Something ive noticed in this forum and several others bothers me. I want to understand why there is a pervasive hatred(pick your word for it) of anyone with wealth. I just notice anytime we discuss tax codes and bring up any changes for or against the wealthy a lot of people seem to just act irrational saying that how can you "defend the wealthy" as though they have done something contemptible.
Most of the time when 'hating on the wealthy' people are speaking against the fact that the wealthy are trying to worm out of paying their fair amount of taxes or such. I don't 'hate' them.... I just expect them to pay up... they can afford to.
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Most of the time when 'hating on the wealthy' people are speaking against the fact that the wealthy are trying to worm out of paying their fair amount of taxes or such. I don't 'hate' them.... I just expect them to pay up... they can afford to.
There's a big discrepancy between "they can afford to" and "they should". For example, you could afford to sell your house and devote your life to Christ as monk in a monastary, but you don't. It is unfair to expect any more from the wealthy than the rest of society. People say, "The wealthy should pay more taxes because they have more money." Yes, they have more money... but paying 15% off of 100k is already more than 15% off of 40k. Why should people expect them to pay 40% off of their 100k? The wealthy pay more than their fair amount and they always have in modern society. Any tax evasion is mostly off of money that is more than the portion ordinary people are paying. We all heave different definitions of fair and I understand this. But, ultimately, we need to properly compensate the wealthy for their services and we cannot expect to take as much to the point that they won;t starve. Every person has a basic freedom of choice to do as they please with their money. Exorbitant tax rates for the wealthy is denial of this freedom.
Here are a list of more "reasonable" arguments I find for hating the wealthy. I don't agree with any of these, but they float out there:
1) The wealthy are suppressing the poor. Because of the wealthy, we have laborers on minimum wage and we have no national healthcare.
2) The wealthy corrupt the government with bribery and lobbying.
3) The wealthy are socially unresponsible (i.e. polluting the environment for money) in other ways than directly affecting the common man.
I believe the main problem is differentiating between plutocrats and "good people that just happen to be rich." Some folks aren't so easily divided, but either way if one engages in plutocracy you are a plutocrat.
Plutocrats are doing as the above poster have said are true. Rich "bad guys" or "plutocrats" do so, while not everyone is a clear cut evil plutocrat and do some good for society. There is a point between just "having a job" and "having a job you enjoy without fear that your latest trainee Paublo is going to be promoted to your job next year." When both white collar and blue collar jobs that "produce something" are exported for the sake of profit. There is a problem with the system.
There is a problem with the system with TARP funds and large lobbyists. Before that there was much lobbying behind to neuter bankruptcy laws which will now hurt companies too, meanwhile that were aimed to benefit only the credit card companies and their defaulters. Manipulating tax codes, laws, and ect. on a whim through lobbying is a big problem.
I'm still thinking we might just need to do something with these comitee groups and people in power that can override hierarchy in places such as the Senate to force a vote or get rid of members off of comitees that are useless.
I have no interest in arguing... I've a fairly good idea where what you are spouting at me comes from.... it's all over Fox Radio and I don't think those persons have the brains that god gave elk. It's bunk; wealth is relative and after a certain point there just becomes no practical point to it....and last I checked 'freedom =! money'.
Besides, I'm a Marxist at heart. Share and share alike.
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It's bunk; wealth is relative and after a certain point there just becomes no practical point to it....and last I checked 'freedom =! money'.
So we shouldn't have the freedom to spend our own hard earned money the way we want it to? Is that what you're saying?
And I'm not against sharing. That's why we have taxes. But is it really necessary to share every cent we make?
And the Fox News thing is a very bad generalization... Fox News isn't the only propagandized conservative news source you know. I don't even watch the news because I have no TV in my college dorm room.
In high school I had the teacher (whom I hated) that claims that anyone who is rich is automatically someone who is unethical. "You can't be rich without doing something that is wrong" or some variation of such.
That, of course, is hardly true. Not every wealthy person in the world acquired his wealth via unethical/illegal means. The only reason I can see for such blanket disdain for the wealthy would be jealousy.
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"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Recent news article said that lobbyists in 2008 made the companies they worked for 220 dollars for every single dollar spent.
Good times.
Progressive tax systems benefit society as a whole by taking a large percentage of the super wealthy's taxes. You know, that 1.2% of america that owns 50% of the nation
I personally think the 'hate' towards the 'wealthy' is how they use that money or flaunt it. From what I have seen in my life, there is no hate toward those who work for their money. Its the people who fall into the money and start acting in a way they are better then everyone else, have a huge bullseye on their backs.
As for the tax issues brought up in this thread, if the government needs the monies to function where are they going to go to get it? Are they going to go to the group of people struggling to get by or are they going to go to the group that is sitting comfortable financially wise??
I seriously think the majority are fed up with wasteful spending. If the government was smarter about where and how they spend our monies there wouldnt be such a problem.
My general issue with the liberal arguments are not that they are unreasonable, but that when they are actually applied to public policy, the boundaries between "ultra rich" and "slightly wealthy" suddenly warp drastically.
(N_S) brings up the issue of plutocrats. From the "sound" of his argument, it seems he is referring to some tycoon or mogul who makes at least $100 million a year. But when tax day comes, guess who shares the exorbitant tax bracket with Mr. Microsoft CEO?
I would not consider a person making $250,000 a year to be capable of exploiting the government or of hiring lobbyists to double his money's worth. That would require at least several million dollars a year. He does none of those corrupt or exploitative deeds. Neither does this man have to work for some major Wall Street company. He might not even be a businessman at all! He might be a white collar worker like many of your parents. A plastic surgeon may very well earn this amount through his own sweat and blood.. through all that effort he put into his PhD.
Now I ask you, are we really taking back what's rightfully ours from oil monguls? Or are we just robbing the upper middle class of what little surplus they have? This policy may in fact deters higher education because many of the jobs requiring advanced degrees still fall in this upper tax bracket. Because of Democrats such as Obama, you can thank them from ridding our future society of lawyers and doctors and psychologists and engineers.
This is why when I go to the ballot, I could never vote Democrat. The people who are most hurt from Democratic policy are not the oil monguls or the silicon valley CEOs, it is the benign upper middle class that is sandwiched between them. And let me tell you, there are much more people in the upper middle class than there are the ultra rich. I do not vote Republican because I agree with all the bribery and corruption. I vote Republican because the Democratic Party is unjust toward a wide margin of the "slightly wealthy".
Believe me when I say that many of you will graduate from college with all your debt, and you'll finally start making a decent salary, and then the Democrats will take what you have away from you. Many of you may not understand the injustice today, but you will realize the injustice tomorrow.
I think the bands most countries have are stupid, because an increase of $1 in your salary, has a large effect.
That is only a problem if the country does not use progressive brackets. Canada and the US use progressive brackets so a bump by $1 into a higher bracket has a trivial effect.
When you start buying handbags that cost 30k, I think you deserve to be slapped across the face. That's the kind of "wealthy" I hate. Nobody needs a 30k purse and nobody needs four Ferraris in his/her garage and so on. The kind of wealth that enables this kind of spending is excessive and should, in my opinion, be shared rather than wasted in unsustainable consumption.
Otherwise I don't care how you made your money as long as it's legit. Wealth through investing is perfectly fine as it's a service, too (not with derivatives, though).
Remember the guys who designed, made, and sold that custom Ferrari? They need to eat too.
In fact, niche luxury goods are a form of patronage that reward quality over quantity, the sort of capitalism we desperately need at all levels, not just the super-rich.
One reason society do not like their super rich members is because these people have no capacity for empathy for the sorts of things that dictate the lives of the rest of us. Worrying about rent, loans, bills, where the money will come from to have surgery if we need it, having to compromise our children's safety and security because we live in the best neighborhood we can afford to, but it's not enough. Having to set aside or give up our dreams of being artists, musicians, gardeners, and parents while we slave away at retail jobs or call centre slots which could disappear tomorrow. Having to divorce your wife so she can benefit from federally funded medical care, because you have no other way to pay for it otherwise, choosing not to have lifesaving cancer treatments because we want our daughter to have an inheritance to help her, rather than a 100% disabled parent to support, even if I survive.
The super rich often were born into that money and never had to do or endure the things the rest of us have to to contribute and earn our room and board. They've often never had to make the hard choices, the ones that leave us bitter and depressed and angry, or guilty and ashamed.
I'm not saying they should just give out money. Although a strong commitment to charity helps. They should support laws and entities which protect people from poverty, devastating illness, and disability. They should have to gain the sort of insight into the reality of being not-rich, before they are allowed to suborn elections and lobby for things. As they say, money is power, and power corrupts. Even when it doesn't, it insulates and creates an empathic gap between the power and the rest of us.
The rich should be using that power to help lift up the general condition of their fellow human beings, but often they are almost autistic in their inability to put themselves in the other person's shoes.
I'm not saying all rich people are like that. But even the ones with the most admirable public service records, may not truly have empathy into the human condition. They may be doing so out of political expedience, and may do so again but under the influence of a different ideology which dictates a different attitude towards the poor. I can't even begin to discuss the possible role wealthy socialite blockheads like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan might have other than to stir up more resentment. These are people who are on the other end of the spectrum, whose privileged lives constitute a form of personality disorder.
Meh. Hate for the wealthy is born more form hating corporations. Most poeple that "hate the wealthy" will only talk about the highest members of corporate org charts, and have converted their hate of a vague entity to something concrete and more real.
I think it's horribly misguided, and I feel that it's just another popular bandwagon to hop on like the environment.
Even if we accept your premise, the GOP is unjust towards everyone else. Especially the poorest. Having zero cap on your potential income but in return being left with zero safety nets works fine for you if you have lots and lots of money already. It's a nightmare for the other 90%, though.
Very few Republican lawmakers would be in favor of zero safety nets, so you're setting up a bit of a strawman. But even if you weren't, in what sense is treating everybody equally "unjust"?
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Very few Republican lawmakers would be in favor of zero safety nets, so you're setting up a bit of a strawman. But even if you weren't, in what sense is treating everybody equally "unjust"?
Because we're not all created equal, we rely on social justice to recognize this and provide and protect our children, elderly, disabled, and ill members of society. Treating them 'equally' is a specious term for neglect and abuse.
@emo pinata: There have always been haves and have-nots. The have-nots always envy the haves, and often the haves do things or run things a certain way to incur a lot of resentment. Since when has any group ever been able to avoid generalizations about another group?
There has to be mistrust of rich people in order for them not to turn society upside down. Rich lobbyists have an incredible influence on government and legislation. In contrast, how much political influence do you think the middle class has? You can vote for different politicians... who are or will be in the pockets of lobbyists either way. Lobbyists basically get away with anything they want, there are marvelous pieces of legislation all over the world to prove how twistedly they have set up the system to favor them. And there's rarely been anything lower-class people can do to stop them.
Secondly, the lifestyle of upper aristocracy is utterly heinous. Gotta love how often the incredibly retarded argument of "poor=lazy, so why would we cather to them?" is used. Your average lower class soccer mom probably works her ass harder just taking care of a household than most employed persons, let alone Paris Hilton and her lobotomized Hollywood ilk, and she'll never see a dime for all that work. These people live a grand lifestyle and spend hundreds or thousands of times as much on luxury items as a middle class person could afford to spend on similar commodities. Truly horrible if you consider many such fortunes are built upon the exploitation of poor third world people working in factories.
Third and last, cathering to your upper class doesn't even warrant social stability either way. Remember the example of Ireland, the country that managed to draw in all those riches with its low corporate tax of 11% and other legislation to cather to the rich. Well, look how well that turned out today. Ireland was the first European economy to collapse under the present economic crisis, in fact it fell so hard and fast it's not even funny. The (once) richest businessman in Ireland commited suicide some time ago when his fortune of 450+ million euros burned down into a 18 million debt.
There are specific reasons to mistrust the rich in specific contexts and situations. As you can see, it's not a blind sentiment of hatred.
@emo pinata: There have always been haves and have-nots. The have-nots always envy the haves, and often the haves do things or run things a certain way to incur a lot of resentment. Since when has any group ever been able to avoid generalizations about another group?
I'm not sure why I was being asked this, but it's impossible for humans to not have stereotypes in their culture. There's a lot of debate as to why they exist, but the only known entity is that we have to have something to "hate". I also think that it will always be easier to hate something you don't understand than to fear it or even learn to understand it.
(N_S) brings up the issue of plutocrats. From the "sound" of his argument, it seems he is referring to some tycoon or mogul who makes at least $100 million a year. But when tax day comes, guess who shares the exorbitant tax bracket with Mr. Microsoft CEO?
You should learn more about tax brackets and come back - from $250k -> top tier, there's at least 3 brackets that I'm aware of, and considering that's in excess of what I made and hired people for I'm probably lacking in my knowledge of it.
I would not consider a person making $250,000 a year to be capable of exploiting the government or of hiring lobbyists to double his money's worth. That would require at least several million dollars a year. He does none of those corrupt or exploitative deeds. Neither does this man have to work for some major Wall Street company. He might not even be a businessman at all! He might be a white collar worker like many of your parents. A plastic surgeon may very well earn this amount through his own sweat and blood.. through all that effort he put into his PhD.
Doctorate != PhD for starters - and secondly in order to actually be "penalized" you need to be making around $400k.... oh, and you'd still be paying less taxes on the top brackets than under Reagan, the messiah of my ex-party. (And most plastic surgeons I know of, which due to my congenital hand condition I've known plenty across my years, look towards the half a mil range)
Now I ask you, are we really taking back what's rightfully ours from oil monguls? Or are we just robbing the upper middle class of what little surplus they have? This policy may in fact deters higher education because many of the jobs requiring advanced degrees still fall in this upper tax bracket. Because of Democrats such as Obama, you can thank them from ridding our future society of lawyers and doctors and psychologists and engineers.
Except when you look at the statistics to how taxes are actually in NET instead of GROSS and you realize that besides the drastically low end of the scale (those in poverty/on the edge of that receive EIC) very few people have a meaningful amount of their taxes defrayed by deductions until they reach over $125k - heck, there was some statistics run in 2007 on FY2001-2006 that showed that nearly half of all MULTIMILLION dollar individuals (which includes businesses) had a NET tax burden of 0% for AT LEAST two years across that period.
Hi, I make $60k/yr and I pay about $12k to the Fed after everything is factored in - but yet someone making an excessive amount of money can manage to pay NOTHING to the Fed? That seems incredibly fair....
LMAO i love the arguement that rich people won't get fed because they don't have enough money....maybe they won't have enough money left over from buying expensive sport cars and jets to eat, good point.
have you ever thought that your decreasing the incentive for the rich to work themselves because they can retire early?
taxes can also increase funding for jobs so your arguement about taxes = bad is mute. we give to our government so we don't have our investments abused. in fact no country ever worked without any government at all.
the super rich control most of the wealth in America mind you. Even if we doubled the taxes on the super wealthy i doubt you'd see a real change in class.
Back in the early years of World of Warcraft, one would raid dungeons with forty people. These raids were considered very difficult and time consuming.
They would often require one to dedicate two to three hours of gathering herbs and other materials simply to prepare the necessary buffs and boons that would then aid their six to seven hour raid on this dungeon. And even then, some monsters took weeks or even months (of these ten hour days) to kill. When one did kill one of these monsters, equipment (armor, weapons, etc.) were dropped to be looted, and these items were far more powerful than any other in the game.
This lead to gigantic discussions (pointless forum bickering) between the "Casual" players, and the "Hardcore" players. Casuals, who did not have nearly enough time to accomplish these tasks, felt it was unfair that they could not acquire items of this power level even though they were paying for the game as well. Hardcore players felt it was fair, because they felt one should have to put in that much time and effort to be rewarded with such prizes. At the peak of this Casual vs. Hardcore dynamic, less than 1% of the game's ten million subscriptions were seeing this content.
Casuals would say that Hardcores simply wanted to stay ahead of everyone else, and Hardcores would say that Casuals simply wanted "wellfare" loot (often using the sarcastic idea of having Blizzard, the developing company, mail these players this loot for doing nothing at all).
Now sure, a "hardcore" guild would often take lesser experienced characters (players) along for the ride, letting them "soak up" these items without actually learning these dungeons along with the rest of them. But is that not the right of the Hardcore? To pass on their earnings and hard work to friends and family?
Every now and then a Hardcore guild will find an error in the game's programming and use it to their advantage (an exploit). Sometimes this takes the form of a monster being unable to attack the players when the players can easily attack the monster. Sometimes it's simply using powers and spells in ways the developers did not intend, letting these players kill some monsters much more easily then intended. Even so, these players are in the minority (within a minority itself), and have never and should never be considered the standard Hardcore guild.
The actions of these few do not detract from the legitimate work the other Hardcore guilds have put in, and certainly do not bolster the Casual's argument much, if at all.
For the record, I was a Casual.
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#define ALWAYS SOMETIMES
#define NEVER RARELY
#define ALL MANY
-=GIVE US SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN=-
I'm nerd enough to link my WoW Armory Though I'll put it in a small font.
I think the major reason is that people find that most wealthy people are not as such because of their own doing. They have become as such because they have good connections (nepotism) or because they have regularly broken the law (e.g. what Vaclav said about income vs taxes). For the majority of really rich people, meritocracy doesn't hold up.
It's a generalization, but most people feel it's justified because it holds true for most wealthy individuals.
Meh. I disagree.
Most wealthy people are actually rich because their own doing. The unwealthy tend to find comfort in looking at the Paris Hiltons of the world, and cover themself in the assuring thought that other peoples wealth comes from unfair advantages. An easy answer that clears them from any responsibility.
I don't think that using an electronic toy as a metaphor for the relations between the wealthy and the poor is a good idea.
Just for you I'll state it plainly, then.
Not all wealthy people have gotten said wealth through devious means. To assume that they have (or to regard these honest wealthy people as collateral damage) isn't much more fair than the un-honest wealthy treating the poor the way they do.
It is also the right of the wealthy to leave their belongings (hard earned or not) to family and friends, and faulting someone for inheriting money is ridiculous.
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#define ALWAYS SOMETIMES
#define NEVER RARELY
#define ALL MANY
-=GIVE US SOMETHING TO BELIEVE IN=-
I'm nerd enough to link my WoW Armory Though I'll put it in a small font.
That reminds me of another reason many people hate the wealthy.
Even if some wealthy people worked really hard to get what they have, most of them usually start with favorable conditions. There are millions of people who will live paycheck to paychek all their lives and there's little they can do about that, and they know it. So when you hear about lottery winners, inheritances and other people that got instant riches, it's no wonder many would feel envy at that.
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It is always easy to be tolerant and understanding...Until someone presents an opinion completely opposite to your own.
Wow, this is like a bunch of high school kids hating on jocks.
Let's look at Steve Jobs. He started as a regular person. He made a product and a company from basically scratch and now is a powerful and wealthy businessman.
What the heck right does anyone have to tell him how to spend the money he's earned? It's good to look at such people and be motivated and try to find ways to make similar accomplishments. It's detrimental to think that he has to give what he has to everyone else simply because they want it.
The danger in overtaxing or overhating the wealthy is that you risk destroying the motivation to become wealthy. People want to become wealthy because it affords you many advantages. There's lots of things people worry about that they have to worry about less with wealth. If wealth just brings on more obligations with no more privileges, there is no motivation to be wealthy. If there is no motivation to be wealthy, there is less motivation to be creative and industry becomes negatively impacted. Note this is a lot of the reason the Soviet Union's economy had so much trouble. Why would anyone want to try to make a successful business if the government would come in and tell the proprietor that other people were going to take the money he'd earned because by virtue of having less than him they deserved it more?
You deserve what you work for and earn. Anyone who thinks they deserve more simply because someone else has it and they don't is deluded by an overinflated sense of entitlement.
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Thoughts?
Yes i am the same guy who trades/sells on MOTL AND Wizards of the Coast and i trade on POJO.
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EDH
BRGWUScion of the Ur-Dragon ~ BSiezan, The Perverter of Truth ~ W 8.5 Tails (needs work)
All my Decks.
There's a big discrepancy between "they can afford to" and "they should". For example, you could afford to sell your house and devote your life to Christ as monk in a monastary, but you don't. It is unfair to expect any more from the wealthy than the rest of society. People say, "The wealthy should pay more taxes because they have more money." Yes, they have more money... but paying 15% off of 100k is already more than 15% off of 40k. Why should people expect them to pay 40% off of their 100k? The wealthy pay more than their fair amount and they always have in modern society. Any tax evasion is mostly off of money that is more than the portion ordinary people are paying. We all heave different definitions of fair and I understand this. But, ultimately, we need to properly compensate the wealthy for their services and we cannot expect to take as much to the point that they won;t starve. Every person has a basic freedom of choice to do as they please with their money. Exorbitant tax rates for the wealthy is denial of this freedom.
Here are a list of more "reasonable" arguments I find for hating the wealthy. I don't agree with any of these, but they float out there:
1) The wealthy are suppressing the poor. Because of the wealthy, we have laborers on minimum wage and we have no national healthcare.
2) The wealthy corrupt the government with bribery and lobbying.
3) The wealthy are socially unresponsible (i.e. polluting the environment for money) in other ways than directly affecting the common man.
Plutocrats are doing as the above poster have said are true. Rich "bad guys" or "plutocrats" do so, while not everyone is a clear cut evil plutocrat and do some good for society. There is a point between just "having a job" and "having a job you enjoy without fear that your latest trainee Paublo is going to be promoted to your job next year." When both white collar and blue collar jobs that "produce something" are exported for the sake of profit. There is a problem with the system.
There is a problem with the system with TARP funds and large lobbyists. Before that there was much lobbying behind to neuter bankruptcy laws which will now hurt companies too, meanwhile that were aimed to benefit only the credit card companies and their defaulters. Manipulating tax codes, laws, and ect. on a whim through lobbying is a big problem.
I'm still thinking we might just need to do something with these comitee groups and people in power that can override hierarchy in places such as the Senate to force a vote or get rid of members off of comitees that are useless.
Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.
Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.
Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle.
Besides, I'm a Marxist at heart. Share and share alike.
Flavour-Deckbuilder of the Flittering Clique
The [Pack] My Trade List
Cardshark IS AWESOME!
Trade me Crusaders?
GWREnchanted Eve (building) ~ BPoxy Pox
Standard
WUMeow-Go~BU Infection
Casual
BWAngel Doom ~ GRWWarpride ~ WGUStoic Control (ARG)
EDH
BRGWUScion of the Ur-Dragon ~ BSiezan, The Perverter of Truth ~ W 8.5 Tails (needs work)
All my Decks.
So we shouldn't have the freedom to spend our own hard earned money the way we want it to? Is that what you're saying?
And I'm not against sharing. That's why we have taxes. But is it really necessary to share every cent we make?
And the Fox News thing is a very bad generalization... Fox News isn't the only propagandized conservative news source you know. I don't even watch the news because I have no TV in my college dorm room.
In high school I had the teacher (whom I hated) that claims that anyone who is rich is automatically someone who is unethical. "You can't be rich without doing something that is wrong" or some variation of such.
That, of course, is hardly true. Not every wealthy person in the world acquired his wealth via unethical/illegal means. The only reason I can see for such blanket disdain for the wealthy would be jealousy.
"Sometimes, the situation is outracing a threat, sometimes it's ignoring it, and sometimes it involves sideboarding in 4x Hope//Pray." --Doug Linn
Recent news article said that lobbyists in 2008 made the companies they worked for 220 dollars for every single dollar spent.
Good times.
Progressive tax systems benefit society as a whole by taking a large percentage of the super wealthy's taxes. You know, that 1.2% of america that owns 50% of the nation
I personally think the 'hate' towards the 'wealthy' is how they use that money or flaunt it. From what I have seen in my life, there is no hate toward those who work for their money. Its the people who fall into the money and start acting in a way they are better then everyone else, have a huge bullseye on their backs.
As for the tax issues brought up in this thread, if the government needs the monies to function where are they going to go to get it? Are they going to go to the group of people struggling to get by or are they going to go to the group that is sitting comfortable financially wise??
I seriously think the majority are fed up with wasteful spending. If the government was smarter about where and how they spend our monies there wouldnt be such a problem.
What percentage does a Lawyer, Doctor, or other schooled professional spend on surviving?
How much do the top 1% spend on surviving?
(N_S) brings up the issue of plutocrats. From the "sound" of his argument, it seems he is referring to some tycoon or mogul who makes at least $100 million a year. But when tax day comes, guess who shares the exorbitant tax bracket with Mr. Microsoft CEO?
I would not consider a person making $250,000 a year to be capable of exploiting the government or of hiring lobbyists to double his money's worth. That would require at least several million dollars a year. He does none of those corrupt or exploitative deeds. Neither does this man have to work for some major Wall Street company. He might not even be a businessman at all! He might be a white collar worker like many of your parents. A plastic surgeon may very well earn this amount through his own sweat and blood.. through all that effort he put into his PhD.
Now I ask you, are we really taking back what's rightfully ours from oil monguls? Or are we just robbing the upper middle class of what little surplus they have? This policy may in fact deters higher education because many of the jobs requiring advanced degrees still fall in this upper tax bracket. Because of Democrats such as Obama, you can thank them from ridding our future society of lawyers and doctors and psychologists and engineers.
This is why when I go to the ballot, I could never vote Democrat. The people who are most hurt from Democratic policy are not the oil monguls or the silicon valley CEOs, it is the benign upper middle class that is sandwiched between them. And let me tell you, there are much more people in the upper middle class than there are the ultra rich. I do not vote Republican because I agree with all the bribery and corruption. I vote Republican because the Democratic Party is unjust toward a wide margin of the "slightly wealthy".
Believe me when I say that many of you will graduate from college with all your debt, and you'll finally start making a decent salary, and then the Democrats will take what you have away from you. Many of you may not understand the injustice today, but you will realize the injustice tomorrow.
That is only a problem if the country does not use progressive brackets. Canada and the US use progressive brackets so a bump by $1 into a higher bracket has a trivial effect.
In fact, niche luxury goods are a form of patronage that reward quality over quantity, the sort of capitalism we desperately need at all levels, not just the super-rich.
One reason society do not like their super rich members is because these people have no capacity for empathy for the sorts of things that dictate the lives of the rest of us. Worrying about rent, loans, bills, where the money will come from to have surgery if we need it, having to compromise our children's safety and security because we live in the best neighborhood we can afford to, but it's not enough. Having to set aside or give up our dreams of being artists, musicians, gardeners, and parents while we slave away at retail jobs or call centre slots which could disappear tomorrow. Having to divorce your wife so she can benefit from federally funded medical care, because you have no other way to pay for it otherwise, choosing not to have lifesaving cancer treatments because we want our daughter to have an inheritance to help her, rather than a 100% disabled parent to support, even if I survive.
The super rich often were born into that money and never had to do or endure the things the rest of us have to to contribute and earn our room and board. They've often never had to make the hard choices, the ones that leave us bitter and depressed and angry, or guilty and ashamed.
I'm not saying they should just give out money. Although a strong commitment to charity helps. They should support laws and entities which protect people from poverty, devastating illness, and disability. They should have to gain the sort of insight into the reality of being not-rich, before they are allowed to suborn elections and lobby for things. As they say, money is power, and power corrupts. Even when it doesn't, it insulates and creates an empathic gap between the power and the rest of us.
The rich should be using that power to help lift up the general condition of their fellow human beings, but often they are almost autistic in their inability to put themselves in the other person's shoes.
I'm not saying all rich people are like that. But even the ones with the most admirable public service records, may not truly have empathy into the human condition. They may be doing so out of political expedience, and may do so again but under the influence of a different ideology which dictates a different attitude towards the poor. I can't even begin to discuss the possible role wealthy socialite blockheads like Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan might have other than to stir up more resentment. These are people who are on the other end of the spectrum, whose privileged lives constitute a form of personality disorder.
I think it's horribly misguided, and I feel that it's just another popular bandwagon to hop on like the environment.
Very few Republican lawmakers would be in favor of zero safety nets, so you're setting up a bit of a strawman. But even if you weren't, in what sense is treating everybody equally "unjust"?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Because we're not all created equal, we rely on social justice to recognize this and provide and protect our children, elderly, disabled, and ill members of society. Treating them 'equally' is a specious term for neglect and abuse.
@emo pinata: There have always been haves and have-nots. The have-nots always envy the haves, and often the haves do things or run things a certain way to incur a lot of resentment. Since when has any group ever been able to avoid generalizations about another group?
Secondly, the lifestyle of upper aristocracy is utterly heinous. Gotta love how often the incredibly retarded argument of "poor=lazy, so why would we cather to them?" is used. Your average lower class soccer mom probably works her ass harder just taking care of a household than most employed persons, let alone Paris Hilton and her lobotomized Hollywood ilk, and she'll never see a dime for all that work. These people live a grand lifestyle and spend hundreds or thousands of times as much on luxury items as a middle class person could afford to spend on similar commodities. Truly horrible if you consider many such fortunes are built upon the exploitation of poor third world people working in factories.
Third and last, cathering to your upper class doesn't even warrant social stability either way. Remember the example of Ireland, the country that managed to draw in all those riches with its low corporate tax of 11% and other legislation to cather to the rich. Well, look how well that turned out today. Ireland was the first European economy to collapse under the present economic crisis, in fact it fell so hard and fast it's not even funny. The (once) richest businessman in Ireland commited suicide some time ago when his fortune of 450+ million euros burned down into a 18 million debt.
There are specific reasons to mistrust the rich in specific contexts and situations. As you can see, it's not a blind sentiment of hatred.
I'm not sure why I was being asked this, but it's impossible for humans to not have stereotypes in their culture. There's a lot of debate as to why they exist, but the only known entity is that we have to have something to "hate". I also think that it will always be easier to hate something you don't understand than to fear it or even learn to understand it.
You should learn more about tax brackets and come back - from $250k -> top tier, there's at least 3 brackets that I'm aware of, and considering that's in excess of what I made and hired people for I'm probably lacking in my knowledge of it.
Doctorate != PhD for starters - and secondly in order to actually be "penalized" you need to be making around $400k.... oh, and you'd still be paying less taxes on the top brackets than under Reagan, the messiah of my ex-party. (And most plastic surgeons I know of, which due to my congenital hand condition I've known plenty across my years, look towards the half a mil range)
Except when you look at the statistics to how taxes are actually in NET instead of GROSS and you realize that besides the drastically low end of the scale (those in poverty/on the edge of that receive EIC) very few people have a meaningful amount of their taxes defrayed by deductions until they reach over $125k - heck, there was some statistics run in 2007 on FY2001-2006 that showed that nearly half of all MULTIMILLION dollar individuals (which includes businesses) had a NET tax burden of 0% for AT LEAST two years across that period.
Hi, I make $60k/yr and I pay about $12k to the Fed after everything is factored in - but yet someone making an excessive amount of money can manage to pay NOTHING to the Fed? That seems incredibly fair....
Re: People misusing the term Vanilla to describe a flying, unleash (sometimes trample) critter.
have you ever thought that your decreasing the incentive for the rich to work themselves because they can retire early?
taxes can also increase funding for jobs so your arguement about taxes = bad is mute. we give to our government so we don't have our investments abused. in fact no country ever worked without any government at all.
the super rich control most of the wealth in America mind you. Even if we doubled the taxes on the super wealthy i doubt you'd see a real change in class.
They would often require one to dedicate two to three hours of gathering herbs and other materials simply to prepare the necessary buffs and boons that would then aid their six to seven hour raid on this dungeon. And even then, some monsters took weeks or even months (of these ten hour days) to kill. When one did kill one of these monsters, equipment (armor, weapons, etc.) were dropped to be looted, and these items were far more powerful than any other in the game.
This lead to gigantic discussions (pointless forum bickering) between the "Casual" players, and the "Hardcore" players. Casuals, who did not have nearly enough time to accomplish these tasks, felt it was unfair that they could not acquire items of this power level even though they were paying for the game as well. Hardcore players felt it was fair, because they felt one should have to put in that much time and effort to be rewarded with such prizes. At the peak of this Casual vs. Hardcore dynamic, less than 1% of the game's ten million subscriptions were seeing this content.
Casuals would say that Hardcores simply wanted to stay ahead of everyone else, and Hardcores would say that Casuals simply wanted "wellfare" loot (often using the sarcastic idea of having Blizzard, the developing company, mail these players this loot for doing nothing at all).
Now sure, a "hardcore" guild would often take lesser experienced characters (players) along for the ride, letting them "soak up" these items without actually learning these dungeons along with the rest of them. But is that not the right of the Hardcore? To pass on their earnings and hard work to friends and family?
Every now and then a Hardcore guild will find an error in the game's programming and use it to their advantage (an exploit). Sometimes this takes the form of a monster being unable to attack the players when the players can easily attack the monster. Sometimes it's simply using powers and spells in ways the developers did not intend, letting these players kill some monsters much more easily then intended. Even so, these players are in the minority (within a minority itself), and have never and should never be considered the standard Hardcore guild.
The actions of these few do not detract from the legitimate work the other Hardcore guilds have put in, and certainly do not bolster the Casual's argument much, if at all.
For the record, I was a Casual.
Though I'll put it in a small font.
Please stop hijacking my reply box.
Meh. I disagree.
Most wealthy people are actually rich because their own doing. The unwealthy tend to find comfort in looking at the Paris Hiltons of the world, and cover themself in the assuring thought that other peoples wealth comes from unfair advantages. An easy answer that clears them from any responsibility.
You can check how rich you are (on a global level) at http://globalrichlist.com/
These are the decks that I have constructed, and are ready to play:
01. Ankh Sligh to be exact.
Not all wealthy people have gotten said wealth through devious means. To assume that they have (or to regard these honest wealthy people as collateral damage) isn't much more fair than the un-honest wealthy treating the poor the way they do.
It is also the right of the wealthy to leave their belongings (hard earned or not) to family and friends, and faulting someone for inheriting money is ridiculous.
Though I'll put it in a small font.
Please stop hijacking my reply box.
Even if some wealthy people worked really hard to get what they have, most of them usually start with favorable conditions. There are millions of people who will live paycheck to paychek all their lives and there's little they can do about that, and they know it. So when you hear about lottery winners, inheritances and other people that got instant riches, it's no wonder many would feel envy at that.
Let's look at Steve Jobs. He started as a regular person. He made a product and a company from basically scratch and now is a powerful and wealthy businessman.
What the heck right does anyone have to tell him how to spend the money he's earned? It's good to look at such people and be motivated and try to find ways to make similar accomplishments. It's detrimental to think that he has to give what he has to everyone else simply because they want it.
The danger in overtaxing or overhating the wealthy is that you risk destroying the motivation to become wealthy. People want to become wealthy because it affords you many advantages. There's lots of things people worry about that they have to worry about less with wealth. If wealth just brings on more obligations with no more privileges, there is no motivation to be wealthy. If there is no motivation to be wealthy, there is less motivation to be creative and industry becomes negatively impacted. Note this is a lot of the reason the Soviet Union's economy had so much trouble. Why would anyone want to try to make a successful business if the government would come in and tell the proprietor that other people were going to take the money he'd earned because by virtue of having less than him they deserved it more?
You deserve what you work for and earn. Anyone who thinks they deserve more simply because someone else has it and they don't is deluded by an overinflated sense of entitlement.