Does this article destroy the 99% versus the 1%?

Great Debates
21

And I claim extra points for honestly invoking a libertarian icon*! :smiley:

  • Though not necessarily a FF, since he was not at the Constitutional Convention – that depends on how we define “FF.”

And I can top it! :cool:

“Our merchants and master manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.”

“By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-labourer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England.”

“The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess … It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.”

“We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate … Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.”

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

“The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit of a remedy. But the mean rapacity, the monopolizing spirit of merchants and manufacturers, who neither are, nor ought to be, the rulers of mankind, though it cannot perhaps be corrected may very easily be prevented from disturbing the tranquility of anybody but themselves.”

– Adam Smith

22

Here’s another. From “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius,” by George Orwell (1941):

And which Donald Trump and Doreen the Bag Lady cannot.

23

Did the process ever require the existence of extremely wealthy people anyway? They’re not the only ones who cause capital to move in the economy.

24

Extremely wealthy people are unnecessary. Just as people who have every X-men comic book are unnecessary. Now prove to me that people who want to amass money as their method of pursuing happiness need to be prevented from doing so, as opposed to people who amass comic books, or vintage motorcycles.

25

Easy. Amassing comic books makes you nobody’s boss.

26

I didn’t know bosses were a problem. Some bosses, of course, but that doesn’t seem to depend on how much money they have. I’ve had a lot more issues with low paid bosses than high paid bosses.

27

Yes, you did.

28

Bosses are like the government. You need them, and how much money they make doesn’t make them more or less likely to be dicks.

I don’t think this idea that rich people having too much money is going to get you very far. The idea that a person can accumulate as much wealth as they desire is pretty well established as a basic human right. It’s called pursuing happiness.

29

Curious title, does that allude to the Rothschild family?

30

:confused: It alludes to the lion and the unicorn.

31

Then why has no one in human history ever managed to do it?

32

[del]Cutting people’s heads off with a rusty hacksaw blade[/del] [del]Taking artistic shits in people’s living rooms[/del] [del]Setting fire to apartment buildings[/del] Playing AC/DC in my back yard at concert volume 24/7 makes me indescribably happy.

Does that mean I have a basic human right to do so?

At what point does “acquiring wealth” and all that inescapably accompanies that notion cross the line from “pursuing happiness” to, well, the kind of transgressions I snarked above?

33

What makes you think they are on the same continuum?

Regards,
Shodan

34

I am thinking that “wealth” is a non-static thing that cannot literally be “accumulated” in a useful way. If you hoard a resource, everyone else will simply seek other ways to address the need that that resource serves, hence, for wealth to have actual value, it must be fluid. For you to obtain the benefit of wealth, you must manage its flow, simply accumulating it is not enough.

I suspect that dozens of books could be written on the subject without anyone ever getting it quite right (if there is a “right”).

35

Except for religious ascetics, perhaps – but they satisfy their desire for wealth only by rejecting the desire.

36

Where does it say “pursuit of happiness” is anything but one continuum?

(Okay, I could one-question this back at you, but I won’t. :slight_smile: )

Unless you’re going to make a fairly arbitrary division between forms of personal happiness that take nothing from any other individual or community and ones that do take something as the source or “cost” of the happiness, there’s only one continuum. I’d posit that some truly overwhelming percentage of “happiness” requires taking something that potentially diminishes someone else’s potential for happiness. It’s all a matter of scale from there.

While “wealth” is not a zero-sum concept outside of board games and econ classrooms, it is somewhere approaching totality that wealth is acquired at someone else’s expense, or everyone’s cost. When the gradient reaches certain levels, those with very large amounts of “happiness” almost certainly have it at the cost of someone else’s. (I am excluding silly extensions here, such as unhappiness from envy of someone else’s wealth. A big pile of pelf probably cost some significant human pain and loss on someone else’s part, or many someone elses’ parts.)

37

IMHO, there are two separate questions here. Whether large income inequalities are necessarily a bad thing is just the first one. Studies have shown (no, I’m not going to go looking for them) that large income inequalities lead to higher social tensions and a generally less happy society, and, obviously, if the discrepancies are large enough lead to poverty and destitution in the lowest echelons even in a nation of plenty. Conversely, people in countries with relatively low GDPs score higher in general happiness surveys if there are no really huge systemic income disparities, as long as they have enough to sustain a reasonable if modest quality of life.

But the second, separate question is the extent to which the wealthiest echelons of the population are able to use their wealth to influence the political process and disproportionately direct it to their own best interests, basically usurping democracy by propagandizing the masses and exploiting the fact that there are few meaningful limits on advocacy spending and campaign finance. To me that’s what the metaphorical “1%” really means – whether it’s numerically 1% or 0.01% or 0.001%, it most significantly refers to the tiny minority that has overwhelming political power and influence on the political process.

38

That makes the song by Genesis much easier to understand, thanks!

39

Not familiar with it. What’s it got to do with the Rothschilds?

40

The Rothschild Family Coat of arms has kind of a similar design, with the same supporters in the same positions (I was looking for some material yesterday to beat down some CT nuts with, so that phrase kind of struck a synchronicity chord with name at the time).