.

It is definitely NOT OK to lead a life of luxury when there are people in this world who have not shelter.

It is definitely NOT OK to lead a life of luxury while there are sick people who have no access to competent medical care.

Money that goes to someone to allow them to lead a life of luxury is money that is not being spent to alleviate hunger and other serious social ills.

[gravity]

143. There are greedy rich people and greedy poor people

I don't agree with the hostility towards rich people since many poor people behave the same way. Some people are just more generous than others regardless of social class. If everyone was completely generous, our society would look like utopian comunism, but human nature suggest that people generally take care of themselves first before looking out for others.

I think the progressive tax structure addresses the inequality issue in our society. The tax system could be revised, but I don't think there is any problem if someone becomes rich by fair means.

[demrabble]

146. "Greedy" Poor People??

I don't know of a single poor person who is "greedy".

I know lots and lots and lots of rich people who are greedy, though.

Do you really know any poor people who are "greedy"?

[gravity]

152. Yes

There are deadbeat dads, who don't pay child support, which is greedy. Poor people will steal, even when its not for necissity, which I consider greedy.

My point is that not everyone who is rich is greedy, and not everyone who is poor is real generous. A thief and a shrewd businessman are the same types of people, just different social classes.

[HardRocker05]

151. real question - how did she get that billion dollars? how messed up are we as a society that

we pay our entertainers 100's of millions of dollars a year, while average working people can work 40hrs/wk, 52 weeks per year and still be living in poverty or near-poverty? i don't think any one is against rich people, but i am against grossly unequal and unfair distribtion of wealth.

[antonialee839]

169. I'm just glad I will never have to search for a

really tiny camel.

[Fran Kubelik]

187. That is a great question.

My problem is with people who have more money than God and are still willing to hurt people to make more money.
As far as I am concerned, Oprah does not fit in that category at all. A big business that makes all its decisions based on $$ and does not take into consideration the repercussion on people does. Politicians who pass laws that make it more difficult for poor people to make a living do.

[mondo joe]

204. I think what matters is having an infrastructure than provides for the minimal needs

and fair opportunities (adequate access to health care, education, etc), and that it is supported by a progressive tax system.

From there, if people have earned their fortune without violating others' rights, and pay their taxes, they have met the threshold of what is called for. From there, whatever else they want to do (and arguably SHOULD do) is gravy.

[blindpig]

213. I understand they're very tasty and are best served

the sooner the better.

It won't cure all of our ills, just most of them.

[jberryhill]

217. Bill Gates has done more for Africa than I ever will

I can tell you that much.

[sadiesworld]

219. How you "feel" about the uber wealthy isn't terribly

important, deluding yourself that you have more in common with them than with your neighbors and fellow worker bees is a problem.

[mdmc]

220. they havve a hard time gettin in to heaven