Conservatives: Do you believe people with money should run things?

Great Debates
61

Evidently, you are correct. I stand corrected. Thank you. But the first part of my statement remains true. Ford’s move was not altruistic, it was in his company’s best interest to do so.

Acting within the law, it does what it needs to do to remain a profitable country.

I didn’t no that there were zero other companies to work for in America. Interesting.

True, but Walmart’s policies serve Walmart. As they should. Also, there is also the possibility that these new jobs would be less attractive than Walmart jobs. Maybe they all they get are the Walmart rejects.

Let someone step up to the plate. Herb Kelleher did it in the airline industry. Maybe in the retail space Walmart operates in it’s just not possible. If that’s the case, you have to take your hat off to them for sewing up the market. But the fact is that there a=are other stores. Target, most notably.

62

I am a conservative (on the fiscal side), and wealth is a decent proxy for some set of skills and capabilities. The exceptions would be inheritance / lottery / marriage wealth. I might add in those who get rich from singing or acting, but long-term careers in show business require at the least a good handler if not skills of your own.

I would never want this enshrined in law, but I would think that a group of Fortune 500 CEOs would come up with a better decisions than 500 Wal Mart greeters (to play at the pure extremes).

63

In this country it used to be “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations”. These days, though, with trust funds, “charities”, and enormous, untouchable, overseas accounts, the rich are becoming more and more a completely separate class, and wealth is handed off from generation to generation with extreme smoothness.

The question is, is that a good thing? Are we better off being run by a small oligarchy that was raised on inherited money? The last two Republican presidents were raised rich, and Romney was too. Reagan, Nixon, and Eisenhower were not, though.

The difference between the Kennedys/FDR and the current Republican crop is that the rich liberals feel a sense of responsibility to the poor. Not everyone can be rich, and making the inevitable lower class as absolutely miserable and downtrodden as possible appears to be something that rich liberals deplore and abhor. Rich conservatives, OTOH, appear to consider it a social GOOD.

Which makes no fucking sense to me, but whatever floats your boat.

64

Le Sigh.

Please do some research before making statements like this.

Link

And another link.

Some of the super wealthy (Waltons of Wal-mart and the Mars family) inherited their wealth but a large number of the super wealthy earned it. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Larry Ellison, Carl Icahn, Michael Dell, etc all created their wealth.

When you get down to just the standard millionaires the number of self made runs at about 80%. So the vast majority of rich people earned it.

The top 1% also pays about 40% of the taxes. (See the Yahoo link).

As far as the OP goes, I want people who understand personal responsibility to run things. Sadly, that seems to be lacking in pols on both sides of the aisle. Instead both sides play to their base to keep their jobs.

I recently changed my mind about term limits because many pols are, for all intents and purposes, a de facto ruling class since they get re-elected for eons. It turns the job they are elected to into a career and the pols become more interested in furthering their career instead of doing what is right. If they get two terms max then they less pressure to please whatever base they need to get elected and are, imho, more likely to pursue unpopular but responsible policies.

Of course, t’ain’t ever gonna happen. Too many groups like having pols in their pocket.

Slee

65

Candidates having wealth or not having wealth isn’t the problem with our system. Smart, capable people are certainly able to accumulate wealth if that is their goal and sometimes those people transition into a life of public service. All well and good. Some other smart and capable people eschew wealth accumulation and focus their efforts elsewhere. Those, too, can be good public servants.

The problem is the cost of running successful campaigns in our system. The people who finance them gain inordinate influence on the political process and few of us are better for it.

66

Seriously? How stupid do you assume your audience is?

This bewilders me about conservatives. They just assume massive stupidity and ignorance in their audience. Why? People are waking up. The gravy train for Rush Limbaugh, etc. cannot and will not last.

Dude, sure, Gates, Buffett, etc. all came from non-millionaire backgrounds. Gates doesn’t entirely count, because he was one of very, VERY few high school students with access to a computer in the early 70s, but whatever. YES, they made their own money, largely.

What do you think their kids are going to do? Dig ditches?

No, smart guy. Even if all of them give 90% of their wealth to charity, there will still be PLENTY left over for trust funds for their descendants. Guaranteed.

My point is that trust funds and fake “charities” are the new ways in which the wealthy ensure their descendants will never have to worry about basic needs, ever.

Rich kids used to be able to gamble away their inheritance. It’s not like that any more. Wealthy people are getting smart and creating trust funds that their foolish offspring cannot piss away.

67

I’m a little confused by the OP. Particularly because it seems to be based on a bunch of broad, ill-defined assumptions that the “rich” “run” “everything”.

In the business world, as in much of America, people get money BECAUSE they run things well. If you don’t you typically get fired or go out of business. Or if you’re lucky they just stick you somewhere you won’t do any harm. People like Gates, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg and so on get to run their companys because they built them.

I would expect that most successful politicians would have been good enough at something during the course of their careers to have earned a fair amount of money doing it. I mean if you can’t even manage your own life well enough to make more than $50k a year, what makes you think you should be involved in the decision making of anyone elses life?

The other half of the equation is it takes a lot of resources (typically represented by “money”) to run things. So unless you plan on taking it by force, people with money tend to want to have a say in how their money is spent.

68

This is a nice narrative, unfortunately the fact that most wealth is inherited and that most opportunity to make the majority of the next generation’s “earned” wealth is also inherited is kind of inconvenient for the fable.

69

You have a cite for that? Your inheritance claim is lacking data.

Lets look at the Forbes Top 25 source of Wealth (my sorting):

Technology:
Bill Gates $59 B 55 Medina, Washington Microsoft
Larry Ellison $33 B 67 Woodside, California Oracle
Jeff Bezos $19.1 B 47 Seattle, Washington Amazon.com
Mark Zuckerberg $17.5 B 27 Palo Alto, California Facebook
Sergey Brin $16.7 B 38 Los Altos, California Google
Larry Page $16.7 B 38 Palo Alto, California Google
Michael Dell $15 B 46 Austin, Texas Dell
Steve Ballmer $13.9 B 55 Hunts Point, Washington Microsoft
Paul Allen $13.2 B 58 Mercer Island, Washington Microsoft, investments

Wall Street / Investments:
Warren Buffett $39 B 81 Omaha, Nebraska Berkshire Hathaway
George Soros $22 B 81 Katonah, New York hedge funds
Michael Bloomberg $19.5 B 69 New York, New York Bloomberg LP
John Paulson $15.5 B 55 New York, New York hedge funds
Carl Icahn $13 B 75 New York, New York leveraged buyouts

Wal Mart Inheritance:
Jim Walton $21.1 B 63 Bentonville, Arkansas Wal-Mart
Alice Walton $20.9 B 61 Fort Worth, Texas Wal-Mart
S. Robson Walton $20.5 B 67 Bentonville, Arkansas Wal-Mart
Christy Walton $24.5 B 56 Jackson, Wyoming Wal-Mart

Other:
Charles Koch $25 B 75 Wichita, Kansas diversified
David Koch $25 B 71 New York, New York diversified
Sheldon Adelson $21.5 B 78 Las Vegas, Nevada casinos
Forrest Mars $13.8 B 80 Big Horn, Wyoming candy
Jacqueline Mars $13.8 B 71 The Plains, Virginia candy
John Mars $13.8 B 75 Jackson, Wyoming candy, pet food
Phil Knight $13.1 B 73 Hillsboro, Oregon Nike

Nope - the only inheritance folks are the Wal Mart ones.

70

So I will say again - if you told me that I had a choice between being ruled by the Forbes 25 richest people in America vs 25 randomly chosen names out of a hat - I would take the Forbes list.

71

“Among the top 100 or 200 wealthy families in the U.S., inheritance is the overwhelming source of wealth. At the very top, for example, in 1982, when FORBES published a list of America’s billionaires, thirteen of the fourteen on the list had inherited all or most of their wealth, and eleven of the thirteen family fortunes derived from oil.”

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/dward/classes/powpart/ecoinequality.html

Sorry I don’t wait every moment checking the site to respond immediately. This stuff isn’t hard to find in any case.

72

Do you think it just might be possible that wealth distribution among individuals in American has shifted slightly in the past thirty years?

ETA: Oh sorry. You are talking about families, not individuals.

73

30 year old study - and I have seen the Gini data before. We certainly have issues with mobility in the US, and the distribution of wealth. The system is breaking from where it was earlier in America due to education being so much more important in our service economy.

A better rebutal to me would be this article:
http://www.faireconomy.org/press_room/1997/born_on_third_base_sources_of_wealth_of_1997_forbes_400

This piece (not peer reviewed, but interesting nonetheless) shows that 31% of the Forbes 400 of 1997 came from nothing while 42% inherited enough to make the list automatically. The remainder took money and more of it.

I still would take that list over a random one - so to continue to answer the OP, absent any other listed criteria - let the rich run things.

74

"I. Summary of Results

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United for a Fair Economy analyzed the 400 individuals and 50 families on the 1997 Forbes 400 list and grouped those listed into five categories borrowed from our national pastime. Those “born on home plate” inherited their way onto the Forbes 400. At the other end of the spectrum, those “born in the batters box” had no discernible special advantages. Keeping with the baseball rule that “the tie goes to the runner,” the study team gave list members the benefit of the doubt. For example, if researchers couldn’t be sure whether a member belonged on second or third base, they assigned him to second base. Initial analysis of the 1997 Forbes 400 shows:

42 % Born on Home Plate ó inherited sufficient wealth to rank among the Forbes 400. This percentage is higher than that listed by Forbes for inheritors. The reason: Forbes listed as “self-made” people who actually inherited substantial sums or property and then later built that stake into a greater fortune. One example is Philip Anschutz (1997 net worth: $5.2 billion) who is listed as “self-made” even though he inherited a $500-million oil and gas field.

6 % Born on Third Base ó inherited substantial wealth in excess of $50 million or a large and prosperous company and grew this initial fortune into membership in the Forbes 400.

7 % Born on Second Base ó inherited a medium-sized business or wealth of more than $1 million or received substantial start-up capital for a business from a family member.

14 % Born on First Base ó biography indicates wealthy or upper-class background that was to our knowledge less than $1 million, or received some start-up capital from a family member. Due to the study team’s conservative coding rule, it is likely that some of those listed as born on first base actually belong on second or third base.

31 % Born in the Batter’s Box ó individuals and families whose parents did not have great wealth or own a business with more than a few employees. **(no more than a few employees is not “nothing”. Most people would love to have had a family that owned a business to get them started in life. There are probably a few rags to riches people in here, but it’s not statistically that significant.)
**

Between 1996 and 1997, the total combined net worth of the Forbes 400 increased from just over $476 billion to just under $624 billion –a gain of 31 percent. There was a 25% increase in the number of billionaires over this one year period.

Inherited fortunes are disproportionately represented in the top half of the list. There is a higher percentage of inheritors, those Born on Home Plate, in the top 50% of the list than the bottom 50% of the list."

http://www.faireconomy.org/press_room/1997/born_on_third_base_sources_of_wealth_of_1997_forbes_400
These numbers aren’t even that great since you’d like to see what percentage of wealth came directly from other wealth due to the advice of a financial advisor and not actual business ventures of the individuals ect. Were also only looking at the top 400. Which again is an individual mark and not really accurate if you want to track down the money held by dozens of people in an entitlement family of inheritance or money held in family trusts ect. Regardless even the lowest level of this list allows for plenty of startup resources above the avg person born in the US.

75

Beat ya to it!

:wink:

76

I wanted to elaborate since a larger clip makes a lot less of the self made man idea than a selective excerpt.

Of course this doesn’t get into whatsoever the very real nature of inherited opportunity and other ways the past generation of the wealthy pass on their advantages to their offspring. Corporations are filled with executives by favor to big player families in the corporation. Pretending its all about personal skill and assets is pretty naive. Its not to say it doesn’t happen just that the amount that it doesn’t doesn’t outweigh the pace that it does.

The only way someone thinks that people are solely responsible for their own success is by listening to the mass media and the fables they churn out about it. We have a desire to worship deities and the ultra-wealthy fit nicely into that. The problem is that it’s pretty absurd to imagine that Bill Gates even within his own accumulated wealth was personally responsible for adding 60 billion o more in value to the world. Business is about selling things for more than you paid for them. One of those things is labor throughout the lifecycle of the components of your products. When you can buy the labor of others for less than you can sell it for and you can do that tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of times it becomes possible to accumulate 60 billion dollars for yourself. Problem is that wealth is mostly skimmed off the top of other people’s labor. I mean its an accomplishment, a success in the game of business, but it’s not reasonable in any way It’s just a quirk of how the human hive works. Little more.

77

In any case, no, they should not run things. It is precisely because of our tendency to organize ourselves socially in a top-down-manner that these folks exploit to trade a very small amount of their own efforts and talents for a gigantic amount of others. It’s self-fulfilling nonsense. Get a group of people and make one the leader then if theyre successful give the top guy the majority of the credit and pay him a ton, if they don’t succeed still pay him more than anyone else because you know he was the top guy and all so he must deserve it lol.

78

Believe it or not, in Canada, Corporations, trade unions and unincorporated associations may no longer make political donations to candidates.

79

So how many of the Forbes 500 are politicians? Not that many. And point of fact, people like Mitt Romney, Ross Perot, Steve Forbes, Donald Trump and other exceedingly wealthy people who have run for office more often than not don’t win. So the only thing they really get to run is their companys and personal fortunes, which they are entitled to.

You talk about the “average person”, but do you really want average people in charge of things? I want qualified, educated people with a demonstrated ability to run things running things.

Now you may argue that most lower and middle class people never get a chance to run anything important because they don’t have the resources to go to the top schools, get managerial positions in major corporations or found startups. And that is a valid concern. However, collectively, they get to weild influence through the politicians they elect and the products they purchase.

80

The fact that you think middle class people never run anything just goes to show what your life experience is. In this group you have small business owners and people running non-profits. But hey I guess if someone isn’t making a ton of money then whatever they’re running is by definition not difficult enough to qualify as experience to contribute to economic and governmental decisions. Better people are clearly trust fund babies with a liberal arts degree focusing on experimental film appreciation.