I’m not rich, but I’ve always thought of this country as being a place to grow rich if you are so inclined. Why are slings and arrows being thrown at Bloomberg for being wealthy? I’m glad for one since he could hopefully go into office not owing anyone. Trump has his wealth handed to him. Trump is an ignorant, arrogant, dangerous, beast busily building up a cadre of criminals who owe him, for the future. He is one of the scariest people that exists and there are people who support his behavior. Who they are I assume are those completely ignorant of the consequences or those who are covering their own hehinds. Some women would like to F**k him because they are attracted to buffoons like that, but I hope to god that is a small number. I will vote for Bloomberg because I think he is the only one who can beat Trump. The other candidates are lovely people with good skills, experience and motivations and would be worthy of consideration, but they cannot beat Trump. Also, I will never vote for anyone who wants to take away my private health insurance. Just look at Canada.
Have you seen the thread on The myth of the businessman-President?
What about Canada?
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There’s a common belief that billionaires got their money by stomping all over their employees and/or customers. If you read even cursory biographies of John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, or Donald Trump for that matter, you’ll find there’s more than a grain of truth behind that belief.
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When you talk about “your” private health insurance, is it all yours, or something your employer provides as part of your compensation. How much would you pay for a health insurance policy that isn’t subsidized by your employer. What if you lost your job tomorrow? What if - like my daughter and daughter in law - no insurance company would sell you health insurance prior to the hated Obamacare, because you had something called a pre-existing condition?
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Four more years of Donald Trump, or a Democratic candidate who isn’t named Mike Bloomberg. Who’s the bigger threat?
The have-nots often do not trust the haves.
Why would I trust Bloomberg (or any other individual candidate) to have my best interests at heart?
There is also a deep, abiding hatred towards him for the “stop-and-frisk” business, which often turned into “stop brown men and arrest them for things no one else gets arrested for and hold them for long periods of time by setting the bail so high they can’t raise it”.
I sometimes wonder if the “billionaire class” saw that there was enough anti-Trump feeling that one of those other folks might actually get in and Bloomberg entered the race to make sure no uppity peons got notions… but that’s really paranoid. 
Well, gosh, then we should just have a minimum wealth requirement before you can run for public office, right? :rolleyes:
You mean… where absolutely no one goes bankrupt due to medical bills?
Where everyone has equal access to the same medical care regardless of whether they are a billionaire or not?
Where no one ever has to worry about pre-existing conditions, co-pays, coverage caps, or exclusions?
When you turn 65 are you planning to keep that private insurance you’re so fond of or go on Medicare like everyone else?
And where your health insurance isn’t tied to your job, so that if you lose your job or look for a different job, you don’t have to worry about losing that sweet sweet private health insurance?
Let’s talk about the reality regarding Canadian healthcare. I work very near the Canadian border and frequently take care of Canadians who have injured themselves skiing. If their injury is non-emergent enough that they can return home for treatment, they are very happy. Very Happy. They don’t have to try and navigate the over priced and only average care that is American healthcare.
Try reading Can Canadians Purchase Private Health Insurance Coverage?. Yes, it’s from some icky liberal site, but is worth a look nonetheless because it’s as even-handed as a good newspaper article.
Billionaires in today’s world tend to share the complex that making gobs of money in one endeavor proves that they are universally capable. The opposite seems to be truer: they are usually one-dimensionally capable and out of their depth in other spheres. They also share the universal notion that their billions absolve them from any faults and deficiencies. Trump just bellows over those; Bloomberg is visibly furious whenever a critic brings his up.
On the other side, the common people want to believe that winning the Presidency is the result of hard work and broad popular acclaim, not merely the effect of spending millions on ads. I.e., other people are so dumb as to be influenced by ads: they are above such trivialities. Nonsense, but some similar sentiment underlies all the comments I’ve read.
Besides, liberals are already hysterical over the imaginary possibility that Trump will stay in office forever. Bloomberg actually had the rules changed to allow him a third term. He’s like a competent Trump in many ways. Shouldn’t that give you nightmares?
I also am annoyed by the antipathy many liberals have against the super-rich. Where does it come from? It confirms one of the stereotypic slurs that right-wingers use against the left.
Many billionaires including Bloomberg have pledged to give at least half their assets to charity.
@ Bloomberg detractors: Have YOU made such a pledge?
The idea that this man, who has pledged to give away another $25 billion, is running for President to save himself form a $2 billion wealth tax (that isn’t happening anyway) is so STUPID, I ask defenders of that stupidity to take it to the Pit.
Are there billionaires and millionaires who are GREEDY assholes? Absolutely!! Are there small businessmen barely able to make ends meet who are also greedy asshooles? YES!
Go on…
Canada has private insurance that supplements the basics if one is lucky enough to find a job that offers this (and anything in the service industry does not offer this). If I lost my job, a medication I take every day would go from being $1.50 per month to $111.00 per month. I would also lose dental coverage and vision coverage and both of those things are absurdly expensive without the help of private insurance.
I also live in a city where I cannot switch doctors because every single doctor has too many patients already. If I go to the clinic and I am not the very first one through the door I will be waiting a long time to see any doctor. And if I go to the hospital because the clinic has closed early (which happens often), I am now at the intentionally-worst clinic in town where I will wait four hours at a minimum.
Don’t get me wrong, I would not trade it for the American system. In the American system I would be dead. But while Canada’s system isn’t going to bankrupt anyone, it’s still far from perfect.
OP asks us to stop considering billionaires automatically evil. Everyone starts talking about health insurance. :smack: Should OP go find a health insurance thread if he wants to talk about billionaires?
Uhh … cite? Self-made billionaires are generally intelligent, have strong drive and organizational skills, and may have “people skills” and attention to detail — all attributes that might lead to success in other fields including governance.
Are good singers likely to make good athletes? Probably not. But while correlation between skills at business and governance isn’t unity, it’s far more than zero.
Temperament is as relevant as skills. The best politicians are compassionate and motivated by a desire to perform public service. But many billionaires turn to public service when their wealth is already huge: George Soros is a good example, although he doesn’t run for office personally.
And note that many billionaires — including Soros, Bloomberg, Buffett — are on record calling for higher taxes on billionaires.
The huge concentration of wealth among a small number of people is a symptom that America’s economic paradigm has flaws. Call the system evil if you wish, but that doesn’t make the individual billionaires evil.
Please don’t use Trump as counterexample for any of this: He’s NOT self-made, NOT a particularly good businessman; used criminality both for his real estate ventures and for his White House; and exhibits the same nastiness and and narcissism in both spheres.
I do not blame Bloomberg for being annoyed when having to put up with the “billionaires are always bad” mentality we see on exhibit.
Bloomberg is an old man who is performing an act of altruism. He hopes he can rescue the U.S.A. from this Trumpian nightmare, and has promised to keep up the big spending even if not the nominee. Regardless of how his campaign progresses, he deserves applause.
No, because doing so would leave me homeless and thus is irresponsible.
Size of the fortune counts.
Bloomberg could give away 90% or even more of his assets before he had to worry about living in a van down by the river.
Me, I give to charitable causes a portion of my income that will not result in me requiring others’ charity.
What’s your next strawman?
Everything you write is obvious, and, yes, I could/should have omitted the silly snark when mentioning Bloomberg’s huge charity.
**Yet you seize on the single sentence I should have omitted and completely ignore (are unable to refute?) all nine paragraphs of my most recent post. ** Who is it that needs to attack strawmen?
I actually knew a “self-made” billionaire. He supported my late spouse’s business ventures (that’s what he did in “retirement” - help entrepreneurs. And by “know” I mean he invited us into his home as guests and friends).
He would (and did) freely admit that a good dose of his wealth was due to luck (at one point he bought into a tiny company no one had ever heard of called “Microsoft” - the guy had actually supported entrepreneurs for decades before we met him). Of course, keeping the money and making it grow could be credited to good business skills, but honest folks will admit that luck plays a role and the real trick is being able to recognize and take advantage of that luck when it comes. Which is where the hard work and self-drive comes into play.
So yes, the guy was an actuary which means super strong math skills, and he was organized and self-disciplined… but without that stroke of luck - investing in the right place at the right time for something that exploded in importance - he might have been “just” a millionaire instead of the sort of wealth that starts with a “b” instead of an “m”.
Likewise with quite a few other super-rich people who, yes, might have had amazing athletic talent or artistic talent or business talent but not only had the hard work, discipline, and focus to be successful but also were able to spot opportunity and go after it - they saw their “lucky break” and used it. Meanwhile, there are millions of talented, focused, self-disciplined people who, although successful on one level, never have and never will get that “lucky break” that will propel them into the stratosphere.
If I could, I would dispel the myth that being super-rich means you’re superior, better, or more worthy.
True. Pity we don’t have more of them.
Which is about the only thing that makes Bloomberg tolerable in my view.
Yeah, it’s like the “retail workers are always stupid” meme I have to put up with at work. Or like the sexism/racism/ageism/other -isms we all have to put up with.
There are bad billionaires out there. The “billionaire community” has to deal with that fact.
I can agree with that while reserving the right to view him with the same scrutiny and suspicion I view anyone asking for my vote.
Um… see my following post?
It does take me a few minutes to bang out a few paragraphs, a few more if I actually put some thought into it.
Billionaires depending how you define bubble, probably live in the smallest bubble it’s possible to live in, is it bigoted or prejudiced to think that a billionaire won’t care about the working man, yes it is, but I think it’s a safe bet.
I also see autocratic traits in Bloomberg in light of his past support of stop and frisk and his nanny state policies.
I also don’t see Bloomberg in an altruistic light trying to save us from Trump, I see it as him saying “Hey if one billionaire can become president, that means I can too!” I think it’s more for his ego than anything else.
So, it seems we’re largely in agreement, except for my bit of stupid snark which I regret and retract. Friends? 
Anyway, I’m no Bloomy Brat. I want whoever can beat Trump, but can’t decide who that is.
And my pessimism is overwhelming. Even if a D wins the White House, Moscow Mitch will control the Senate. That, plus the problems likely to surface 2021-2022 due to Trump’s bad stewardship, plus intraparty bickering among the D’s, plus continued malice and lies from the Putin-GOP axis, may lead to a resurgence of the Evildoers’ Party. :mad:
Yes, but one has to be greedy to become a “self-made billionaire” while one does not to become a small businessman. You have to value money as a thing to acquire rather than as just something to get you what you need or even want. It’s just orders of magnitude beyond what would happen if you were just good at business but didn’t constantly feel the need to make more. (And self-made means they didn’t inherit the wealth or get it through luck alone.)
Is it possible that a billionaire might have enough good qualities to overcome that flaw? Sure, though I can’t think of any offhand (though, to be fair, I don’t know of a lot of billionaires). Are there some that did some bad things in the past but are working to make up for it now? I would tentatively put Bill Gates in that list.
But it’s an uphill battle because of what it means to have acquired so much wealth in one lifetime. It tells us about your priorities and values. And those priorities and values are not generally the same ones that those of us who see the current wealth system as flawed actually have.
Throw in that Bloomberg seems to be the most right-leaning centrist candidate, and of course I’m going to oppose him. There’s no way such a person could have made up for their greed in my eyes.
Then there are the rape/sexual harassment allegations, which really don’t help.
Calling out dumb stuff that you actually said isn’t attacking a straw man.
Can you cite liberals calling it a character fault to be rich?
Can you criticize the financial system structurally without impugning people?
How did “character” even come into it?