# Problem is, it ain't the 1%, it's the 5+% **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 21, 2011, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686 "2011-11-21T21:27:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Terr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/839c29/32.png) [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/101 "2011-11-22T18:31:26Z")
> [@Evil\_Economist](#): > > Could you point out specifically where in that thread the question “is 100 ≤ 100” is answered? Ah you edited your post and I didn’t look when I responded. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/102 "2011-11-22T18:33:37Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I’m a Hispanic male with income in the top 5%. My father was an immigrant from Central America whose childhood home had a dirt floor. > > I’m very inconvenient for this discussion. I thought you were Cuban. Does that count as Central America? [/west\_coaster] In any case, anyone can get lucky. Hard work doesn’t insure success, it increases the chances. You still are at the whim of outrageous fortune. So you being successful is nothing but an anecdote. We need to look at overall numbers. And as an aside, was your dad living in a dirt-floored shack when he moved here? If he was a professional when he came it kind of undercuts what you’re saying. Also, unless you have an accent and are particularly brown looking, you probably feel much less racism than someone from Mexico. I look completely white and despite growing up in Hawaii speak with a neutral American accent (thanks to my mom making sure to never speak pidgin around me), but my mom is a dark-skinned Filipino. People certainly think of me as a white dude, and I’m sure that has increased my options. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/103 "2011-11-22T19:40:03Z")
> [@Hyperelastic](#): > > What is this, 1952? Cabots and Lodges vacationing on the Cape after a hard year of investment banking and lawyering? > > Give me a break. The “overclass” is less white than it’s ever been. It’s awfully Jewish, you know. Why don’t you run with that? :rolleyes: Yes, that’s been covered in the thread. **Race** is important but incidental here; **class** is essential. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/104 "2011-11-22T19:45:31Z")
From [_Class: A Guide Through the American Status System_](http://www.amazon.com/Class-Through-American-Status-System/dp/0671792253/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294367637&sr=8-1) (originally published 1983), by Paul Fussell: > [@](#): > > My researches have persuaded me that there are nine classes in this country, as follows: > > ## Top out-of-sight Upper Upper middle > > ## Middle High proletarian Mid-proletarian Low proletarian > > Destitute > Bottom out-of-sight > > One thing to get clear at the outset is this: it’s not riches alone that define these classes. . . . “Economically, no doubt, there are only two classes, the rich and the poor,” says George Orwell, “but socially there is a whole hierarchy of classes, and the manners and traditions learned by each class in childhood are not only very different but – this is the essential point – generally persist from birth to death. . . . It is . . . very difficult to escape, culturally, from the class into which you have been born.” When John Fitzgerald Kennedy, watching Richard Nixon on television, turned to his friends and, horror-struck, said, “The guy has no class,” he was not talking about money. > > \ > > Not that the three classes at the top don’t have money. The point is that money alone doesn’t define them, for the way they have their money is largely what matters. . . . The main thing distinguishing the top three classes from each other is the amount of money inherited in relation to the amount currently earned. The top-out-of-sight class (Rockefellers, Pres, DuPonts, Mellons, Fords, Vanderbilts) lives on inherited capital entirely. . . . > > \ > > The next class down, the upper class, differs from the top-out-of-sight class in two main ways. First, although it inherits a lot of its money, it earns quite a bit too, usually from some attractive, if slight, work, without which it would feel bored and even ashamed. It’s likely to make its money by controlling banks and the more historic corporations, think tanks, and foundations, and to busy itself with things like the older universities, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Foreign Policy Association, the Committee for Economic Development, and the like, together with the executive branch of the federal government, and often the Senate. . . . And secondly, unlike the top-out-of-sights, the upper class is visible, often ostentatiously so. . . . When you pass a house with a would-be impressive facade visible from the street or highway, you know it’s occupied by a member of the upper class. . . . > > \ > > We now come to the upper-middle class. It may possess virtually as much as the two classes above it. The difference is that it has earned most of it, in law, medicine, oil, shipping, real estate, or even the more honorific kinds of trade, like buying and selling works of art. Although they may enjoy some inherited money and use inherited “things” (silver, Oriental rugs), the upper-middles suffer from a bourgeois sense of shame, a conviction that to live on the earnings of others, even forebears, is not nice. > > Caste marks of the upper-middles would include living in a house with more rooms than you need, except perhaps when a lot of “overnight guests” are present to help you imitate upper-class style. . . . This class is also the most “role-reversed” of all: men think nothing of cooking and doing housework, women of working out of the house in journalism, theater, or real estate. (If the wife stays home all the time, the family’s middle-class only.) Upper-middles like to show off their costly educations by naming their cats Spinoza, Clytemnestra, and Candide, which means, as you’ll have inferred already, that it’s in large part the class depicted by Lisa Birnbach and others’ Official Preppy Handbook, that significantly popular artifact of 1980. What Lind means by the “overclass” encompasses the Upper-Middle upwards. There is more or less free intermarriage within that ring-fence. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/105 "2011-11-22T21:53:18Z")
What if someone who names their cat “Spinoza” marries someone who names their cat “Fluffykins”? Busting the class ring-fence? :eek: ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2011, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/106 "2011-11-22T22:57:13Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > What if someone who names their cat “Spinoza” marries someone who names their cat “Fluffykins”? Busting the class ring-fence? :eek: That happens a lot too, there’s no hard boundaries between one American class and the next, but the general lines are there. And by far most marriages are intraclass. More likely to be intraclass, I should think, than intraregional, especially in the middle and upper classes, who are very mobile geographically, and often marry college or grad-school sweethearts from other states. Ours is a social pyramid of floating layers. A pousse-cafe, if you will. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 12:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/107 "2011-11-23T00:39:50Z")
How many of the top five percent is with the Occupy Wall Street Movement? How many of their children go to a UC or an Ivy League school? After all Noam Chomsky and Warren Buffet (to use two very different examples) are definately part of the Fifteen Million. Some of the top five percent-the wealthiest CEOs in industries like information technology, academics, liberal clergy, are the best allies of Occupy Wall Street. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/108 "2011-11-23T02:18:00Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > So you are saying people have to work all their lives to afford a car, a house, and a pile of goodies, education, etc. And that to do so, they can get financing from banks. > > So far, I am not really seeing the problem … Everyone has to work at something otherwise nothing would ever get done. The question is if the system is set up so that the people working get to enjoy most of the fruits of their labor, or is it being systematically syphoned off so that a few at the top can buy summer homes in the Hamptons. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/109 "2011-11-23T03:22:00Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > How many of the top five percent is with the Occupy Wall Street Movement? How many of their children go to a UC or an Ivy League school? After all Noam Chomsky and Warren Buffet (to use two very different examples) are definately part of the Fifteen Million. > > Some of the top five percent-the wealthiest CEOs in industries like information technology, academics, liberal clergy, are the best allies of Occupy Wall Street. All very true. But that doesn’t make this any less essentially a class conflict. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/110 "2011-11-23T03:24:19Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Everyone has to work at something otherwise nothing would ever get done. The question is if the system is set up so that the people working get to enjoy most of the fruits of their labor, or is it being systematically syphoned off so that a few at the top can buy summer homes in the Hamptons. In the old USSR, not a lot of actual work got done – “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” – but the system was at least set up so that everybody always had a job and everybody always got plenty of vodka. Substitute something more herbal and we could actually make that work here . . . Damn improvement over a Protestant-work-ethic culture, anyway. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/111 "2011-11-23T05:07:54Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > But it’s not working. The upper middle class graduates of Ivy’s and other elite colleges working in Manhattan law firms, investment banks and professional services firms do not, by and large, identify with the guys banging drums out in Zuccotti Park. > > The problem has nothing to do with income level. If I study hard, go to a good school, work 70+ hours a week at a job for 15 years, why shouldn’t I be earning $150,000 a year? What does that have to do with how much some waitress earns in Nebraska? Exactly. And furthermore, assuming I bust my ass and make $150,000 a year, I don’t see why the government has to take my money and “redistribute” it to some person who is busy whining about how some nebulous 1% screws them? It’s ultimately my money, that I worked for and earned; it’s not theirs, no matter how unfortunate or wretched their life may be, and it should be my choice and only my choice to give it to some charity or not. If I want to be a right bastard and hang on to every penny, then that’s none of the government’s business. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/112 "2011-11-23T06:32:58Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > That’s all true. But it is also true that the high-income worker has more in common with the investor class, socioculturally, than with middle-income-and-lower workers. He might even hope to marry his son or daughter into an investor-class family, happens all the time. In fact, the two families might be distant cousins already. (American history being what it is, the investor is **also** a very distant cousin to the African-American who drives him around, but nobody likes to think much about that.) Technically, I’m descended from New England WASP’s, but I’m descended from the more obscure children who went west & became dirt farmers and mechanics. My sort don’t necessarily have connections of the same kind as the yachting set. A lot of railing against “reverse discrimination” is due to middle-income white people in America being told that _they_ can’t discriminate in favor of their own ethnicity, while it’s more or less accepted that immigrant enclaves will, & what you call the “ruling class” seems to do it as well. > [@Chessic\_Sense](#): > > I’m also getting sick of the notion from the occupiers that we should resent the very corporations that employ people and make shit for us to buy. I’m not sure why everyone thinks their boss is the enemy, by virtue of his being the boss. I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with being incorporated as a corporation, but it’s sort of irrelevant to “making things.” “Corporations” are often what we used to call “conglomerates.” They don’t make things, they buy businesses that make things. The conglomerates rebranded themselves as “corporations” so the employees they treated like dirt and the competitors they beggared would complain about “business ethics” and “corporate America” instead of using more precise terms, and people who objected to conglomeration could then be accused of hating business, & in confusion come back to work for the parasites. > [@](#): > > Why do people persist with this myth that it’s possible to buy an election? The media, especially TV and radio, have a strong vested interest in keeping ad buys up, and will try very hard to discredit anyone who runs for a high-profile office on the cheap. They manage to influence public opinion through repetition and control of the airwaves. Want the meme to go away? Bring back the equal time law. But the media hate that too. > [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > I wasn’t talking about buying elections, I was talking about buying politicians. Politicians vote according to the desires of whomever hands them the most money, not according to the desires of who votes for them. If you aren’t rich you can vote for whomever you like; they’ll ignore your needs and desires in favor of the company that just gave them more money than you make in a year. Yeah, it’s economics. All I can offer a pol is my vote, and once he’s in office that’s done with. But [del]an investor[/del] a donor can offer material support at any time. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 6:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/113 "2011-11-23T06:57:26Z")
> [@bump](#): > > It’s ultimately my money, that I worked for and earned; it’s not theirs, no matter how unfortunate or wretched their life may be, and it should be my choice and only my choice to give it to some charity or not. If I want to be a right bastard and hang on to every penny, then that’s none of the government’s business. “ultimately”? “Ultimately”? Technically, in the real world, money is an imaginary asset invented by society to lubricate the exchange of actual material assets. Money is a means to the end of material property, & a sort of scorecard for the silly. Property itself is not physical; it is a form of territoriality developed by human civilization; bound about by laws written and imposed arbitrarily by authorities themselves arbitrary. Property only really exists in the human mind. So, _ultimately,_ money is a quantity of expendable social power used to measure claims on material and social resources. It is used to measure wealth despite having no real value of its own. It is entirely a function of human social technology. If we decided to devalue the currency your assets were in & you somehow failed to change over to the new currency beforehand, you would have a lot of nothing. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/114 "2011-11-23T11:50:18Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > In the old USSR, not a lot of actual work got done – “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us” – but the system was at least set up so that everybody always had a job and everybody always got plenty of vodka. Substitute something more herbal and we could actually make that work here . . . Damn improvement over a Protestant-work-ethic culture, anyway. Yeah. Have fun standing in line in the snow for six hours waiting for your beet ration. You realize when “not a lot of work gets done” that means not a lot of food gets to your table, not a lot of services get filled and you don’t get that great a standard of living. You just summarized everything everyone hates about OCW - “I don’t care if everyone is poor so long as no one is richer than me”. > [@bump](#): > > Exactly. And furthermore, assuming I bust my ass and make $150,000 a year, I don’t see why the government has to take my money and “redistribute” it to some person who is busy whining about how some nebulous 1% screws them? > > It’s ultimately my money, that I worked for and earned; it’s not theirs, no matter how unfortunate or wretched their life may be, and it should be my choice and only my choice to give it to some charity or not. If I want to be a right bastard and hang on to every penny, then that’s none of the government’s business. Do you use any government services? Do you take roads or public transportation to work? Are you protected by the umbrella of legal, fire and EMT services? Do you plan on collecting Social Security when you retire? Consider taxes your maintenance fees for living in a particular part of the world. The issue has nothing to do with having to pay taxes to support a bunch of lazy drum beating hippies. And it has nothing to do with big government vs small government. It has to do with EFFECTIVE government. People should expect that in exchange for paying a fair amount in taxes, the government provide a reasonable level of infrastructure services and protection. And part of that protection includes providing a check against the excesses of corporations. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/115 "2011-11-23T12:15:34Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Exactly. And furthermore, assuming I bust my ass and make $150,000 a year, I don’t see why the government has to take my money and “redistribute” it to some person who is busy whining about how some nebulous 1% screws them? > > It’s ultimately my money, that I worked for and earned; it’s not theirs, no matter how unfortunate or wretched their life may be, and it should be my choice and only my choice to give it to some charity or not. If I want to be a right bastard and hang on to every penny, then that’s none of the government’s business. Nonsense. If it’s OK for you to be a “right bastard” and be completely selfish, then it’s just as OK for those people you dislike to get together and impose a government that confiscates everything you own. Sure it would be ruthless and unfair, but by your own standards complaining about fairness is “whining”, ruthlessness is perfectly fine, and if the end result is you starving to death in the street too bad for you. Of course, I’m sure that like most people who argue in favor of ruthlessness and selfishness, what you _really_ want is the right for you to be ruthless and selfish while everyone else isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/116 "2011-11-23T13:09:04Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Nonsense. If it’s OK for you to be a “right bastard” and be completely selfish, then it’s just as OK for those people you dislike to get together and impose a government that confiscates everything you own. Sure it would be ruthless and unfair, but by your own standards complaining about fairness is “whining”, ruthlessness is perfectly fine, and if the end result is you starving to death in the street too bad for you. As far as I know, **bump** has never confiscated a thing from me – a position I endorse, because (a) I sure don’t want folks confiscating my stuff and (b) he’s setting a sterling example. If a group of people starts getting together to confiscate _ **his** _ stuff, wouldn’t I worry they’ll come for _ **my** _ stuff next? Should I be on their side once they declare themselves for taking people’s stuff, or on his side given his lifelong love of keeping his hands off my stuff? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 1:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/117 "2011-11-23T13:21:02Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > As far as I know, **bump** has never confiscated a thing from me – a position I endorse, because (a) I sure don’t want folks confiscating my stuff and (b) he’s setting a sterling example. If a group of people starts getting together to confiscate _ **his** _ stuff, wouldn’t I worry they’ll come for _ **my** _ stuff next? Should I be on their side once they declare themselves for taking people’s stuff, or on his side given his lifelong love of keeping his hands off my stuff? Between those two you should be on their side, since at least they represent an organized society. “I’ve got mine, screw the rest of the world” is a philosophy that leads to the general collapse of society if enough people follow it. And with that philosophy it’s impossible for you to _be_ on his side anyway; completely selfish people by definition are never on the side of anyone but themselves. Of course, in reality you should reject the selfishness and amorality that are at the heart of both behaviors. That after all is the actual point I was making. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/118 "2011-11-23T14:00:02Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > And with that philosophy it’s impossible for you to _be_ on his side anyway; completely selfish people by definition are never on the side of anyone but themselves. > > Of course, in reality you should reject the selfishness and amorality that are at the heart of both behaviors. That after all is the actual point I was making. But I’m not seeing it. The people who rely on “selfishness and amorality” to confiscate everything a guy owns _ **already** _ have me quaking in my figurative boots and reaching for my literal gun. The guy who gets branded with “selfishness and amorality” when talking about _‘my money, that I worked for and earned’_ doesn’t yet sound like a threat; he sounds like _ **me,** _ he sounds like The Kind Of People We Can Do Business With, he sounds like someone who may well earn his money by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions with consenting adults in between cooperating with folks who likewise honor contracts and believe in fair play. Now, granted, maybe he ain’t – but the point is that I haven’t yet heard a reason to be against him; I’ve already heard an excellent reason to be against the confiscators. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/119 "2011-11-23T14:12:16Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > But I’m not seeing it. The people who rely on “selfishness and amorality” to confiscate everything a guy owns _ **already** _ have me quaking in my figurative boots and reaching for my literal gun. The guy who gets branded with “selfishness and amorality” when talking about _‘my money, that I worked for and earned’_ doesn’t yet sound like a threat; he sounds like _ **me,** _ he sounds like The Kind Of People We Can Do Business With, he sounds like someone who may well earn his money by engaging in mutually beneficial transactions with consenting adults in between cooperating with folks who likewise honor contracts and believe in fair play. No he isn’t, such a person is a parasite and utterly amoral; it is the philosophy of a psychopath. He’s someone who wants to take and take from society and never give anything in return, someone who has no empathy, someone with no sense of loyalty or obligation to society. You expect fair play and honoring contracts from someone who doesn’t feel he owes other people any consideration whatsoever? Someone who would let people starve to death so he can hold on to a few extra dollars? Hardly; this is the sort of philosophy that produces people who will casually cheat you, defraud you or sell you poisoned food or medicine and tell themselves that succeeding in cheating you proves their superiority. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2011, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686/120 "2011-11-23T14:22:42Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > No he isn’t, such a person is a parasite and utterly amoral; it is the philosophy of a psychopath. He’s someone who wants to take and take from society and never give anything in return Cite? You don’t know how much he gave society to earn that money in the first place, and you’re extrapolating as fast as you can about what he means by _“it should be my choice and only my choice to give it to some charity or not.”_ > [@](#): > > someone who has no empathy, someone with no sense of loyalty or obligation to society. You expect fair play and honoring contracts from someone who doesn’t feel he owes other people any consideration whatsoever? I don’t know that he feels that way. I suppose that anyone in general – and **bump** in particular – could, theoretically, be hiding such traits; I merely know there’s nothing theoretical about the folks you postulate, who go in for a “confiscates everything you own” philosophy. With them, I don’t need to suppose. > [@](#): > > Hardly; this is the sort of philosophy that produces people who will casually cheat you, defraud you or sell you poisoned food or medicine and tell themselves that succeeding in cheating you proves their superiority. I don’t know that he’s in favor of doing anything of the sort; I merely know that the amoral parasites you mention are already dedicating themselves to it. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/problem-is-it-aint-the-1-its-the-5/603686.md?page=7)