Rather than shouting "we hate rich people!" maybe DU could shout "we hate income disparity!"

[Political Heretic]

Income disparity.

This is the real evil.

The problem isn't that some people have more money than other people. The problem isn't that some people have been very well rewarded in their careers. It's pointless and counter productive to start making sweeping generalizations about every person out there who has more money than you do (which is the closest definition of "rich" DU has so far been able to agree on)...

The real problem is the ever-widening gap between richest and poorest Americans. The real problem is that wages have de-coupled from productivity where they used to parallel each other. Under "Reaganomics" wages continue to decline, while the economy "grew." The 400 wealthiest Americans saw their incomes double under Bush (I'll find the source in a second - reported in AP article yesterday). But DU needs to focus its anger - that wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that it happened while wages and worth for the bottom 80% of America were stagnating or declining. That's the problem. The gains of wealthiest Americans in THIS economy have been at the expense of the working-class and middle-class Americans.

That's in contrast to a time when the rich got richer at a slightly more modest pace, that kept in synch with the gradually ever-rising wages and living standards of everyone else.

Irrational sweeping generalization doesn't help anything. We need to talk about income disparity. We need to talk about the de-coupling of wages and productivity. Our goal isn't to "stick it" to rich people - our goal should be to return to a social structure in which everyone has a real shot at "making it big" if that's their desire, and where everyone can see their wages and worth grow over time.

I'm ok that I, working (currently) part time as a night desk person, only make 12$ an hour while my friend, who has been to school and specially trained, and worked his way up in a company for ten years as a computer engineer makes .... um, more. :) That seems fair to me. What isn't fair, is when our government's economic policy benefits him at MY expense.

We should be talking about that.

[begin_within]

1. Thanks... now I have a slogan for the BACK of my sign as well!

[Blue Dog Dominion]

166. I only hate the rich that tell me what to do with my money.

Especially those that "got theirs" and are so fucking wealthy that whatever scam they try to foist on the rest of us won't effect their lifestyle one iota.

ESPECIALLY those that never earned one red cent of their money. I'm looking at you Kennedy Klan.

[Confusious]

2. Well then I would be lying

because I do hate rich people. I think the lying part is worse.

[Political Heretic]

So what's the dollar amount when you start to hate someone?

I just want to know a figure....

[Rosa Luxemburg]

15. when they get $1 million bonuses

[Political Heretic]

17. Obama got some pretty big bonuses for his book - and several million from the circuit

Do you hate him?

Or is it perhaps not that someone has X amount of money but HOW they get that money that you dislike?

[Rosa Luxemburg]

21. probably

[Political Heretic]

28. Probably to which? That you hate Obama or that you probably hate how they get the money?

[Oregone]

49. Speaking for myself...

Id say probably that I hate him because he has a guaranteed existence of absolute luxury till death (not just sustenance), and money and means beyond such (collecting interest and appreciating), yet some of his assets collect dust as people around him starve. Fine, he will probably make a good president, but as a human, how can one be so blind (including Warren Buffet even)? How can someone hold the keys to some other child's ability eat, to learn, to have shelter...how can someone know that giving such a key would in no way hurt them self with their massive amounts of wealth, and yet, how can they still bank it as people starve and suffer?

But the real question for the night...how can someone question other's justification to hate the rich? Thats is really fuckn sickening, you know.



BTW, while you are sitting here making excuses for the rich and deriding the People's criticism, They are sitting in private making fun of your slave ass and talking about how they can manipulate you to vote for them. Yeah, you may think Im outta line but maybe I had an opportunity to crash one of those private functions for a few years, and maybe I know a bit how this shit works, you think? Oh yeah, there are two Americas you there, and be assured, one of them doesn't give two fucks about you, as long as you buy their shit, work at their plants, and vote for them. Cynical, or realistic, take your pick.

[Hippo_Tron]

107. Warren Buffet is leaving nearly all of his money to charity in his will

[Oregone]

109. Im well aware

And Im glad its made him appreciate the size of his large, effective penis as its sat there in the meantime. A lot of good "nearly all his money" will do until he is rotting 6 feet under. Oh my, how saintly.

[Hippo_Tron]

112. You need to think these things through

Warren Buffet is literally the savviest investor on the planet. Sure he could have decided when he made his first billion "hey I don't need most of this, I think I'll give most of it away." Or he could keep investing it so that he will be able to donate exponentially more than that when he dies. Last year his net worth was $62 billion (I'm sure it's currently somewhat less than that due to the financial crisis). But regardless keeping his money and investing it is the best way to make sure that the most possible amount of money gets to the poor at the end of the day. Unless of course, you think that there won't be any poor people anymore by the time Warren Buffet is dead.

[Oregone]

146. "keeping his money and investing it is the best way to make sure that the most possible amoun...."

Right, Im sure that was his motivation. :sarcasm:

The Bentley didn't hurt either.

[Hippo_Tron]

176. Why does motivation matter more than action?

Motivation doesn't feed the hungry or provide medicine for the sick, action does. Buffet's actions will fight provide more money for the hungry and the sick than your suggested course of action.

[Two Americas]

177. effective versus ineffective action

Those controlling all the wealth can always say "I am doing something and you are just whining."

They have the resources to "do something" and it is not fair that a few get to decide what will and will not be done.

Besides, poor people are always generous and do much to help others without any fanfare. I cannot imagine how anyone can have their eyes open and live in modern American society and not know that poor people are vastly more generous than wealthy people are. Grabbing and tightly holding onto resources is how people succeed in this system. A few then feel guilty and give a little back, but that doesn't change anything about the situation.

It is not great sacrifice for a multi-billionaire to give a billion away. Rather than saying "oh isn't Gates wonderful, he gave a billion away" we should be asking "how did he accumulate so much that he CAN give a billion away without sacrificing a thing or suffering in the least?"

[Hippo_Tron]

210. You assume that I'm arguing that charity is the solution

And that is not what I am arguing. What I am arguing is that given the current system we live in where the rich are taxed very little and more of our tax dollars go to bombs and tanks than to helping the poor people, Buffet has chosen a very humanitarian course with his money.

Now in an ideal system, billionaires would pay far more in taxes to alleviate the suffering of others. I don't presume that Buffet's philanthropy is the solution. The solution is that the government should aim to wipe out poverty and that does indeed require wealth redistribution.

But universal health care, a second war on poverty, and fixing our public education system looks a lot cheaper when you compare it to how much we spend on "defense" every year. Assuming we cut down on military spending (which we need to) when we get done taxing billionaires to pay for all of this, many of them will still be billionaires.

At that point we should indeed talk about whether we should tax more for foreign aid, however the process of global wealth redistribution is far more complicated than the process of national wealth redistribution.

I agree that the solution to this problem is a left wing solution and not philanthropy. However, I don't approach this by inherently assuming that if somebody acquired massive amounts of wealth that it was due to the suffering of others. It may be due to what Marxists often call the exploitation of others, which is basically that if you work for someone your labor is being exploited by your employer. Whether or not this is exploitation or not, I do not support ending it by ending capitalism entirely and moving to socialist ownership of production.

While I do not support redistribution to alleviate "exploitation" I do support it to alleviate suffering. If there are poor, sick, homeless, etc. then rich people should be taxed to the extent that is necessary to alleviate these problems as much as government possibly can. Social democracy, in my view, has proven to be the best system to alleviate suffering. If I had to be poor but could choose any country in the world to live in, it would probably be between France, Canada, England, or Germany. All of these countries are social democracies.

But if you think that alleviating exploitation according to the Marxist definition is necessary as well, then you would need a more left wing system than social democracy. That is where we would part ways.

[Oregone]

218. You are assuming these mega rich do not have the power to fundamentally change this system

Instead, they are producing lip service and postmortem philanthropy (which requires them exacerbating wealth disparity in the first place). Are people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet just playing the game as powerless capitalist with our best interest at heart, or do they actually have an ability to fundamentally make a change with their resources? Look, being that Buffet is waiting mostly upon his death to make some impact, I'm not holding my breath for him to make a systematic change while alive.

[Hippo_Tron]

221. What would you suggest Warren Buffet do?

We're not talking about all rich people here we're talking about Warren Buffet, one individual. Buffet was last year worth $60 billion (that was pre-financial crisis, I'm sure it's less now). While that's exponentially more than the average person could even fathom making in their lifetime, it's still a tiny fraction of a percent of all of the wealth in the United States. In other words, he can't unilaterally do a whole lot more to change the entire system than you or I could do.

But since you seem to have all of the answers, I'll throw the question to you. If you had $60 billion at your disposal how do you think it would be best used to alleviate human suffering?

[Oregone]

224. Well, after calculating the assets needed to fulfill my primary responsibility...

which is to ensure my family never starves, has adequate health care and resources, I would take the other 59.995 billion or so and create an active endowed non-profit that does 2 things:

1) Acquires majority ownership of successful capitalistic corporations operating in economically depressed regions and implement a system such that the workers are paid in partial ownership of the companies, such that, after x amount of years 100% of the shares will be employee owned (and they will receive dividends from the profits of their labor).

2) Use the other portion of my wealth to create an effective early prevention program for these areas (that the businesses are operated in) such that children are all provided with adequate food, clothing, and education as a means to re-compensate the families for the years of work they performed and were not proportionally rewarded (including aid for the parents to ensure the environment was safe, secure and nurturing). This is essentially means to stop the endless cycle of poverty and create the future workers of the factories (And believe it or not, things like this have in fact been done, which some endowments granting free college for all graduates in certain counties).

To follow this, I would recruit the help of other mass billionaires to contribute to this movement. I would ensure the success of these companies by launching a nation-wide ad blitz focused on "Buy American, From Real Americans" (not from the fake greedy ass owners that enslave you). I would make it trendy and the "right" thing to do to buy these products, which cater, at fine prices and quality, to struggling families.

By doing this I would, 1) empower the American worker by giving them ownership over the means of production, 2) end the cycle of indentured servitude in these places, 3) create a nation wide movement among the lower classes to only purchase from ethically responsible companies that are owned by the workers, and 4) create a fundamental economic shift that may change the system we live in.

Ah, but Ive had a few beers and thats the first thing that comes to mind. So eh, fuck it. Maybe Id buy a Harley or 14 and sponsor Bike gangs.

[Hippo_Tron]

226. And I think if you had $60 trillion you could do all of that on a macro level

With $60 billion you could only do it on a micro level. You would wind up with a few socialist enclaves in the developing world but no movement to spread them and they may or may not last given how many of these countries are war torn. And you know as well as I do that the other billionaires wouldn't help you, they would fight you. Your movement would likely not gain a whole lot of steam in America for that reason.

But hey that's my opinion. Maybe it would work.

[Oregone]

201. Buffets actions of becoming super rich while living...

depended on him participating in the capitalistic system that enslaves and keeps a massive amount of people poor. Income disparity has a price. His postmortem philanthropy does not negate the victims of his capitalistic activities.

[Hippo_Tron]

209. We live in a capitalist system whether Buffet wants us to or not

In my view, Buffet's actions are the best possible course given our system. Now do I think that we would all be better off if most of Buffet's estate were taxed instead of him giving it to the Gates foundation? I think the answer is probably yes, so long as the government actually uses the money to help poor people instead of building more bombs and tanks. We would also be better off if Buffet paid a drastically higher tax rate while he is alive than he does now. Buffet has said that himself.

[Oregone]

220. Of course, Buffets actions are for "the best in the best of all possible worlds" n/t

[Two Americas]

110. doesn't much matter

Control over resources is what matters.

There will always be generous people. There were kind and humane slave owners, too.

Rick Warren says he is going to leave all his money to charity when he dies, too.


..

[Hippo_Tron]

114. If all billionaires followed Buffet's example it would matter

Control of resources would shift hands because that control would no longer be inherited.

[Two Americas]

116. no it wouldn't

The people should not be forced to rely on the generosity of those who took the wealth out if the community to begin with.

If a certain percentage of thieves gave their stolen money back when they died, would that then make stealing OK, because if all crooks did that it would improve things?

At issue here is whether or not a system that rewards predation and exploitation, and moves wealth from the producers into the hands of the few, the investors and financial industry, is desirable. It is not about whether or not rich people are swell folks or something.

[Hippo_Tron]

121. I didn't say "a few" I said "all"

And it's not about the fact that the money goes to charity, it's about the fact that the money doesn't stay in the same family for generation after generation.

Additionally I do in fact believe that social democracy, a philosophy which generally includes a certain degree of capitalism, can and does work. If you think that the only solution is more toward the Marxist end of the spectrum than social democracy then we'll probably have to agree to disagree.

[Two Americas]

125. understood

I do think that moving to the Left is the only solution, yes. I am not a right winger. That means move to the Left to find a solution.

Yes, if we could reform mankind, then we would have no murderers and the world would be wonderful. That is the realm of religion, and have at it. Meanwhile, we have public systems to protect the rest of us from those who would murder.

Maybe you can pray, or visualize, or enlighten the greed and authoritarianism out of the greedy and bullying few. Have at it. In the meantime, we need public systems to protect the many from the predations of the few.

[bread_and_roses]

142. exactly. it's about the system, not the personalities (n/t)

[CTyankee]

160. Exactly. We used to do that by taxing estates at a certain amount and under the pukes we kept

raising the amount where the estate tax would kick in and then we set to abolish it. It made since to raise the amount at a certain point where middle class people amassed some "wealth" due to the increased value of their homes and maybe some investments. That was the case with my mother and she lived modestly.

In this country's history we have always kept the estate tax when we went to war, except with GW Bush's two wars when we did exactly the opposite. This is stupid as well as criminal.

[creeksneakers2]

149. One person's gain doesn't translate into another person's loss

If I bake 100 pies and sell them for $10 each I'll make $1000. In return for my $1000 I've given the public $1000 worth of pies. So I haven't taken anything. I've produced $1000 worth of goods.

[Oregone]

154. Wrong. There is a limited amount of resources and wealth.

For one person to collect and hoard a massive percentage of them deprives others the opportunity to do so. Normally the collection of such wealth comes from the others actually who create the product working for companies they don't have "ownership" of, who also use their wages to buy other products from the rich.

BTW, baking pies doesn't create "wealth" (they are perishable and will be gone and non-existent). The brick mason and iron workers who bought your overpriced pies created product and wealth, and shifted it to you. For you to collect $1000, you will have to extract that wealth from the public. If you place it away in a bank, not to be touched until your death, the wealth you have accumulated is shifted out of the economic cycle.

[creeksneakers2]

156. There is not limited wealth

If there were, GDP wouldn't go up most years. Is the amount of wealth now only what it was 100 years ago?

If I work 20 hours of overtime I've produced 1.5 times the amount I did when I worked 40 hours. That .5 is additional wealth I've created.

Computers and cell phones make people more productive. That's more wealth to go around.

The bank doesn't let the $1000 sit in a vault and mold away. They lend it to someone who puts it to use.

My pies aren't overpriced. Every person who bought one chose to because he'd rather have the pie than the $10 and if he could have found a better deal he would have taken it.

What's missing from your post is the reality that both workers and entrepreneurs working together create things. Where would one be without the other?

[Oregone]

159. Labor in itself is not a guaranteed production of wealth

Its important to realize this. Sometimes it is merely a shifting of wealth, especially when no product is produced. Everyone who works doesn't automatically, magically, infinitely create wealth. This is fictitious and wrong.

And no, wealth is not unlimited. There is a limited amount of resources/product. Wealth is the ability to purchase and control such resources. There cannot be more wealth than the amount of resources to purchase (because they would be re-purchased by someone else, driving up the cost). So while the dollar figure of "wealth" constantly increases, it is an arbitrary value because we know that 100% of it can only purchase 100% of all resources.

So if 1% of people control 90% of wealth, that only leaves the possibility of 10% of it to be collected and controlled by the remaining 99% of people. Although you find that to be benevolent, I believe the conditions they create cause disparity, poverty, strife and a perpetual cycle of frustration and indentured servitude. Thats not benevolence.

[creeksneakers2]

162. When someone shifts wealth

He's providing something as valuable as labor. He's coordinating resources with needs in a more efficient manner than previously existed. That doesn't make him any better or worse than workers. He's simply performing a different part of the system to get people the things they want to buy.

I don't know where you get the idea of limited resources. Sure, there is only so much iron in the ground. But we haven't used it all and could hypothetically take twice as much next year as last year. All that could be made into steel, which could be made into other products. The supply of everything doubled.

[Oregone]

163. At any point in time...

there is a finite amount of resources/product in the economic system that can be purchase and controlled (remember, the unused iron is already purchased and owned). Yes, more product can be created (which is the generation of wealth), but remember, someone already owns the iron mine, the steel plant, the factories, and the stores they sell the final product in. When wealth is generated it rarely leaves the confines of the original owners of the means of production.

Until some iron miner can gather enough in wages to purchase his own mine (or a similar investment), he really isn't getting wealthier. Rather, he is just sustaining his existence, and in doing so, becoming a living tool the mine owner is utilizing to generate wealth for them self. The worker actually becomes a resource himself to the mine owner, with a price tag attached to him.

[Two Americas]

175. you are defending "free market" libertarianism

Which is fine, there will always be some among us doing that. But don't try to present it as something else.

[creeksneakers2]

178. It would be if I didn't believe in limits on it

[Two Americas]

183. that is an illusion

That is always a reactionary argument in terms of practical political effect.

By saying "I am on your side" you give yourself cover to then aggressively argue the opposite side. This is very common in modern liberalism and the Democratic party. We hear many variations on this. Recently we heard "don't get me wrong I support GLBTQ rights..." which would then be followed by an unleashing of all sorts of expressions of bigotry and homophobia.

You cannot argue both sides of this issue at the same time. Saying that it is OK that you promote all of the fundamental premises of "free market" libertarianism merely because you pay a little lip service to the idea of regulation is to deceive us and perhaps yourself as well.

[Oregone]

202. Limits?!? You are defending and canonizing multi-billionaires

[creeksneakers2]

211. I don't remember that

which ones?

[bobbolink]

169. Well, the RW has built a great empire with that thinking.

Look where it's gotten us.

[creeksneakers2]

179. That thinking brought us from the great depression to

become the most wealthy and powerful nation the world has known. We are better off now by multitudes. I'm talking about taxed and regulated free enterprise.

[bobbolink]

182. I stand corrected. I didn't know that baking pies brought us out of the Great Depression.

[creeksneakers2]

195. Lots of people made lots of different things

[Oregone]

204. Yes, poor farmers in Mexico made us plenty of fruits we sold in our markets for good prices.

I'm sure we paid them well.

You are equating economic success as economic righteousness. This becomes a might is right argument, essentially. Because America is "the wealthiest" nation on earth, then therefore everything it does to become so it proper. It makes no difference who or what was exploited along the way, or how many lives were crushed in the process. That is a big reason I cannot live there anymore. I know my standard of living depended on years of people around the world being taken advantage of (as well as people living in the USA). Its all an illusion if you think there are no blood on the hands of capitalism, and it has thrived because it is truly the "right" economic system.

[creeksneakers2]

212. Your descriptions of me aren't accurate

We do very well here in America. Even the poor are much better off than poor elsewhere. Where do you live? Is there somewhere that the powerful don't profit off the weak?

The poor in other countries who work for sweatshops, if they are doing so without force, are getting a better deal than they had before. Otherwise they wouldn't choose the sweatshops. Can you pay them more? Who can? The rich wouldn't be rich enough to support the world if they gave all their money away.

When corporations pack up and move overseas, why isn't the far left overjoyed? In fact, the far left is furious when some of these supposedly terrible people go elsewhere.

[Oregone]

217. It humorous how you write off being poor in America...

Their drastically high infant mortality rate, their high rate of death due to preventable disease (higher than developing countries), and the proven brain developmental problems due to poor nutrition are nothing to scoff at. Pretty electronics do little to alleviate the pain of being poor and hungry in America. If you do not understand this, you are out of touch. There is an America they do not show on TV, you know.

[anaxarchos]

223. And your description of America isn't very accurate either...

In America, life expectancy is lower than in 41 other countries; infant mortality is higher than in 29 - and has actually increased - and maternal mortality rates are higher than in 35 other countries. Some 45 million people have no health insurance coverage and almost unique among industrialized countries, Americans lose their health coverage when they are laid off. Annually, more than 3.5m people suffer homelessness, 1.35m of them children. Some 35m people, about 10% of the population suffer from hunger.

Employment has been falling absolutely for the last year and at an accelerating rate. In 2008 2.6m people lost their jobs, 1.9m in just the last 4 months of the year. The official unemployment rate is now 7.2%, but in some localities it is more than twice that. If you calculate unemployment the way that it was calculated twenty years ago, it is twice the official rate and almost three times that rate if you go back to the way it was calculated in the 1940s. The share of employees with a work-related pension fell from 50.6% in 1979 to 42.8% in 2006. 60% of male workers have a real hourly wage that is absolutely lower than it was in 1979.

Physically, the United States itself is literally on the verge of collapsing: of almost 600,000 bridges, more than 25% are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete; half the locks on 12,000 miles of inland waterways are functionally obsolete; more than 3,300 dams are unsafe or deficient, many of them susceptible to large flooding events or earthquakes; the highways need more than $150 billion annually spent to maintain and improve them, but receive less than half that; Americans spend the equivalent of 2.5m working days every year stuck in traffic; commercial airline delays and cancellations have been increasing every year. Altogether there is about $1.6 trillion of infrastructure work needed.

The social infrastructure is also in a terrible state: 30% of students fail to graduate from high-school. School spending has fallen by two-fifths since 2001 and 43% of schools are rated as "poor". Internationally, in 2006 the US was beaten in reading by 10 other countries, in scientific literacy by 22, and in mathematical literacy by 31. State expenditure on higher education have grown by 21% over the last 20 years but expenditures on prisons have grown by 127% over the same period. Over the last 30 years, prisons have displaced education as the number one budgetary item in most states.

For a country with less than 4% of the world's population, the United States has the world's largest prison population - almost 25% of all of the prisoners incarcerated anywhere in the world. One out of every one hundred people is in prison - the largest ratio for a major country in all of world history.

The overall standard of living in the U.S. is no longer even in the top two dozen of the world's nations.

But, don't let any of that bug you. You just eat your yummy meal, watch your flat-screen TV, and explain to your cat how fortunate everyone is to live in poverty here...

[bobbolink]

234. You're exactly right about the exploitation. And to think that "progressives" DENY the curing

effects of the Roosevelt New Deal is so astounding to me that all I can do is to just say to them, "You're right.... it's all a matter of besting others." There's no use trying to get through all those RW arguments anymore. People believe what they want to believe for their own purposes.

Thanks for putting it so succinctly!

[Oregone]

203. Decades of a 70-90% top marginal rate took us from a Great Depression to a wealthy nation...

That and exploiting third world countries. Enjoy you coffee today.

And hows that working out for us now, eh?

[creeksneakers2]

213. Its working great

I'm lower working class and my wife and I watched the super bowl tonight in a warm house on a 27" TV. We had a yummy dinner and dessert. I have Internet access. I have a very nice cat. I have a car too. Compared to the communist countries you think are great I think I'm very lucky. I'm probably in the lower 10% of earners.

Developing nations ("third world" is insulting to them) are better off too. What's economic growth in China now? 10%? They have terrible problems too, like pollution. But they are gaining the ability to deal with them.

Be sure to thank poor old Juan Valdez for the beans. Tell him I said he can stop selling them if he wants. Its OK with me.

[Oregone]

216. Ah ok, because for a minute, I thought you were on a verge of another depression

Congrats for success via exploitation

[treestar]

230. But it's not that simple

It may not be the system is wrong but the way the right wing has dealt with it.

[Two Americas]

174. it is raining pies!

Nice defense of trickle down economics and "free market" libertarianism there, disguised as it is.

At issue here is whether the producer of the pies or the investor in the pie company calls the shots and has the power. The right wing always tries to accuse the Left of wishing to harm some poor little baker.

[creeksneakers2]

180. It isn't trickle down

It isn't socialism either.

[Two Americas]

185. not a buffet table

Politics is not a buffet table from which we select our personal favorite from several choices.

You didn't respond to what I said about investors versus producers. Blurring the line between the two is the prime tactic used to defend trickle down "free market" libertarianism. Trying to convince us that the only alternative to that thinking is some bogey man of socialism that you then try to frighten people with is red-baiting and McCarthyism, and is also a reactionary argument that promotes and defends "free market" libertarianism.

You are trying to deceive people that you are not promoting "free market" libertarianism when you actually clearly are doing that. That is very common and very destructive, and the reason people have always done that is because they know that if they argued this point of view honestly people would reject their arguments.

[creeksneakers2]

193. Why isn't politics a buffet table?

We can pick and choose what we want. Who says we can't?

I'm not following you here, because you seem to be rejecting the libertarian model, socialism, and the mainstream liberal hybrid of the two. We not only can pick the middle course, we have since Roosevelt and its worked incredibly well.

I didn't call you a socialist. What are you? I've run into this before. Is it red baiting to call a communist a communist? I don't know what else to call them. I'm not trying to put a black mark on anybody. There are more communists here than there are moderates like me. You are calling me a libertarian, which I'm not. I think you are the one who looks like he's turning the crowd on somebody.

Investors live off producers but investors are an essential part of the system. We are now moving away from that model toward one in which crony capitalists use public money for investment rather than private. We'll see what that will produce but I think the rich benefit more and more unfairly when investment comes from the public. How much of the stimulus package will go to guys like me? None. Ever. I'd rather some rich person put his money at risk than the public.

I'm not saying public enterprises can't work because many of them do. They have their disadvantages though. Whether is was investor banks or quasi-governmental corporations, both lost lots of money on real estate.

[Two Americas]

198. because politics is a dynamic and ongoing struggle

It is an upper class point of view to play comparative systems and ideologies, and see politics as a matter of personal choices and preferences.

Let's start here:

It is not needed nor fitting here that a general argument should be made in favor of popular institutions; but there is one point, with its connections, not so hackneyed as most others, to which I ask a brief attention. It is the effort to place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor, in the structure of government. It is assumed that labor is available only in connection with capital; that nobody labors, unless somebody else, owning capital, somehow, by the use of it, induces him to labor. This assumed, it is next considered whether it is best that capital shall hire laborers, and thus induce them to work by their own consent, or buy them and drive them to it without their consent. Having proceeded thus far, it is naturally concluded that all laborers are either hired laborers, or what we call slaves. And further, it is assumed that whoever is once a hired laborer is fixed in that condition for life.

Now, there is no such relation between capital and labor as assumed, nor is there any such thing as a free man being fixed for life in the condition of a hired laborer. Both these assumptions are false, and all inferences from them are groundless.

Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.

Agree, or disagree?

[Two Americas]

199. agree, or disagree?

he age of machinery, of railroads; of steam and electricity; the telegraph and the radio; mass production, mass distribution - all of these combined to bring forward a new civilization and with it a new problem for those who sought to remain free.

For out of this modern civilization economic royalists carved new dynasties. New kingdoms were built upon concentration of control over material things. Through new uses of corporations, banks and securities, new machinery of industry and agriculture, of labor and capital - all undreamed of by the Fathers - the whole structure of modern life was impressed into this royal service.

There was no place among this royalty for our many thousands of small-businessmen and merchants who sought to make a worthy use of the American system of initiative and profit. They were no more free than the worker or the farmer. Even honest and progressive-minded men of wealth, aware of their obligation to their generation, could never know just where they fitted into this dynastic scheme of things.

It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.

The hours men and women worked, the wages they received, the conditions of their labor - these had passed beyond the control of the people, and were imposed by this new industrial dictatorship. The savings of the average family, the capital of the small-businessmen, the investments set aside for old age - other people's money - these were tools which the new economic royalty used to dig itself in.

Those who tilled the soil no longer reaped the rewards which were their right. The small measure of their gains was decreed by men in distant cities.

Throughout the nation, opportunity was limited by monopoly. Individual initiative was crushed in the cogs of a great machine. The field open for free business was more and more restricted. Private enterprise, indeed, became too private. It became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.

An old English judge once said: "Necessitous men are not free men." Liberty requires opportunity to make a living - a living decent according to the standard of the time, a living which gives man not only enough to live by, but something to live for.

For too many of us the political equality we once had won was meaningless in the face of economic inequality. A small group had concentrated into their own hands an almost complete control over other people's property, other people's money, other people's labor - other people's lives. For too many of us life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.

Against economic tyranny such as this, the American citizen could appeal only to the organized power of government. The collapse of 1929 showed up the despotism for what it was. The election of 1932 was the people's mandate to end it. Under that mandate it is being ended.

The royalists of the economic order have conceded that political freedom was the business of the government, but they have maintained that economic slavery was nobody's business. They granted that the government could protect the citizen in his right to vote, but they denied that the government could do anything to protect the citizen in his right to work and his right to live.

Today we stand committed to the proposition that freedom is no half-and-half affair. If the average citizen is guaranteed equal opportunity in the polling place, he must have equal opportunity in the market place.

These economic royalists complain that we seek to overthrow the institutions of America. What they really complain of is that we seek to take away their power. Our allegiance to American institutions requires the overthrow of this kind of power. In vain they seek to hide behind the flag and the Constitution. In their blindness they forget what the flag and the Constitution stand for. Now, as always, they stand for democracy, not tyranny; for freedom, not subjection; and against a dictatorship by mob rule and the over-privileged alike.

The brave and clear platform adopted by this convention, to which I heartily subscribe, sets forth that government in a modern civilization has certain inescapable obligations to its citizens, among which are protection of the family and the home, the establishment of a democracy of opportunity, and aid to those overtaken by disaster.

But the resolute enemy within our gates is ever ready to beat down our words unless in greater courage we will fight for them.

[Oregone]

205. "I'm not saying public enterprises can't work because many of them do. They have their disadvantages

Such as? Im just curious, you know...


BTW, I get my energy from a government owned corporation that monopolizes the region. I pay rock bottom prices to heat our place. Still, this company pays its blue collar line men $70K a year, its CEOs half a million, AND STILL generates half a billion dollars in *profits* yearly that go into government coffers. When Enron happened, there wasn't a crisis here. Im just not seeing a disadvantage to that.

[Oregone]

147. LOL. You are essentially arguing that promoting income disparity and philanthropy would end poverty

But the philanthropy would be irrelevant in the long run until people died. For someone to be that rich, millions must be slaves to the capitalistic system. Giving back to the slaves he helped create won't end poverty. It will probably just ensure the slaves are better equipped to serve their next billionaire, and do not starve in the mean time.

[bobbolink]

170. Not to mention that slaves who can't work are left to die. How "progressive"

[Hannah Bell]

128. so he tells us. over & over & over.

bruce springsteen tells us offshoring jobs is bad.

but he takes walmart's checks.

rhetoric & pr does not accurately represent reality.

He's giving 85% of stock currently valued at 37 billion to the gates foundation, of which he is a trustee, in decreasing yearly donations, which end if bill & melinda are no longer trustees, with the condition they spend the donation rather than add it to the foundation principal (thus ensuring he controls the spending of the largest bequests until he dies). i'd bet there are further strings we don't know of as well.

He's giving the rest to foundations controlled by his kids.

http://www.monsanto.com/features/rob_horsch.asp

"Rob Horsch Says Goodbye to Monsanto

In November 2006, after 25 years of service with Monsanto and its predecessor companies, Rob Horsch will join the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as senior program officer, focusing on improving crop yields in sub-Saharan Africa. His career at Monsanto has been a distinguished one, including sharing with three other Monsanto scientists the United States National Medal of Technology in 1998. Here he talks about agriculture and his Monsanto career."

March 19, 2008

KAMPALA – The African Agricultural Technology Foundation (AATF) today announced a public-private partnership to develop drought-tolerant maize varieties for Africa...

AATF will work with the non-profit International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT); the private agricultural company, Monsanto; and the national agricultural research systems in the participating countries. The new drought-tolerance technologies have already been licensed without charge to AATF so they can be developed, tested, and eventually distributed to African seed companies through AATF without royalty and made available to smallholder farmers.

Bokanga added that the project will involve local institutions, both public and private, and in the process expand their capacity and experience in crop breeding, biotechnology, and biosafety.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Howard G. Buffett Foundation contributed a total of $47 million to this effort."

http://www.monsanto.com/droughttolerantcorn/WEMA.asp

Howard Buffett - that's Warren's son's foundation.

Nice rich people! Kind, good, generous rich people!

[Hippo_Tron]

130. I don't see the problem

The man wants to control where his money goes. It's still going to philanthropic organizations and, more importantly, most of it is not going to his kids. Keeping all of one's wealth within the family is how we get people like George W Bush who have tremendous access to power that they have not earned and thus are not good at handling.

[Hannah Bell]

132. the buffett kids will control more wealth than the bush kids did.

foundations are a policy-making arm of the ruling class.

how is it that the gates & buffett families get to make agricultural policy for the entire continent of africa?

Howard Graham Buffett (born December 16, 1954) is the elder son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

Howard G. Buffett grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has been active in business, politics, agriculture, conservation, photography and philanthropy. Buffett has written more than half a dozen books on conservation, wildlife, and the human condition, and has written articles and opinion pieces for The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. In 1996, Harvard published his thesis, The Partnership of Biodiversity and High-Yield Agricultural Production. Buffett then wrote On The Edge: Balancing Earth's Resources.

...In 2007, Buffett was named an Ambassador Against Hunger by the United Nations World Food Programme. Buffett has served in elected office in Nebraska, on several United States Trade Representative Advisory Committees and as Chairman of the Nebraska Ethanol Board.

He currently is a member of the Commission on Presidential Debates. He is on the corporate boards of Berkshire Hathaway, ConAgra Foods, Lindsay Manufacturing and Sloan Implement Company; previously serving on the boards of Archer Daniel Midland, Coca-Cola Enterprises and The GSI Group."


Board of ARCHER-DANIELS MIDLAND & CONAGRA, funding Monsanto's research, Nebraska Ethanol Board, Lindsay, GSI, sloane implement, does that give you a clue about the self-serving nature of such *charity*????

http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:HmaxwM2m1tYJ:www.grainnet.com/companies/GSI_Group__LLC.html+GSI+Group&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=7&gl=us

http://www.lindsaymanufacturing.com/

[bread_and_roses]

143. excellent and too-often forgotten point

and another reason why "charity" is not the answer.

[Confusious]

20. Generally, its not so much about money

As the fact most of them are arrogant, I can buy and sell you, I'm more important then you

ASSHOLEs

If I find one thats a decent person worth the skin he's in, well I don't hate him. But thats only happened twice maybe three times, and they weren't really all that rich, maybe a mill or two.

[Political Heretic]

29. nice.

Now we're getting somewhere.

[Oregone]

46. When they have everything the need, and then some; a life of luxury and the whole 9 yards...

And enough assets leftover to feed a troupe, yet they can still look at a hungry homeless man without a twinge of pain in their shallow gut. That the dollar-fuckn-amount I hate them at. Got a problem with that?

[Political Heretic]

78. And you've appointed yourself judge of when their needs are met...

...when they do or don't feel guilt, and whether they have or have not done enough.

The guy making 200,000$ a year - he and his family probably don't "need" that much money to live. Are they rich?

No? Why not? They make money in excess to what they need. So they should be hated right?

Wait who defined "need?" Is it objective?

What if the family of four was living on $50,000 a year instead? Are they not living in excess? What if they have two used cars instead of one? What about their internet connection? Come to think of it.... why are YOU typing on the internet right now? Shouldn't you be using that money to feed someone else? You sick fuck! /Judge on!

What about a family living at the United States Poverty line? That's still a hundred times more than other places in the world....


So yeah... I have a problem with absolutists who think they can, without any understanding of context or variables, make knee-jerk reactionary statements.

I hope to get no response to this post, because you've recognized your hypocrisy and canceled your internet service, giving that money instead to your local food bank.

[Oregone]

100. The point it over your head

It isn't about people who have a little extra some months, like that family of 4 on $50,000 a year. It isn't about some guy like me who needs a computer to perform his job and is utilizing someone else's WIFI. Its about those who thrive, living the lifestyle of only the upper echelon, GUARANTEED FOR LIFE based on their current wealth, and STILL, after meeting sustenance, after meeting thriving status, after a guarantee of perpetual luxury FOR LIFE, they still need to hoard, hoard, hoard more wealth that does nothing but collect dust while people starve.

Its not about those with a little extra they can do without. Its about those with a financial guarantee of food, shelter, clothing, transportation, and absolute luxury who still need to obtain more they cannot possible utilize. As a human who did not win that lottery, I will fulfill my natural role and hate them as I should.

You keep carrying water for the sick fucks that think of you as a slave. Yes, I may be crude and up front about my feeling, so Ill remain cast out in the field at my own accord. Fortunately for you, they'll let you in their house to clean up after their messes, so long as you don't leave any dirty fingerprints or piss on their rug like the animal they think you are. You seem to have an infinite more amount of respect for them than they have for you.

[Political Heretic]

102. It's not that I disagree with the principle. It's that I disagree that you're an effective judge

Of who has an appropriate balance between their money and their needs and who doesn't.

Certainly on the extreme ends we can probably all agree. The multi-billionare with fifteen Yachts and no clue or care that anyone goes hungry is probably worthy of criticism. But the devil's in the details. And it all falls apart as you move in from those polls.

The only thing I'm "carrying water for" is reality. Reality is a world that isn't binary. Not all people with more money than you suck. Not all people with less money than you rule. There are better ways to work and act for social transformation that looks to have a geunine shot of coming in our lifetime. And having simply, unsophisticated, blanket generalizations about people without any context, or knowledge of particulars is just categorically stupid.

[SteelPenguin]

219. This

This is one of the best posts I've read on DU in a while.

[creeksneakers2]

152. If they aren't consuming all the wealth

The rest goes to investments which create jobs and goods. I think the people who are rich but consume less than they can are benevolent.

[Oregone]

153. Oh yes, rich people are so benevolent

Dont beat me massa. You so good to me massa.

You've revealed yourself to be the perfect slave.

If someone has more than they can consume, it doesn't make them benevolent. It makes them attribute to extreme income disparity and poverty. That is anything but benevolence.

[creeksneakers2]

155. I'm not a slave

Just because someone has more money than me does not make me their slave. Some people have less than me. Are they my slaves?

Compare the opposite of what you say is not benevolent. Suppose an heir takes a working company and takes money out to satisfy his crack habit until the company fails. The workers get laid off and the products are no longer available. That person consumed more than he had. I call that kind of thing greed.

[Oregone]

158. And I call it greed when anyone hoards more resources than they can ever, ever possible consume

And many of these people "stimulate" the "economy" (create jobs) by "investing" it in exclusive clubs called hedge funds, including Johnny "two Americas" Edwards who made millions yearly on this "investment". Unfortunately, some of these exclusive, benevolent, job creating investment funds operate by performing hostile mergers of vulnerable companies and laying off workers. Now thats benevolence.

People who own companies (the shareholders), especially with the trickle down voodoo economic theories as of late, do more harm to the companies than anyone. In the last decade, their motivation hasn't been preserving the jobs for the workers, but rather, extracting as much wealth from the private companies to sit in their bank accounts. Never have we seen earnings so heavily turned into "profits" than lately. You have people working in factories who are be eaten up by the obsolete machines, simply because some benevolent shareholder didn't want to spring for safer equipment because they wanted their annual per share dividend to be 2 cents higher. Benevolence of bullshit?

What do I fucken care? There is a reason America has the lowest rate of Intergenerational Mobility (American Dream) among industrialized nations (and your attitude is part of that). Who am I to give a damn what you let yourself become?

[LanternWaste]

172. And even those on the lowest rung of the American economic social scale

And even those on the lowest rung of the American economic social scale would appear to live like kings to a family of seven living in abject poverty in Rwanda. And I imagine that for each console game we purchase, for each I-Pod we buy, with each new CD we get, that family in Rwanda would increasingly say the precise same thing about us that you applied to "the rich."

One man's pauper is another man's king-- so I imagine it's a pretty good thing that your hatred for those who purchase the entertainments, the conveniences and the foods we ourselves buy is not directed at us from that family.

What we perceive as a moderate and genteel existence is still far more than most of the world will ever have a chance to partake of. I imagine that we ourselves are "sick fucks" for carrying that particular bit of water at the expense of the truly impoverished and hungry-- but at least we get to watch DVD's and play computer games...

[Oregone]

206. You are forgetting relative poverty and the psychological impact

To be incredibly poor, "one of them", in America can have a profound impact on an individual. To be poor where everyone else is, well, you just play soccer and help put food on the table. In both situations, there is extreme strife to reach sustenance level (to put food on the table and secure shelter). There really is. But in a place where everyone is poor, there is community, acceptance, and understanding. Here, there is the Real OC on MTV, telling everyone what their life really should be like.

BTW, US lags massively on deaths attributed to preventable disease, as well as quite a high infant mortality rate. There are also recent studies showing that the poor have massive neurological disabilities and problems with brain development (due to environment and nutrition). To scoff at these "sick fucks" for complaining is disgusting. There is a real impact to being poor in America.

[LanternWaste]

228. Well... we still get to play your console games and listen to mp3's.

Well... we still get to play console games and listen to mp3's and that family in Rwanda is still hungry, and life goes one...

[Oak2004]

243. Do you have a clue what that lowest rung looks like?

It looks like people living in boxes, huddling on grates to keep warm, harassed by police, beaten by kids "having fun", starving, and dying.

Tell me the poor in Rwanda envy that. I'd bet they'd be more likely to pity it, given that they at least can hunt for bush meat.

[Hannah Bell]

135. The poster, so far as I know, controls no companies, factories, croplands,

workforces, politicians, research institutes, or foundations.

Warren Buffett & Bill Gates & three of their friends could buy the entire continent of africa.

[Hippo_Tron]

227. Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and 3 of their friends couldn't fund the US defense budget for a year

I don't see how they could buy the entire continent of Africa.

[Hannah Bell]

235. gdp of kenya = 29 billion. gates & buffett fortunes = about 1 trillion.

[Hippo_Tron]

237. Warren Buffet's net worth is about $68 billion, Gates' is about $58 billion

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/10/billionaires08_Warren-Buffett_C0R3.html

And that was pre-financial crisis, so I would imagine they are worth substantially less in 2009 than they were in 2008. Also GDP is only what a country produces in a year. In order to determine how much a country is "worth" one would have to add up the total value of the nation's assets and then subtract the total value of the nations' liabilities and even for Kenya I suspect that woud be substantially more than $29 billion.

Northern Africa also includes several oil rich nations.

[Hannah Bell]

239. and the gates foundation endowment is 35 billion, & the buffett foundations

together have over 3 billion. So that's about 150 billion.

So maybe they & their friends could only buy half of africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African_countries_by_GDP

[Hippo_Tron]

240. They could probably afford Liberia and have some left over

But I don't think they could purchase Kenya, or half of Africa for that matter.

[Hannah Bell]

241. well, egypt supposedly bought or rented 2 million acres of uganda for $1/acre.

http://www.monitor.co.ug/artman/publish/news/Egypt_claims_2_million_acres_of_Ugandan_land_72097.shtml

but - hyperbole, dude. 5% interest on 50 billion = 2.5 billion means gates gets 8.6% of kenyan gdp/year just for breathing, i.e. 2.7 million people's worth of income.

[bvar22]

196. My personal gauge:

When someone reaches a level of wealth, arrogance, and sociopathy where they feel entitled to a "Golden Parachute"...that is where I draw the line.
At THAT point, it is ME against THEM.....and that includes most members of our Ruling Class in Washington.

[Oregone]

207. Whats sad about this...

"and that includes most members of our Ruling Class in Washington"

It makes you pretty cynical of politicians, despite if they have a D or R after their name. I mean, I honestly cannot feel hope or optimism anymore because They call the shots. Every 4 years they redress it up with a pretty speech into a pink pill for the other half of America to swallow, but in the end, the same fundamental structure that is strangling us remains in place. Right or wrong?

My old Senator Wyden seems like a guy I could trust, but you know...its tough to swallow anymore in all.

[NeedleCast]

157. It's funny that you're using Confusious as a handle

and talking about hating people...

[Initech]

3. The idea of hating the rich goes back to Marie Antionette.

So I dont think we'll be getting rid of that idea any time soon.

[leftstreet]

4. So you're saying more people should be able to be rich

our goal should be to return to a social structure in which everyone has a real shot at "making it big"

:shrug:

[Political Heretic]

9. It says that.. if you leave out a few words.

... "if that's their desire."

[Confusious]

5. We could make it longer also

We hate the top 1% having 90% of the wealth of the country, leaving the rest of us to eat dirt!

Think it would go well on a sign, if I use really small letters?

But then no one would be able to read it!

SCREW THE RICH!

Sounds good... on the sign it goes!

[Political Heretic]

13. So, what's the dollar figure when you start hating people, then?

Just want to know where the cutoff is

[Confusious]

22. com'on man

Your really harshing the buzz here.

[undergroundpanther]

6. The greedy create the needy

If we had no bazillionbillionairs, no one would be hungry or homeless,There IS enough,when a few are NOT taking most of it for themselves.
I hate the rich who cause income disparity!

[Greyhound]

23. *crickets*

[Political Heretic]

32. Hardly.

[Political Heretic]

31. That would be policy makers.

[w4rma]

93. The rich, in general, lobby those policy makers to keep the wealth gap growing. (nt)

[Two Americas]

119. lobby them?

Buy them. Control them. Own them.

The wealthy few have bought the government.

[Two Americas]

115. of course

Because it is about dominance, not money. It is about bullying and it is about controlling others.

There is more than enough for everyone to be comfortable. People who continue to amass wealthy after they are comfortable and secure are behaving in a destructive and anti-social way. And, no, it is not "human nature" and therefor excusable, anymore than rape or murder are. A small percentage of the people are driven to this sort of dominance and control, just as a small percentage of the people are driven to rape and murder. We don't say "oh well, it is human nature" and then organize the whole society around the needs and desires of rapists and murderers. Why organize society around the needs and desires of the bullying and greedy few? That makes no more sense.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

139. Not even remotely true.

Because the amount produced is not a constant.

Any change to society that meant that there were no longer any very rich people would also massively disadvantage everyone else, too.

The invention that did most to make the industrial revolution possible was the corporation.

There are certainly changes that would reduce the number of very rich people that would benefit everyone else, but nowhere near as dramatically as most DUers would like.

[harun]

164. Look at all the starving Indians Columbus found when he arrived here because they

didn't have any gazillionaires to rain down compassion on them yet.

Horse shit example Don.

[Two Americas]

181. clearly false

If we are going to exchange simple-minded little slogans and bromides, here is mine:

What if everyone took a vow of poverty? None would be in poverty.

By the way, the the corporation was the "invention" against which the colonists rebelled in the American Revolution, as well as the invention against which the people in all of the British colonies rebelled.

The "invention" that made the industrial revolution possible in Britain was the Enclosure Acts, which drove the people from their communal and cooperative rural agricultural existence and into slums where they became a desperate and easily exploitable workforce. It was not technology and it was not capital and it was not corporations.

It us impossible to separate out your naive notions about "progress" from the ruthless exploitation of the people without completely re-writing history.

"Most DUers" are very moderately to the political Left in their views. Yet you say they go too far? Forgive me if I question just which side you are on in the struggle.

[NashVegas]

186. Enclosure Raises Its Head Again With Genetic Engineering and Intellectual Property Rights

On mere ideas that haven't even been fleshed out.

[Two Americas]

187. yes

And keep in mind that all of the research and technology that then gets corralled, controlled and exploited for profiteering by the ruthless few was developed on the public dollar.

Also, in agriculture the innovations get "fleshed out" just fine without any intervention by Wall Street and always have. Were that not true, we would have famine in this country today. The movement toward patenting and copyrighting and controlling crops will most certainly lead to famine.

The argument that we need Wall Street in order to "flesh out" ideas and bring them to the public is an age-old excuse for exploitation and tyrannical rule by the few.

[blindpig]

245. Help me! Help me! I'm doomed without the rich.

Where do you think that wealth came from? It was expropriated from workers. They make nothing, we make everything, how dare they command the fruits of our labor as they will?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

140. Dupe, delete

[valerief]

7. Nah, I hate the rich. You know why? They don't share. nt

[undergroundpanther]

11. Same reason I hate them

And not only do they not share they take as much as they can from those who have much,much less and are shameless about it.

[valerief]

25. And the richer they are, the more they hate to pay their bills. nt

[Political Heretic]

14. Actually, many people with means do share. A lot.

I know the concept of "philanthropists" isn't something you hear a lot about in western corporate media but, you should look into it.

[valerief]

18. No, more rich people should share. nt

[Confusious]

24. Yea,

Talk to Ariana Huffington about that. She used to think that the people willing to give money would help the poor.

Not so much anymore.

[Career Prole]

47. Okay. We'll look into that.

A great deal of the public attention about philanthropy is generated by large, dramatic gifts by really rich people—the types who tend to be unaffected by short-term economic fluctuations. But while splashy donations like the $100 million the Blackstone Group's Steven Schwarzman commited to the New York Public Library might garner large headlines, or land a donor on the "Slate 60," such megagifts in 2006 represented just 1.3 percent of overall donations, according to Giving USA. Rather, it's the smaller donations by hundreds of millions of nonbillionaire Americans that fuel most of the nation's nonprofits.

Newsweek: The Coming Charity Crisis

And it's probably fair to say that tax considerations drive most of the donations of the wealthy, while the rest of us give for no other reason than it's the right thing to do.

[valerief]

232. Thanks for the facts! The super-rich really don't share. nt

[Donnachaidh]

51. and that *sharing* always involves tax breaks -- have you noticed?

:eyes:

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

89. Should it not?

[Political Heretic]

103. First of all, no it doesn't. Second of all, so what?

[Runcible Spoon]

148. You were schooled on this in the other thread and you still insist on repeating untruths

Most massive philanthropies are run like corporations and do really fucking stupid things like hedge fund investing. They rarely dip into their actual principles and instead whatever work they do is skimmed from the interest. There are MASSIVE tax incentives for giving to philanthropies:

http://www.portfolio.com/resources/business-intelligence/2008/03/31/Tax-Benefits-of-Philanthropy

[Political Heretic]

161. This paragraph

"Surprisingly, many investors who engage in charitable giving—as much as 45 percent, according to some research—don't realize that multiple tax breaks are available to them, Kimberley Wright-Violich, president of Schwab Charitable in San Francisco, says."

[valerief]

233. Yeah, but their tax accountants know it! nt

[JI7]

26. it's not always the rich, it's people like "joe the phony plumber"

who are there to prop them up .

[valerief]

30. And men with guns who protect them and their interests. nt

[Two Americas]

236. why is that?

As the Democratic party abandoned standing strongly and speaking out for the traditional principles and ideals of the party and the organized labor movement, the people have become more and more susceptible to the rabble rousing of the Republicans.

The right wingers, and their wealthy and powerful clients, have always been with us and have not changed. The only way they can gain the sort of power that they have is when their is an absence of any serious opposition, and the only way that can happen is when the Democrats insist that they are that opposition when they really are not, and then ruthlessly suppress any other forms of opposition to the right wing and devote more time and energy to destroying the Left than they do to fighting the right wing. That is exactly what has been happening.

Don't blame Joe the Plumber.

Blame Nancy the deeply conservative and authoritarian and gentrified and aristocratic and upscale "progressive" trust fund baby.

[bluestateguy]

8. Very astute

I would remind people here, BTW, that Obama carried voters making over $200,000.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls/#USP00p1

[Confusious]

35. That poll is very general

What about 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 9-10

It doesn't say he won millonaires

[bluestateguy]

37. I'm sorry

that the poll smashed your narrative.

[BlooInBloo]

10. Nah - that would disentangle the rational piece from the jealousy piece....

And the motivationally fiery aspect comes from the jealousy piece.

When 2 or more things are conflated, there's usually a reason. Maybe not a good or valid one, but a reason nonetheless.

[Confusious]

12. I also think jo-ann and jo-bob

have no idea what "income disparity" is.

is someone depressed about their income? Well SHEEE-UT I am tooo!

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

16. The behavior of the wealthy in the US...

Over the last 30 years, has been largely reprehensible. It has been a litiny of unfathomable greed, spiced up with just the right amount of cruelty, and a soucon' of boorishness.

Un-fucking-acceptable.

They have brought a lot on themselves and you know what? They know it. A lot of them are shit-scared that things are real close to getting real bad and the veneer of civil order is gonna slip and they find themselves minus their heads or something.

Which, I must say, is a thought that does have it's charms, however few.

And the richies that have done good and kind thing for society, that have let altruism guide their hand? They are decidedly in the minority. Most ain't fit to feed to the pigs. Just make them sick.

[noamnety]

19. I think that disguises the cause.

It seems like an attempt to sugar coat how our economic system works - which is that the rich get rich by exploiting the resources and labor of the poor.

It's not a problem caused equally by the rich and the poor - it's a problem caused by the greed and excessive wealth of the rich. I'd like our terms to reflect that.

[Political Heretic]

27. That sounds great except that it isn't always true.

What we have had for the last thirty years is the rich getting richer by exploiting the resources and labor of the poor. While things for one group were going up, things for another larger group were going down.

However, prior to that, yes there were some career paths and opportunities that led to hire salary jobs. I think that's fine on the off chance that, the skills, education, experience and training of a brain surgeon is worth more and in more demand than my service as a night desk clerk. I'm okay being paid less than the brain surgeon. But prior to the last 30 years, our economy was functioning in such a way where my wages were growing along with the economy, and growing as productivity rose. As the "rich" were getting "richer" - so was I. Sure, I wasn't as wealthy as the brain surgeon, but I also wasn't getting poorer while he was getting richer.

That's how things used to work. That's what we ought to be working toward again. Unless you want to scrap a market economy altogether.

[valerief]

36. Let's scrap the monetary system and make everyone rich/poor. nt

[noamnety]

38. I think that's a very narrow view of what our economy was doing

before 30 years ago. It's a view that's very focused on how our economy affected white middle class Americans prior to 30 years ago.

If you look at the history of our country, it's always been about the rich exploiting the resources and labor of those with less privilege.

[Political Heretic]

104. You are describing the history of the world, not the country

And it has never changed as long as humans have exited.

[underpants]

33. Senator Webb is on it

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=421364&mesg_id=421364

[StreetKnowledge]

34. It should be fair that those who work hard make more.

I don't think that any wealthy person should be an asshole about it, but most of the rich in America earned it one way or another. Some ripped off people of course, and those people deserve scorn. But yelling out "screw the rich!" isn't really very intelligent, is it? Even in the most socialist countries, there are still very, very wealthy people. Our challenge is to better the lives of those of us who work hard for a living. Yes, that will mean those at the top giving up some of their share. But if all we do is punish people who do work hard, how will any of us get anywhere? If those people are driven off by our behavior, they won't be using that money to provide jobs, will they?

[leftstreet]

40. Everyone with a job and an alarm clock claims they work hard

We need to throw the "work hard" mantra in the trash

[StreetKnowledge]

54. Most of us do lose out because we got unlucky.

It happens. I don't like it, but what can we do? Ban anybody from ever laying off anyone? Good luck with that.

Hating rich people does nothing, does it? Demanding they pay their fair share is perfectly acceptable.

[Two Americas]

188. LOL

You betcha. Where's my Ouija board? I need to ask it when I will be a millionaire.

Just bad luck I guess that someone stole my car. Shoulda had my lucky charm with me. No sense in calling the police - it is all my fault!

Stuff happens, I guess and what can we do? We are just weak little helpless peons.

I think I'll go buy a lottery ticket. Hey, maybe I will get lucky!

"Luck" - this is a political philosophy?

[valerief]

41. All together now: SCREW THE RICH! n/t

[bread_and_roses]

144. You think the really wealthy earned it by hard work?

I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.

[Kitty Herder]

39. I hate both. Is that cool?

I hate the income disparity and I hate the greedy, rich motherfuckers who created it. And I'm not talking about your friend the computer engineer. I'm talking about the corporate CEOs who make millions in bonuses,yet pay very little in taxes, all the while cutting benefits and jobs. I'm talking about the Wall Street slime who gambled away old ladys' pensions. I'm talking about ne'er do well heirs and heiresses who cry and whine that they have to pay taxes on their inheritances. Etc., etc.

[metapunditedgy]

42. Problem is, we've been fed this line that wealthy people are just

hard workers and more talented than us. And as we grow up, we find out it's not true. And then we're angry at the people who fed us that lie.

I think what's fair is "wealth = effort x talent". I have no problem with talented and/or hardworking people making more money. But when you look at the extremely wealthy people, it's obvious that they did not earn their riches with either wealth or talent. And so we dislike them, because it is unfair.

[Two Americas]

43. of course

PH, I don't think anyone is shouting "we hate rich people!" If it seems that they are, they are just venting and are really saying they do not like greedy selfish people, don't you think?

Good post, good points, small quibble.

There have been several posts recently cautioning us to nit "hate rich people." Those who are more fortunate certainly hate us, if ever such a generalization could be made with any validity. But leaving that aside, rich people are not in danger and defending them is not necessary. Some are a little nervous - including some of the better-off people here - because the people have been pushed to the brink.

But the louder and more aggressive the backlash from the working class now, the less likely it will be that any rich people will be harmed. Try to keep the lid on it, and the pressure will keep building. It is far too late to sweet talk people out of their righteous and justified anger.


...

[scarletwoman]

44. I'll go with "Down with Capitalism!".

But I'll also keep "Eat the Rich", for nostalgia's sake.

sw

[Two Americas]

48. this always happens

The moment the working people and poor people start waking up and fighting back, we have the rational voices showing up and accusing us of "hating the rich" and trying to throw a wet blanket on the growing fire.

Wealthy people are in no danger. Poor people are dying. We need to keep some perspective on this.

[leftstreet]

52. With one exception

This current Capitalist FAIL crisis suggests that the wealthy may actually be in trouble.

Could we (the US of the world) be poised on the edge of a cliff-changer in the labor v capital dynamic that THEY instituted?

One can dream...

[Two Americas]

58. not like we are

Proportion and perspective is needed.

In any case, when the people are fighting for their lives, is that the right time to start worrying about the very ones who have been destroying the people? They certainly are not worried about us.

The events of the last several days have convinced me that there will very soon be massive social unrest here. I don't think it can be avoided, and we are well past the point of no return. It will explode this year.

[leftstreet]

60. Sobering statements

And you make a good point about people fighting for their lives. (Although if you've ever lived in any other countries, the fight looks a bit different.)

However, I do think the rich are very, very worried about us. Not our conditions as you say, but what we may be capable of.

[Two Americas]

63. understood

The reason that the more well-off people, and their sycophants here, are worried is because of guilty consciences. They know what has been done to the people - better than anyone - and know just what real justice might mean. But they are pretty well insulated and safe and we are a long ways away from "eat the rich" or anything. It could come, but only if the wealthy and their apologists and sycophants try to keep the lid on things so that the pressure keeps building. We are starting to see more and more posts here that are trying to do just that - clamp that lid down, because things are getting out of hand and the conservatives among us are getting nervous.

I have lived in other countries, and would be interested in hearing how you think the fight looks different.

[Political Heretic]

66. That's not my intention.

I just see blind generalizations borne mostly out of petty envy as counter to any serious movement to produce significant change

"The rich" is just too broad a category, when talking about individuals. I much prefer institutional criticism or more specific criticism that applies some degree of rationality and not just bitter envy of the "haves"

[Two Americas]

73. I didn't necessarily think that PH

I don't think this is about individuals at all, and I don't think we get anywhere talking about individuals.

In the 1850's, the opponents of the Abolitionists said "not all slave owners are bad people" and cautioned against "hating the slave owners." In the 1880's and 1830's, the opponents of organized Labor said "not all owners are bad people" and cautioned against "hating the business owners." Feminists were accused of "hating men." GLBTQ people are accused of "hating straight people." Civil Rights advocates were accused of "hating white people."

Let's not inadvertently promote a reactionary and conservative theme here, one that has a long history.

[Political Heretic]

74. Alright well.... I don't want to be on that side of the fence

But just because people on the wrong side of the issue stated something that was true doesn't make it "less" true.

So allow me to fully support the radical upheaval of our broken corporate politco-economic structure into something better servinc social and economic justice AND point out that making stupid sweeping generalizations about "all" "rich" people is lame. :)

[Two Americas]

77. no, I don't think you do

Just consider what I am saying is all I ask, and don't take it as an insult or a slam.

You have much to contribute in the area of tactics and organizing and rhetoric, by the way, and your points about that are valuable and important.

I think that massive social upheaval is now unavoidable. That makes issues of organizing and tactics critical.

[Political Heretic]

85. Agreed. Your points above, not lost on me. Message matters... therefore...

...if paying attention to generalizations is going to sound like apologizing for the very institutional system that has oppressed and enslaved all this time.... then eff that! :)

Still... I'm not quite ready to give up on the possibly of radical advocacy for economic justice that is a little more nuanced than the angry "I hate rich people" sloganeering.

But that's the important key to all of this... the only reason I care about this at all is because I care about the potential for revolutionary activism and action that may be coming. I'm talking about how we talk about the rich not because I give a flying fuck about protecting the rich people... but because I want our message to connect with as many people as possible and for an anti-establishment political and economic movement for participatory, sustainable, equitable community and economic system to be born.

[Two Americas]

87. we need to hammer it out

Just as we are here. Thanks for giving my ideas about this consideration.

"I want our message to connect with as many people as possible and for an anti-establishment political and economic movement for participatory, sustainable, equitable community and economic system to be born."

That's it, yes. I agree.

[Political Heretic]

71. Furthermore - I don't think your post is fair at all.

I don't think my original post should be dismissed so easily as trying to throw a wet blanket on anything.

If that was the case, I'd be defending the institutional system that keeps a tiny minority in control of the majority of the wealth.

This is more if a framing issue. Movements grow as more people are convinced. Simply being jealous of what other people have and resenting them for it, well, that motivates and mobilizies people for a brief fleeting moment. There's something deeper and so much more lasting beyond the pettiness - and that is criticism of a system that doesn't work, that never works - we've been saying for thirty years that conservative economics are broken.

Now's the chance to take to the streets and drive that point home. Rich OR poor people who resist the truth - THEY are the ones who deserve our disdain. To anyone who agrees with our vision of a more just economic structure, weclome.... no income test required.

[Two Americas]

76. heh

Well you know me.

As I said in my first post, I have one specific complaint about what you posted, and I don't think that everything you are saying should be dismissed.

The desperate straits of the people, and their growing anger about that, is not pettiness.

The assumption that people fighting for economic justice are motivated by "being jealous of what other people have and resenting them for it" is yet another reactionary theme.

[Political Heretic]

92. Fair point.

The assumption that people fighting for economic justice are motivated by "being jealous of what other people have and resenting them for it" is yet another reactionary theme.

I do not want that to be the theme everyone walks away with from my comments so.... yeah. Need to adjust there.

[angrycarpenter]

45. Live in Palm Beach as a poor person for a while.

You will grow to hate the rich. A run of spectacularly bad luck made me homeless for while. The sheer disgust on the face of a Bentley driving asshole is something that you will never forget or forgive.

Being in real poverty makes it a very personal issue and one that it is impossible to treat in a purely rational way.

[Donnachaidh]

50. So you basically want to go back the the utter bullshit days of *American Public Relations*?

"our goal should be to return to a social structure in which everyone has a real shot at "making it big"

It was utter RUBBISH back then, and to wish for the return of that is delusional. It's the worst sort of false advertising that keeps people divided, and not working together to make things better for EVERYONE. It's a carrot on a stick for the masses - "Work hard, don't complain - because YOU TOO can become a corporate giant with hard work and persistence!"

:puke:


Corporations and the media push this nonsense because in the long run, the only ones *making it BIG* are the corporate companies - and they do it by standing on their employees necks.

:eyes:

[leftstreet]

56. The Middle Class Revolution: Because 'bourgeois' is just so hard to spell

n/t

[Political Heretic]

67. Another one cutting off my statement.

leaving out.. "if that's their desire."

[anaxarchos]

53. What a crock...

Don't hate the torturer, hate the torture...
Don't hate the pedophile, hate the pedophelia...
...and on and on ad nauseam.

It is in the nature of things that the slaves hate the slavemaster. Most don't ask if their particular master is a peach of fellow.

You have a problem with that? Then state your problem honestly. Protesting the "generalizations" about the rich is phony. Are you afraid that the rich are discriminated against? In America?

How is it that "our government's economic policy benefits" the rich? Is that just an error, having nothing to do with the many wonderful qualities of the rich? This is the cause you have chosen... to defend the rich against "unfair characterization"? And you chose this noble cause this year?

You should try something different:

"I identify with the rich and intend to be one someday, and I don't care who knows it..."
"I think the Democratic Party should cater to the rich and all this class warfare talk is bugging me..."

Somethin' like that... whatever. This position against all "generalizations" is either disingenuous or silly.

[Political Heretic]

64. So what's the dollar amount when you start to hate someone?

[anaxarchos]

79. How many slaves make a slave owner? n/t

[Political Heretic]

81. Just answer the question.

Shouldn't be too hard...

Just define "rich" for me, and let me know at what income level we start being angry at people for what they earn.

[Two Americas]

126. he did

See my post below.

[Hannah Bell]

138. what they "earn"? try what they "own". like your life, & your kids' lives.

a few funny games in the stock market, & your job & assets are on the chopping block.

a few funny games between rival financial mafioso, & your kid gets blown up in iraq, along with some iraqi kids.

fuck them. no one should own other people's futures.

[JVS]

96. "And he loved his master more than his master loved himself"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQe9nUKzvQ

[Hannah Bell]

55. Republic of Money: the Farish family.

The Farish family: keepers of GHW & GW Bush's blind trusts while they were president: Great wealth, & great crimes in every generation, for 300 years:

Starting (at least) with slave plantations in the Mississipi Delta in the 1700s, sources of wealth & power also include fomenting revolution in Texas & land theft, tenant labor, the Standard Oil monopoly, auschwitz, government war contracts & gun-running, land gifts from the British crown & US government, & intermarriage with other large fortunes.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4751898

Intermarried with Davis (as in Jefferson Davis), Livingstons (NY patroons), Harrimans (RR & finance), duPonts (guns & drugs, pre-revolutionary French aristocracy), Howard Hughes, Phipps (Carnegie partner), Botts/Rice (as in Baker/Botts, Bush-linked law firm & Rice University), Gerry (old NY aristocracy), Goelet (banking) - just in the main line.

On the offshoots Vanderbilts, whitneys, french & english royals.

These are the folks who run the big foundations, direct the commanding heights of business, employ the politicians, fund your "entertainment," & give you your very ideas.

[MrSlayer]

57. I hate the rich and I hate income disparity.

Of course, given the option, I'd rather be rich and hated than not rich and hated.

[Political Heretic]

68. Ah so you hate the rich because you aren't?

I appreciate the honesty.

[MrSlayer]

94. Absolutely.

Rich is when you never have to work and can just do what you want, whenever you want. Who wouldn't be envious of that? I'd much rather be lounging around on a beach in the Caribbean, drinking electric lemonades and reading than freezing my balls off running pipe 100' in the air in the dead of winter. I have a good job and it still sucks. Not being rich sucks.

[Blue Dog Dominion]

165. So you really must hate the Kennedys

I doubt Ted has ever gotten dirt underneath those manicured nails of his.

[RandomKoolzip]

184. Well, if a person of extreme privilege is conscious of his status, and

conscious of how unfair great gaps of wealth disparity are to the majority, and is using his power to do something active to fight for those he knows are far less privileged than he - and I would name your boy Ted Kennedy as a sterling example of this type of human - then why should, I a poor person, hate him? He's conscious of his power and my lack of it and is proposing some way to bridge the gap through going to bat for the working class in the Senate (min. wage bill, etc.).

However, if some rich asshole is doing his level best to hoard his wealth, and to make my life even harder than it is - a person such as George w. bush, for example - then why shouldn't i hate that person?

[Blue Dog Dominion]

197. So that pardons his families attempt to hoard their wealth?

It seems they come up with a tax dodge it gets outlawed after they implement it.

[RandomKoolzip]

200. Huh. I dunno. I DO know that it's weird that someone who's seemingly so anti-kennedy

is posting anti-kennedy stuff on a Democratic website. Just sayin'.

[Two Americas]

189. oh I see

There are some rich people we like, so therefore we cannot hate and fight against the ongoing destruction of the people for fear of hurting some wealthy person.

How come one "good" wealthy person can be used to let them all off the hook, while one "bad" poor person is used to indict all of us?

The Kennedys mean that not all wealthy people are bad, so we should not "hate" entrenched wealth and the suffering that is causing. But McKinney is "crazy," so all people on the political Left, all fighting against entrenched wealth and power and defending those suffering from that, can therefore be freely attacked and maligned.

The double standard you are advocating is itself the problem. You ask us to give greater consideration and sympathy to people based on their wealth and power and "success."

[Two Americas]

111. but we all could, and should be

Don't predicate this on the false notion that there is not enough to go around.

[JVS]

59. Who do you think benefits from and arranges the income disparity?

RICH FUCKERS!

[Political Heretic]

69. Some. And its the institutional arrangement that deserves criticism

[JVS]

70. They need to be liquidized as a class. They're parasites. There will be plenty of time to...

criticize their system after that.

[Political Heretic]

72. What's the cuttoff?

Who is "they" exactly?

[JVS]

75. There is no cutoff. It's like the old pornography saying. People know rich they see it

What was the cutoff for level of aristocracy eliminated in the French revolution?

[Political Heretic]

80. Oh please.... how did the french revolution work out?

Yeah... I think the "know it when they see it" thing sort of let to a ridiculous bloodbath and not exactly a "better" state of affairs....

[JVS]

82. It successfully destroyed the monarchy despite brief periods of restoration of the monarchy...

imposed by the outside. Yeah, big fucking failure there, with their fucking establishment of a republic! If they had listened to you, they'd still have a king.

[Political Heretic]

91. It did not "destroy" the monarchy.

The monarchy returned, and when it was removed again, it wasn't because of the "revolution."

The french revolution was essentially a bunch of mass murdering fuckheads gone out of control. Yeah, good job there.

[JVS]

95. If it was a bunch of mass murdering fuckheads gone out of control, why do the French celebrate it?

And the restoration periods were ended with the revolution of 1848, which built on the gains of the first revolution because the aristocratic class had been severely weakened by the "terror". The only reason there had been a restoration was that Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Great Britain had imposed one on them after defeating Napoleon.

[Political Heretic]

98. Probably similar reason as to why we celebrate Columbus Day

:shrug:

[JVS]

99. Answer the question, don't give conjecture. And why is there no restoration holiday?

[Political Heretic]

105. That IS the answer. The same reason we celebrate columbus day.

History is subjective and typically reflects the perspective of those who won.

[Hippo_Tron]

108. It replaced the monarchy and the aristocracy with the capitalists we're talking about now

The French revolution was initially started by the entrepreneurial class who didn't like the fact that the law gave the aristocracy and the clergy the same representation as the third estate even though the third estate was much larger. In other words they didn't like the fact that status and political power were given to people because of their bloodline or their connection to the church. They wanted status and political power to be determined by how much money you can make.

Sure, there were parts of the French Revolution that involved peasant and worker uprisings. But at the end of the day it mostly just replaced the old elite with the new elite.

[JVS]

113. Yes. It was the replacement of one class' rule with another. We should look to it as an example.

Ours has been going on since 1917 in various places and times

[Hippo_Tron]

117. And then that new ruling class will quickly become just as bad as the previous one

The lesson I take away from the French revolution is that any ruling class is bad. The best thing to do is to have a democracy where everybody has as equal ability to participate as possible. Neither bloodline, wealth, or any other such factors should give one more say in a democracy.

[Two Americas]

120. right

For example, the former slaves continue to hold the former masters in bondage, I have noticed. Women now forbid men from voting.

[Hippo_Tron]

123. Women nor former slaves have ever become the new ruling class

Nor did they ever overthrow an old ruling class. The analogy was the French revolution where the entrepreneurs overthrew the aristocracy as the ruling class. The entrepreneurs are the predecessors of today's investor class that we are discussing on this thread.

[Two Americas]

127. ok

But that is what the reactionaries of the time said was the danger. This is always the reactionary argument, used against those fighting for justice and equality. "If we free the slaves, they will make us slaves."

It is easy to see how absurd that is today, but many reasonable people said that in the 1850's, just as you are saying it now.

[Hippo_Tron]

129. Not what I'm saying

First of all, although the argument you've stated above was possibly used in the 1850's, it was likely merely for propaganda purposes. Actually being enslaved themselves was probably the last thing that the plantation owners were concerned about.

A more apt comparison might be to the fact that many people who would otherwise have supported revolutionaries in Latin America in the early 19th were hesitant to because they were afraid of another slave revolt like what had happened in Haiti. There's a difference between freeing slaves and a slave uprising.

Secondly, I'm not suggesting that if people take pitchforks to the ruling class, some of the people with pitchforks are going to become the new ruling class. They will soon be corrupted by power and probably become just as bad as the old ruling class. Humanity has a natural tendency for top down hierarchies and eliminating them from society is damn near impossible. In the French revolution the entrepreneurs replaced the aristocracy. In China, the cadre leaders replaced the landlords when Mao came to power. Then it went back to the landlords (at least somewhat) when Deng Xiaoping came to power.

There is always going to be an "elite class". My point is that instead of trying to overthrow the current one, it would be better to work toward creating a more democratic system where elite does not inherently mean powerful.

[Two Americas]

133. sure

I think the slave owners were seriously worried about becoming slaves, or thought they were. Takes on to know one, and people project their own thinking onto others. Having read extensively from their diaries and letters, I think that they did imagine and believe that what they were doing to others would be done to them if they relaxed their grip.

What I am saying us that the fear people raise now - that if we overthrow the economic tyranny under which we will live we will merely replace it with another - is no different.

You are making the perennial argument in defense of the ruling class that has been made throughout history - that tyranny lives in the hearts of all men, and that there is no sense overthrowing the tyranny under which we live, because that will merely lead to a new tyranny. That was the argument against overthrowing the feudal landlords, the monarchies. People who side with the tyrants always want to see tyranny as "human nature" and inevitable because that makes it impossible to overthrow.

You are looking at slavery in the rear view mirror, with the benefit of hindsight. You know how that one turned out, and you know which side to take.

[Hannah Bell]

122. then they intermarried with the old elites.

Cicely d'Autremont, "heiress," wife of James Angleton:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton


Daughter of Minnesta mining heiress Helen Congdon & businessman/financier Hubert H. d'Autremont.

His ancestor:

"Madame Marie D'Autremont, a native of Paris, and whose husband
(Hubert D'Autremont) had been guillotined early in the revolution,
fled from France in 1792"

Another one:

D'AUTREMONT, VICTOR duPONT

The duPont connection goes way back:

One of America’s wealthiest families, the DuPonts, can trace their
history back to Allegany County.

Victor Du Pont de Nemours went with Countess Marie D’Autremont to
Angelica and bought a tract of land adjoining hers.

However, a brother, Irenee DuPont de Nemours persuaded Victor to
join him in New Jersey.

Records from the period tell how Victor sold a household servant to
Augustus D’Autremont before leaving the settlement for New Jersey.

http://www.usgennet.org/usa/ny/county/allegany/countyhistory/Belvide
re%20Celebration/Stories%20of%20the%20Church%20Family%20of%
20Belvidere.htm.

[Two Americas]

84. easy to determine

More so than almost any other social distinctions. There are those are free from needing to work or get assustance - 1% or so - and then there are the rest of us living hand to mouth hoping that catastrophe doesn't overtake us. There is virtually no middle or gray area any more.

There is also a class of people between $70,000 and %$250,000 in annual income and wannabes who identify with those people, about 10% of the population, who overwhelming side with the super wealthy and defend the system, regardless of whether they call themselves "liberals" or "conservatives" or "libertarians" or "progressives." That group is disproportionately represented here, in the liberal organizations, and in the party at all levels. That makes it very difficult to arrive at consensus, build solidarity, or seriously combat the right wingers. In fact, it makes it very difficult to even carry on discussions about economics at all. But out there, the other 90% are becoming more radicalized every day and the general public is now far, far to the Left from the activist community and party insiders.

This is more in the way of an observation than it is an opinion or desire or ideology I am expressing. Massive historical forces are at work. They cannot be stopped. You cannot do what has been done to the American people without serious consequences, and the day of reckoning is rapidly approaching whether we want it to or not. Moist people know this in their bones, but many are denying it, and the more knowledgeable and informed a person is, the more likely they are to be denying and resisting it.

[Political Heretic]

90. It's in that group of 70,000 - 250,000 where I think things get much more complicated

I don't disagree with anything you wrote here. And I think the criticism levied at the 70,000-250,000 bloc is crucial to make. With a slight exception. This is the particular span at which I think things get a lot more complicated.

I think the attitudes of people in this 70k - 250k group are much more diverse. Example one is my long time close friend with is wife and two children. He makes 100 to 110k a year, and I don't think he has any idea how much money he squanders. To him, he feels he is always struggling financially. Many of the things that to me seem like luxuries to him seem essential. He strongly criticizes the economic system, but I don't think he has any real awareness of his position in it.

Okay, well that person is different than person making a similar amount of money who sides with the super wealthy very consciously and defense the system very consciously. And I think the distinction may be important because I think we want to try to win over the "middle class" that's simply asleep even while flipping the bird at the "middle class" that is very awake and servicing the super rich.

If we just lump everyone together and say "the rich suck, the middle class suck, but the poor rule" - I think we're going nowhere. The poor occaisionally do not rule, the middle class sometimes do not suck and the rich very occasionally do not suck and, despite the number of people one the wrong side of issues who have made that point in the past, I still think its important for our progress that we try to remember contexutalities.

[Two Americas]

97. that is the challenge

Half of the people are now down under $35,000, and the people at $100,000 - give or take - don't realize that they are a lot closer to the bottom than they are to the top. There is hardly anyone above $250,00, and the wealth is all clustered way up at the top. The "middle class" professionals shill for the wealthy and powerful, often without realizing that they are (I have a theory that this is what they are actually paid to be doing, indirectly. Try talking socialism in a corporate job and see what happens to you.)

The is a liberal version and there is a conservative version of siding with the upper class. The liberal version sounds much nicer and more reasonable and intelligent. It is for that reason more destructive than the out and out support for the ruling class that comes from conservatives, because it is harder to detect and refute (or ignore, which is best.)

"If we just lump everyone together and say 'the rich suck, the middle class suck, but the poor rule' - I think we're going nowhere."

That is fine, so long as we start with the realization that 90% of us are poor, by any sane measure. The "middle class" - down to about 10% of the people - will split, just as whites split over the Civil Rights movement, and Northerners split over the Abolition movement. We will not get them all, and we don't need them all. We should never cater to their "ruling class lite" ideas, however, in the hopes of being reasonable and winning them over. We are so steeped in the idea that we MUST win over the successful people - the movers and shakers - in order to succeed. But they play a game with us of "unless you can convince me and my peers about your radical communist ideas, you will never succeed." The truth is that many would never be won over no matter what we said, and we don't need them in order to succeed. Keeping us tied up in and distracted by endless hair-splitting "philosophical" arguments is their goal with that.

[Political Heretic]

101. If we're going to say that 90% of us our poor, we may need to talk about what poor means

I agree, that I think the more/most important message is that 90% of America is in the same boat. But when we start using the word "poor" I think a lot people have some wacky ideas about what that means. And I think that a lengthy clarification of the difference between absolute and relative poverty is probably to stuffy to mean much on the street.

Instead, I think maybe what we should be talking about is the fact that 90% of Americans are getting out from the economic/from society proportionally less than what they are putting into it, while a small minority of people are taking disproportionally more out of the system than they are putting into it. It's not about asking for a "handout" - its about the fact that 90% of us are getting robbed and its time that there be a reckoning with the robbers.

Incidentally, this is also an explanation for the parameters I would place on my attitudes toward "the rich" - to those who are taking more out of the system than they put into it, I condemn that. For those who are essentially taking out equivalent to what they are putting back in, I have no quarrel - even if they are more well off than I am.

[Two Americas]

124. this was answered up thread

How many slaves does it take to make a slave master?

Don't use the words "poor" and "rich."

Say "the impoverished" and the "impoverishers." That is what is happening. Ignoring that makes any and all discussions about poverty and economic disparity foolish.

Get it?

How many impoverished does it take to make an impoverisher? Why do we coddle those who wish to impoverish others? Why do we look for artificial distinctions, and say that it matters how successful an impoverisher is at it?

A slave owner with one slave is still a slave owner, though he may not be a very successful one. That one slave is still a slave. You are opposed to slavery, or you are not. There is no way to be opposed to slavery and yet continue to try to work the needs and desires of the slave owners into your calculations under various ruses.

If you can't talk about this subject this way, you are not really talking about it at all.

[Two Americas]

136. slavery is a good example

In the 1850's there were 5 million whites, and 4 million slaves if I recall correctly. But each white person did not own one slave. Some owned hundreds, some owned none. Most of those whites, however, supported the slave owners.

Now, would we have said at the time - and people did - that we needed to figure out just what a slave owner was, that we needed to not "hate" slave owners? People said that not all slave owners were bad. They also said that not all slaves were good, so that oif we overthrew the slave masters, that the slaves might seize control and impose the same tyranny - because, after all, not all of the slaves were saints.

Some small farmers might own a slave or two at one time or another in their life, but not at other times. Some small farmers night rent a slave one day a month, or rent 100 slaves for a month during harvest. Were they slave owners? Would we have needed to figure that out before we could take a stand against slavery? Since every white could, and many did, have control over at least one slave at some time in their life, it would be pretty difficult to find a cut-off, wouldn't it?

So would we have said, "well it is just the people who own more than 100 slaves for more than a year, and who treats them badly, whom we should fight? One little farmer renting one slave to help him out once a month doesn't seem so bad."

Anyone who thinks that slavery is not analogous to the struggles against entrenched wealth that we face today need look to no more radial a source than Lincoln or FDR, by the way, to see just whom it is they are disagreeing with on this, and to understand the reactionary position they are taking. "Necessitous men are not free men." Economic slavery is different in degree from chattel slavery, to an extreme, but the principle is the same. Both men had an understanding of that. In fact, the argument in the 1850's from the apologists for slavery was that there was no real difference between slaves and employees, and that in fact the slaves had it better. Of course the slaves did not have it better - that is not the point. The point is that the wealthy and powerful saw the two groups as the same.


...

[Yavin4]

61. I Have A Question

If someone develops a talent or a product or a business that benefits the masses, say a new form of alternative, clean energy, should not that person be rewarded with weatlh that benefits the masses en large and makes life easier and better for everyone else?

[Two Americas]

65. not necessarily

Most of the "talent or products or businesses that benefit the masses" come from the private sector, and all of it heavily relies on the public sector. It should never come at the expense of the public sector, as it so clearly does today to an extreme degree. The more privatization, the less innovation. The whole economy has turned into some sort of shell game, some sort of fire sale and mad scramble to exploit and destroy everything for private gain. Very little production of anything of real value is happening.

Those who do the work that gives the most benefit to the people are the least rewarded. It is a relatively small percentage of the public that is motivated primarily by money, and their activities produce a relatively small number of benefits to the public. We should not all be forced to serve them, to our own destruction.

We are far far over to one extreme right now. Worries about "suppressing initiative" are misplaced and absurd in the current crisis.

[Yavin4]

167. Wait, You're Introducing A Strawman Argument Here

I never said that the rich should not pay taxes to support the social infrastructure, like health care and education. Once they are taxed at a reasonable rate, they should be allowed to retain the balance for their own choosing.

[Two Americas]

168. the war of the straw men LOL

I never said that you said that the rich should not pay taxes.

[bread_and_roses]

145. And if that person is not independently wealthy already, s/he benefited from public education

and even if already independently wealthy, s/he depended on others who had a public education to bring his/her ideas to fruition. S/he depended on there being a public system of roads, water purity and delivery, fire protection, police protection, etc. His/her great new product probably built on research that was funded by public dollars. So to what degree should the "profits" of that product or business belong solely to this oh-so-independent "entrepreneur?" The whole notion breaks down, but we continue to accept it as a given that some individual (or more likely rapacious, profiteering corporation) should garner all the "wealth" from activities that would be impossible without the civil society that WE fund.

[anonymous171]

62. I just hate Plutocracy. If that makes me a socialist or marxist or whatever, so be it.

I prefer to think of myself as an anti-plutocrat though.

[Marr]

83. I'm never sure if people who defend "the rich" are talking about the same people I'm talking about.

I'm not talking about "income disparity". The truly wealthy don't measure their worth in terms of income. They make money by having money, and they have ungodly amounts of it. They're our version of aristocracy; a relatively small collection of incredibly rich families (and their servants) who are completely divorced from middle class realities. These are people with no real skills who contribute less than nothing and devote vast resources to making life more difficult for the people who actually make the nation run-- working people-- all so they can save a few more pennies.

They're parasites. I don't hate them individually because I don't know them individually. But as a class, you bet your ass I hate them.

[Political Heretic]

106. I think you nailed it.

I realize after reading this thread that I define "rich" a lot more broadly than many other people do.

I guess that's cause I'm really poor. heh.

You're post is well stated. I can agree with that.

[InvisibleTouch]

86. I don't understand the wholesale hostility toward the rich.

Sure, some rich people are shallow self-centered assholes, but others use their wealth to do a lot of good in the world. And still others may not go out of their way to do good, but also do no harm. Just being rich in and of itself doesn't make a person worthy of loathing, IMO.

One of the major bummers about being poor is seeing so much that needs fixing in the world, so many good causes and groups that I'd love to lavishly support, but I just don't have the resources to do it. If I ever get rich, you can be sure I'd use my money to support the causes I believe in. And then people will hate me just for being rich. ;) Yeah, I can dream!

But seriously. Isn't some of this knee-jerk hatred just a little bit of jealousy? I dare say a lot of tunes would change if someone handed each of us a few million bucks.

[Two Americas]

118. there is more than enough to go around

When we talk about the rich, we are talking about those who amass wealth so that there is not enough to go around. It has nothing to do with "tunes" anyone would change, nor with jealousy.

Your "suck it up losers" thinking here is abhorrent.

Why would any working person so aggressively defend the interests of the privileged few, while there is so much suffering around us? I just never could get that at all. Maybe your life is consumed by envy, admiration for and jealousy of the rich, or perhaps your sense of self worth is wrapped up in whatever wealth you have amassed. But the rest of us should not be forced to live in that shallow, anti-social and self-centered world.

[InvisibleTouch]

208. It seems that MINE isn't the life that's consumed by envy...

...given that YOU'RE the one spewing bile and hatred. Aggressively, I might add. While I only mentioned that I didn't get the mindset that arbitrarily hates a person for the size of their bank account, whether or not they had actually harmed or helped the world. That's pretty blind. Abhorrent, even!

But hey, enjoy it, if that's what floats your boat. I prefer to save my bile and hatred for those who have actually done something to deserve it. And maybe just a little bit left over for assholes who attack others on an anonymous message board for daring to voice a different opinion than the one they hold sacred.

[Hannah Bell]

214. this aggressive bile & hatred you speak of - i don't see it.

i see someone who can't tolerate legitimate criticism of the ills of concentrated wealth.

that would be you.

[Two Americas]

238. begging your pardon?

I am not "spewing bile and hatred." I said "there is more than enough to go around." Bile and hatred? Not following you here.

I am not aware of anyone here having "the mindset that arbitrarily hates a person for the size of their bank account." I certainly do not.

What we might be seeing here is a case of "the wicked flee when no man pursues." The slightest suggestion that there is a serious imbalance in wealth and income, and out come the people accusing us of being "haters." Guilty consciences, maybe?

[Runcible Spoon]

151. Somebody who is worth $10 billion and gives $200 million is NO MORE CHARITABLE than someone....

Somebody who is worth $10 billion who gives $500 million is NO MORE CHARITABLE than someone who makes $25,000 and gives $500. Actually, s/he is LESS charitable since his donation does not impact his lifestyle at ALL and someone who gives 2% of their income when they only make $25,000 a year is probably sacrificing some luxuries to do so.

We should not hold these people on pedestals; they should be TAXED on their massive wealth and that money should go to do the work that is the responsibility of government anyway.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

88. How exactly does our governments economic policies favor your friend?

I could see your argument if you are talking about the CEO of your company. However if you make $30,000 a year and your friend makes $75,000 a year and all other things being equal, then your friend would pay taxes at a higher rate than you. Maybe I'm missing something here.

David

[Cash_thatswhatiwant]

131. I agree. nt

[southern_dem]

134. Hating is not progressive

and I don't hate the rich. I just don't like the system. They pay too little in taxes and that needs to change. No one in this country should be hungry, cold on the street, or dying because they can't get good health care. That isn't a personal failing of wealthy people though, it is a collective failure of this country. Life is too short to hate and I would rather spend my energy on trying to right the wrongs of society. Even if it seems like an insurmountable mountain on occasions.

[rug]

137. "Dissuade Income Disparity" lacks panache.

[NashVegas]

141. Here's What You Missed, In Your Desire to Be Non-Threatening

The board of directors that runs the corporation that owns your hotel, each making millions of dollars per year, hired that engineer to make a computer program that can perform all of the functions of your job except greet customers.

Because of that computer, you are no longer required to have any math skills, and you are limited in your decision-making skills.

When it's at the point where your job can be completely eliminated, the board will be finished with your friend the engineer, as well.

[treestar]

229. The company that writes the software and makes the computers

marketing and distributing all have offsetting new jobs, though.

[Kansas Wyatt]

150. Rich people do not give a damn about income disparity.

In fact, they rather enjoy the benefits from it.

[Orsino]

171. Can we also hate what income disparity does to rich people?

Extreme wealth really does change people in terrible ways.

[Two Americas]

190. excellent point

This does not get discussed enough.

[Faygo Kid]

173. Worst income disparity since 1928. We know what happened soon after.

It's happening now. The top 1% control a higher percentage of the nation's wealth than since 1928.

A primary goal of W., and he succeeded. His goal was to make the vast majority of Americans dependent on the good will of a privileged few. He didn't quite succeed in that; there is still a tenuous "social safety net."

So plan B: Destroy the economy, and in a roundabout way you destroy the social safety net.

Another success.

[Mike 03]

191. K & R. NT

[JDPriestly]

192. Face it. We hate rich people. People don't stay rich unless

they keep a lot more of their money than they need. That is the definition of greed. Not only do we hate greedy rich people, but Jesus hated greedy rich people and told them they would have a tough time getting into his and God's heaven. If Jesus hated greedy rich people, then I don't see any reason why I shouldn't hate them. Of course, I suppose Jesus forgave them too, so maybe after I hate them I have to forgive them. Well, I guess if Jesus can do it . . . . I can too, but, let me tell, you, it's really hard to forgive greedy rich people.

And I'm not talking about generous people who make a lot of money. Let them keep what they need (and maybe a little more) and then let them give the rest away. That's what Jesus told rich people to do if they wanted to get into heaven.

[Mike 03]

194. I can definitely get aboard this train. This is a crucial observation and I'm so happy

someone has made it, and made it so eloquently.

I agree: This is the issue. The "hate the rich" thing is going to go nowhere, and it's actually shooting ourselves in the crotch.

[alfredo]

215. Louis D. Brandeis on the concentration of wealth.

"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." -- Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis

[Evoman]

222. I don't feel that "I hate income disparity" adequately expresses my homicidal rage and hatred of

rich people.

[LeftyMom]

225. We're being exploited by people, not by a concept.

Income disparity is one tool used to wring more out of us for less, rising housing costs are another.

A concept can't work a body into an early grave, or drive a family out of a home, unless somebody makes that decision.

[Hugabear]

231. You CANNOT become rich without taking advantage of someone else

I just don't think it's possible. Whatever the source of that wealth, at some point in time somebody had to be taken advantage of, stepped on, hurt, etc to help create that wealth. SOMEBODY had to suffer so that someone else could become rich.

You can't have an action without an equal and opposite reaction.

[GoneOffShore]

242. You're right- but can't we eat some of the really rich people anyway?

Not Bill and Melinda Gates or Warren Buffet or George Soros, but some hedge fund managers or Bernie Madoff or some of the nice fat ones that would barbecue well?

[hfojvt]

244. too bad you had to start out with a load of crap

"every person out there who has more money than you do (which is the closest definition of "rich" DU has so far been able to agree on)"

There are at least two schools of thought

1) only Bill Gates and the Fortune 400 are rich.
2) those in the upper quintile are rich, depending to a degree on their local cost of living.

Then again, there seems to be specious reasoning throughout.

"The problem isn't that some people have more money than other people."
...
"The real problem is the ever-widening gap between richest and poorest Americans."

Hard for me to tell the difference between those two.

"our goal should be to return to a social structure in which everyone has a real shot at "making it big" if that's their desire, and where everyone can see their wages and worth grow over time."

"Return" is a bad word here. There has never been a time in our history when "everyone" had a real shot at making it big. Nor has there ever been a time when "everyone" saw their wages and worth grow.

Finally, by your example you seem to imply that the only reason we lowly workers don't make the big bucks is because we haven't been to school. There are quite a few exceptions to that in my experience.

And many here also do not hate rich people. John Edwards was practically king here in the primary season, and he's not exactly poor (except to school #1 since he's not in the Fortune 400).

[blindpig]

246. Truly PH, you are the reincarnation of William Graham Sumner.

There is an old ecclesiastical prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich. In days when men acted by ecclesiastical rules these prejudices produced waste of capital, and helped mightily to replunge Europe into barbarism. The prejudices are not yet dead, but they survive in our society as ludicrous contradictions and inconsistencies. One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured. Perhaps they do not recognize themselves, for a rich man is even harder to define than a poor one. It is not uncommon to hear a clergyman utter from the pulpit all the old prejudice in favor of the poor and against the rich, while asking the rich to do something for the poor; and the rich comply, without apparently having their feelings hurt at all by the invidious comparison. We all agree that he is a good member of society who works his way up from poverty to wealth, but as soon as he has worked his way up we begin to regard him with suspicion, as a dangerous member of society. A newspaper starts the silly fallacy that “the rich are rich because the poor are industrious,” and it is copied from one end of the country to the other as if it were a brilliant apothegm. “Capital” is denounced by writers and speakers who have never taken the trouble to find out what capital is, and who use the word in two or three different senses in as many pages. Labor organizations are formed, not to employ combined effort for a common object, but to indulge in declamation and denunciation, and especially to furnish an easy living to some officers who do not want to work. People who have rejected dogmatic religion, and retained only a residuum of religious sentimentalism, find a special field in the discussion of the rights of the poor and the duties of the rich. We have denunciations of banks, corporations, and monopolies, which denunciations encourage only helpless rage and animosity, because they are not controlled by any definitions or limitations, or by any distinctions between what is indispensably necessary and what is abuse, between what is established in the order of nature and what is legislative error. Think, for instance, of a journal which makes it its special business to denounce monopolies, yet favors a protective tariff, and has not a word to say against trades-unions or patents! Think of public teachers who say that the farmer is ruined by the cost of transportation, when they mean that he cannot make any profits because his farm is too far from the market, and who denounce the railroad because it does not correct for the farmer, at the expense of its stockholders, the disadvantage which lies in the physical situation of the farm! Think of that construction of this situation which attributes all the trouble to the greed of “moneyed corporations!” Think of the piles of rubbish that one has read about corners, and watering stocks, and selling futures!

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/4998/

[LanternWaste]

247. I think many people...

I think many people purposefully confuse the words 'hate' and 'envy', yet will never admit to that-- either to other people or to themselves.


But yes, I agree with you in that I too believe income disparity is one of the last, great stumbling blocks before the human race achieves the next level of enlightenment.

[earth mom]

248. "Income Disparity" sounds too nice & too vague for what those Mo Fos have done to this country

and the rest of the world.

Sorry, but I really don't see people rioting and marching in the streets because of "Income Disparity".

The issue needs a much harder hitting frame around it or people aren't going to get angry enough to fight the evil bastards responsible.

"Class War" sounds much better to me. :grr: