It’s not a matter of stricly inheritance. George W. Bush hasn’t inherited a penny, has he? Everybody who thinks he’s become wealthy through his entrepeneurial skill, savvy, and hard-work, raise your hand. It’s a phony statistic, Rand. It’s the family influence that counts. The second chances, the getting the job because your dad’s golf-buddy knows my uncle’s accountant. Almost everyone born into a white collar family gets this to some extent, but the ones who are rich or elite in some way, such as the son of admirals? They really get it. Growing up knowing senators and other national officials? Big plus, that. Gets you assigned planes even after you’ve crashed three. Keeps you in the National Guard even when you forget to report for six months. Gets you investment capital to start new businesses after you’ve run the past few into the ground. Gets you to meet a beautiful heiress whose Daddy will buy you a serious bid at a seat in Congress after she buys you a house in her home town, right after you dump your crippled wife and kids. Etc.
Because that would be taking money from him. “He’s got his, fuck you.” That’s the philosophy. Not “anybody has theirs, fuck everybody else.”
ETA: If you can call the desperate rationalization of “I’m going to do everything I possibly can to get rich, including favoring the wealthy and down-grading the poor at every opportunity, in hopes that some trickles down to me, and thus far some has, so I must be right.” a philosophy"
Because they’re fatter, lazier and don’t floss. Money would be rather wasted on them, don’t you think?
Yes and none. Why?
That’s a good question. I can see how on one level the poor people are just trying to make money, which is what the rich people are doing.
Here’s the difference: the poor people’s method of obtaining money is illegitimate because they are using violence to do so. It’s really just a large and complex version of a liquor store holdup. Rich people, on the other hand, are obtaining money by adding value to the world and increasing total wealth.
You remind me very much of a friend of mine, Rand Rover. Here’s his story:
During the dot-com frenzy, he was a salesman for a “tech” company. I put it in quotes, because it was one of those companies that actually did not have a product, just a half-baked idea. Anyway, my friend was a “salesman” in the sense that he sold the idea to people for lots of money. He knew that the whole thing was a crock. But hey, people were throwing money around left right and center at that point.
Long story short, he sold his company stock before the bust, made $7 million and retired at 39. Put his money into bond funds and GIC’s
Now he goes around telling people what a savvy investor he was/is, and how he “earned” his money the hard way, and those poor people can go fuck themselves. He rails against every penny of tax he has to pay, and feels that interest earnings should be completely tax free (which would put him in a tax bracket of 0%)
What did he contribute to the economy? Really, his “job” was little more than a legal scam artist; he took money from greedy naive people and lined his own pockets. His company produced nothing, lived for less than a year, and enriched only a handful of the top executives.
You know, when you say stuff like that? It goes on your permanent record.
Voting is violent? The Obama economic platform is kin to a liquor store holdup.
You could just be stupid. Given benefit of many doubts, of course. Or maybe you’re stupid and vicious.
Giving rich people more money just gives them more money. The rich are not smarter, more virtuous or wiser. They just have more money. Middle class and poor people add value to the world as well, quite beyond any economic considerations. They can also increase total wealth when taxes, inflation, wars, Wall Street bail outs, etc. don’t bleed away their strengths.
But but, TVeblen, if what you say is true, then people like Rand Rover would not be able to feel smug and superior! We can’t have that!
I know it’s human nature to self-justify your own lifestyle, but some people have apparently elevated it to an art form.
Wow! There really are running dog jackals of the ruling class! Heck, I thought I was joking!
Because you benefited from the public system, but don’t want anyone else to now. And because for all your, “Well, they can get it from private charities!”, you’re not even out there giving to any charities to begin with.
You’re not only a selfish, stupid asshat, you’re a selfish, stupid, hypocritical asshat.
Have I said that the government should not pay for schools? No. Therefore, I’m not being hypocritical re: public education.
Re: charities–what I’ve said is that those who want to give money to the poor can do so through private charities, not the government. Nothing hypocritical in me not personally giving to charities.
Look, I’m aware that certain of the policies that I favor because of their effect on productive people that make alot of money also have the effect of benefitting the “idle rich” who just inherited their money. I don’t think these people should be the focus of government policies. For example, I wouldn’t be in favor of reducing the tax rate only on investments of inherited cash and not on investments of earned income.
However, these “idle rich” are only a very small number of people. The fact that it is possible for them to benefit from policies designed to maintain the incentives for the productive does not mean that these policies are bad. The benefit for the idle rich is just a bad side effect of a good policy. And you can’t point to this side effect as meaning the whole policy is bad.
Whenever I talk about rich people, think Bill Gates, Sam Walton, and Warren Buffett, not Paris Hilton and John Kerry’s wife.
Also, a whole 'nother class of rich people that you guys are ignoring are the James Taggart’s of the world, who profit from government pull instead of through besting their competitors. One big example is Al Gore, who pushes for people to buy carbon credits (which he sells) and subsidize alternative energy (in which he is heavily invested).
Just because some people crow about similar ideas as mine without having personally been productive doesn’t mean the ideas are stupid, it just means those people are stupid. Personally, I’m productive and add value to the world (I grease the wheels of capitalism, essentially), so I’m not like your friend.
Dude, we’re still waiting for you to add value here.
Hey, he’s greasing the wheels! 'Course, might have been better if he had greased the gears or the bearings, then maybe we wouldn’t have skidded into the ditch.
I’m trying duder. Pearls before swine and all that.
He does add value here. Without asswipes like Rand Rover, I might one day convince myself that people like him probably don’t really exist, no one could be that complacent and smug and evil and greedy, and I should not just make stereotypical assumptions like I do about the millions of Americans who somehow vote Republican every year-- and then he comes along and shows me, right in my face, how warped their beliefs truly are, which motivates me to get off my ass and write anothe check for Obama and fly out to a battleground state to get the vote out in a few weekends. God bless and keep Rand Rover!
Smile when you say that (I do). My greed puts food on a lot of people’s tables.
Bill Gates and Warren Buffet both believe they are significantly under-taxed. I’m not sure about Walton – I’m pretty sure he’s dead and I suppose that’s tax enough.