Is it bad to be "rich"?

[blackangst1]

Rich, middle class, and poor ALL exploit and cheat the system. As a general rule? No. But it happens. I certainly dont think as you accumulate more money you shed morals. What the poor contribute in labor, the rich contribute in dollars to non-profits, charities, etc, and jobs for those that labor. Money doesnt inherantly make you "evil". As a very wealthy friend of mine told me 20 years ago "Money makes good people better and bad people worse". I agree with that.

 

[her209]

"Money makes good people better and bad people worse".

:thumbsup:

 

[WhipperSnapper]

In all honestly this is one of the main responses I made this thread to hear. Not to say that I didn't hear many interesting comments, but just as a person who I suppose considers himself republican? I guess, I still know that neither side is perfect and nether side is completely "wrong" and in regards to feelings towards the "rich" I think there's often alot of misunderstanding from the majority of both sides really, or any single person as well for that matter, because if the end result was ever to label anyone and everyone that is "rich" as a violator of the country(might not be the right wording) really seems backwards and away from the goal of getting every person to want and build a good life for himself.

Thank you for your kind words.

Likewise, I don't blame businesses that engage in foreign outsourcing or the importation of foreigners on H-1B or L-1 visas for doing what makes economic sense. Nor do I blame immigrants and illegals for wanting to come to the U.S. Rather, I lay the blame where it belongs--on our politicians.

 

[nobodyknows]

I think they're smart enough to vote. No? Entitlements are not a free lunch and taxing the rich to pay for them comes up short compared to the amount of money needed to fund them. The middle class is where the real money is at. Granted...wealth distribution is out of whack...but this isn't really about the rich now is it...this is about the middle class. They are the new "rich"....the new oppressors of the poor.

Is that how you see it?

I see the vast majority of middle class as being poor. The only reason we can still classify them as middle class is because they have 2 incomes. If something happens to one of the wage earners they are screwed, blued, and tattoed.

At least that's the way it is where I live, but I live in a fairly poor area of a fairly poor state.

 

[fallout man]

Rich, middle class, and poor ALL exploit and cheat the system. As a general rule? No. But it happens. I certainly dont think as you accumulate more money you shed morals. What the poor contribute in labor, the rich contribute in dollars to non-profits, charities, etc, and jobs for those that labor. Money doesnt inherantly make you "evil". As a very wealthy friend of mine told me 20 years ago "Money makes good people better and bad people worse". I agree with that.

This.

 

[JoshGuru7]

I don't have much to say about greed as a personality trait but I do think the impacts of self-interest on the economy are worth mentioning. We exist in a world with scarcity. It would be great if everybody could have as much as they wanted of everything but scarcity has been a constant of human civilization since two cavemen wanted the same stick. The optimal allocation of scarce resources is the underlying goal of economics.

The economic case for self-interest goes like this:

Prices allocate scarce resources by helping the economy determine how much of each resource should go to what product. Competition in the market is what limits how much anyone can charge for anything and still make sales. Sellers are interested in getting as much as possible while buyers are interested in paying as little as possible. So long as all parties are operating under self-interest, resources tend to flow towards their most valued uses. Furthermore, in a price coordinated economy where parties operate under self-interest there are strong incentives to correct the inevitable mistakes that will occur under any economic system. "Greed is good" refers not to the personality trait but rather the beneficial role that self-interest plays maximizing the utility we derive from scarce resources.

 

[CycloWizard]

No problem.

Don't use the tax supported:

Public roads.
Defense from foreign enemies.
Protection from widespread diseases without vaccination, TB, measles, mumps, etc.
Protection from diseases caused by inadequate sanitation, cholera, typhoid, scabies etc.
Police protection from malcontents.
School systems.
Fire protection systems.
Water systems.
Transportation system.

No problem. Go it alone out in the brush somewhere.

It'll be great!! Just like living in the 1700's.

I would say write us how you're doing but of course that won't be available either.

None of those has anything to do with wealth redistribution, which is what we are discussing in this thread.

 

[Doc Savage Fan]

Is that how you see it?

I see the vast majority of middle class as being poor. The only reason we can still classify them as middle class is because they have 2 incomes. If something happens to one of the wage earners they are screwed, blued, and tattoed.

At least that's the way it is where I live, but I live in a fairly poor area of a fairly poor state.

Yes...this is how I see it. I grew up dirt poor and am thankful for government cheese. I'm now middle class because I worked my butt off to get there. I have 4 kids and can barely make ends meet. I am 'rich' in the eyes of many and I need to pay my 'fair share'. You see...I understand both ends. And I understand the disparity of wealth...just as well as I understand that free lunches don't exist in the real world.

 

[HGC]

I am far, far from rich, but I love the rich and wish we could lower their taxes.

Most of the rich, for tax purposes, are actually small businesses. They create most of the new jobs.

The truly rich spend a small fraction of their income. The rest is invested in corporate stocks and bonds or government bonds. In other words, the rich finance the economy and the national debt.

The top 1% pay 40% of the taxes. The top 10% pay 70%. We should cut their taxes for more, better, and cheaper goods and services, more jobs, and lower interest rates on the national debt.

 

[Craig234]

Asking this because I see alot of comments that seem to suggest you are a "bad person" if you are "rich". A recent thread lead me to believe that the majority of people do not pay back into the tax system what they get out of it(i.e how much it cost for 12 grades of school, police, fire department etc), so I would imagine only the minority/"rich" usually pay this back.
EDIT: here is the thread that sparked this question

Do you think people who become "rich" are bad and why?

If rich people are bad people, does that mean financially-strained to "poor" people are good people?

If not being "rich" makes you a good person does that mean we want less people to be rich?

Would society be better off if people stopped trying to earn more than the lowest common denominator? To it more into perspective, I suppose I could ask should more people try to pursue minimum wage jobs instead of jobs that earn more so society will be more accepting of them?

Try to state which question you are responding to in your post if you can.


*For those who may see epic fail in this post for whatever reason I ask that you try to keep your contempt to a minimum when you post.

Per your last sentence, I toned down the response.

It's not about 'rich', it's about the system working for the benefit of all, and that means that whoever gets the spots that make them rich pay a higher percent.

You ask about rich, not about rich and paying very little verus rich and paying a fair share. The former is bad, the latter is generally good, barring other problems.

You don't see Warren Buffet whining about paying too many taxes; you did see Reagan do so leading him to screw up the country, including fighting against things like healthcare.

You avoid the issue of the rich giving back to society, and instead say maybe they shouldn't earn money.

That's misguided.

 

[totalnoob]

You avoid the issue of the rich giving back to society, and instead say maybe they shouldn't earn money.

Generally, those who are best able to satisfy the needs/desires of the public get the greatest rewards. The fact that rich people are able to earn large amounts in the first place proves they are giving a GREAT DEAL back. They have already shown the ability to create wealth and values for society, so chances are they would do far more good with their surplus cash than the most bleeding heart bureaucrat could ever hope to achieve.

 

[Craig234]

Generally, those who are best able to satisfy the needs/desires of the public get the greatest rewards. The fact that rich people are able to earn large amounts in the first place proves they are giving a GREAT DEAL back. They have already shown the ability to create wealth and values for society, so chances are they would do far more good with their surplus cash than the most bleeding heart bureaucrat could ever hope to achieve.

Except this is pretty much bull.

Money works one way when it comes to you and the guy next to you, rewarding certain things that make sense.

But it works very differently in other situations, when it's concentraded in large amounts, used to set up the power structure to exploit and extract and control.

To someone who owns massive amounts of the production of society, their interests are very different than yours. Money allows them very different things to be done to society.

Money can become not some form of 'giving back a lot' but extracting a lot and protecting the power of those who have it.

There are tradeoffs. There is much good done by 'the rich', and society should allow for good things to be done, and for people to be 'rich'.

But no, the people who are rich aren't entitled to pay small amounts in taxes because "gee, the Goldman Sachs employees getting an average bonus this year of $600,000 doesn't prove that they have given so much more to society and deserve tax cuts to pay less than the bums earning middles class incomes.

I liken it to an analogy.

Imagine a small old west town, with its economy of similar people - one owns a hotel, another a general store, another a stable, another a blacksmith, and others are workers at these places. Each earns money and spends it with others. When it's in balance it works pretty well, and some earn more than others but not an extreme.

Now, let's say I suddenly own the whole town. My inn, store, blacksmith, and the former owners now are my workers there, doing the same thing but I get the profits, a cut.

I'm doing great. I don't do much, I just get the cut and sav it or blow or whatever. It simply takes from the rest, because I had the money to own it all. It's destrcutive.

Now, my analogy isn't the only story - sometimes the people who get rich do more. But it describes much of what money, capital, really does in society.

Concentrated, it *limits* opportunity, *limits* productivity, *extracts* wealth from others. It's a license to steal, in part.

This is where the government comes in to have some balance between the inefficiencies of inadequate rewards for productivity, and the norml human society of oligarchy.

The fact you don't distinguish between the effect of money in the worker's hands and the billionare's hands makes your comments appear very naive and harmful IMO.

One problem is, where do citizens turn for this sort of info? It's a sort of hidden censorship not to discuss it, and there are forces who propagandize one view only.

 

[nonlnear]

Craig234, the problem in your story isn't the concentration of wealth, but the monopoly power. The two can be separated quite effectively.

 

[Craig234]

Craig234, the problem in your story isn't the concentration of wealth, but the monopoly power. The two can be separated quite effectively.

I disagree almost entirely.

The kings of the medieval age found this, and modern socities have found this.

Dealing with money used to be considered a disgusting activity for the despicable, while good people did not get involved in things like borrowing and lending of much of those old religiously fundamentalist societies. The expansion of finance inItaly that resulted paved the way for the renaissance, and soon after innovations like the limited liability corporation invented for Queen Elizabeth and other nobles to found the East India Company to enrich them with special legal protections - which led to the American Revolution, incidentally.

Just as the noble class in England also owned the wealth, so has it been is most human history. Our own nations had no massively wealthy people who founded it - George Washington as one of the richer men was much in debt, and he couldn't afford to free all the slaves he and his wife owned. These are the men who formed a government based on 'the people' - who to them were a relatively extremely egalitarian society, in contrast to the rich nobles of Europe rich with money and power.

That Democracy they founded to spread the power to the people is what is as war with concenntrated wealth, who have very successfully undermined it.

This has led to our 'radical leftist socialist' presidential candidate Obama having as his top private donor the most corrupt too big to fail firm, Goldman, Sachs, who has the Treasury Department practically its field office in Washington, D.C., filled with their people, up to and including the Secretary of the Treasury - run so much for them and not the people that George Bush had ordered his Secretary, former Goldman CEO Paulson, that the Secretary 'just had to let him know what he was doing' at the height of the crash.

Foget the guy who actually more shamelessly sells out to the rich, the Republican nominee.

No, they cannot be seperated much as interests. Only a strong democratic culture can do this, and we haven't figured out how to keep that around.

We've had spikes, like the FDR reforms that had some mitigating effect after the crash, but things are a disaster on the 'separation money and power' area.

They go hand in hand generally. The more they get away with it, the worse for others.

I've never seen a way to allow for the runaway concentration of wealth and yet the egalitarian democracy when it comes to political power.

How many countries would you like to look at as counter examples? Pretty much all can be used to some degree. Perhaps Mexico with the richest man in the world? I'm sure he has no political power. How about Russia with its fresh billionares - where they were such a threat to state power Putin had something of a war, imprisoning the richest man in Russia, to fight that battle, and the political power and role with wealth is widely recognized.

It can get even worse, when fascism arises to more directly unite the government and the means of production.

How many more minor countries would you like to look at where the wealth of the nation and the political power in the nation are in the same hands?

In this country, you can find anecdotal rich people who are not about political power, but generally, the concentration of wealth and political power have been not far apart.

Our actual politicians are not the very rich, as they have been in places like old Europe, but the rich have a lot to do with who is elected and what they do, ultimately.

You think it's a coincidence that the peaks of concentrated wealth have coincided with the runaway exploitation of the people's money leading to economic crashes?

That in both cases the political system was helpful to the rich?

Why would you think that after our biggest crash in 80 years, not one person has been convicted of a crime and more importantly virtually no real reforms have been made - by the Democrats who are more in favor of them, much less the Republicans who basically embrace the rich?

Getting elected to Congress requires millions. The rich largely control that gateway. Are you too blind to see that in front of your eyes?

There are exceptions where populists like Bernie Sanders are elected, but the rich have a whole lot to say, as the policies show.

 

[nonlnear]

I disagree almost entirely.

The kings of the medieval age found this, and modern socities have found this.

Dealing with money used to be considered a disgusting activity for the despicable, while good people did not get involved in things like borrowing and lending of much of those old religiously fundamentalist societies.

You do realize that was a myth propagated for the sole purpose of keeping people out of the finance industry, right? That very attitude towards finance was a tool of subjugation.

The expansion of finance in Italy that resulted paved the way for the renaissance, and soon after...

snip

Foget the guy who actually more shamelessly sells out to the rich, the Republican nominee.

No, they cannot be seperated much as interests.

I wasn't talking about the separation of political interests. I was talking about separating monopoly power from other machines of wealth accumulation. Antitrust legislation was the beginning of the concept entering the sphere of public policy - at least explicitly. Monopoly pricing power is fairly easy to detect when you look at the pricing patterns of a corporation.

Granted there are huge political hurdles to clear in order to break monopoly power (which I think is what you were getting at). When I said simple, I didn't mean it in the pragmatic sense. I meant it in the conceptual sense: it doesn't require 10,000 pages of legislation to create a policy that can do it. 5-10 is enough to set out a conceptual framework in detail, and a fully detailed policy probably wouldn't be more than a couple hundred pages.

Only a strong democratic culture can do this, and we haven't figured out how to keep that around.

We've had spikes, like the FDR reforms that had some mitigating effect after the crash, but things are a disaster on the 'separation money and power' area.

You sure do have a lot of faith in the good nature of common people, I'll give you that much.

...
Why would you think that after our biggest crash in 80 years, not one person has been convicted of a crime and more importantly virtually no real reforms have been made - by the Democrats who are more in favor of them, much less the Republicans who basically embrace the rich?

Getting elected to Congress requires millions. The rich largely control that gateway. Are you too blind to see that in front of your eyes?

There are exceptions where populists like Bernie Sanders are elected, but the rich have a whole lot to say, as the policies show.

You would not believe how much we agree on. It's actually quite staggering.

 

[nobodyknows]

Yes...this is how I see it. I grew up dirt poor and am thankful for government cheese. I'm now middle class because I worked my butt off to get there. I have 4 kids and can barely make ends meet. I am 'rich' in the eyes of many and I need to pay my 'fair share'. You see...I understand both ends. And I understand the disparity of wealth...just as well as I understand that free lunches don't exist in the real world.

LOL, welcome to the club. Everybody thinks they are overworked, overtaxed and are jealous of all those people getting a "free lunch", whoever/whereever they are? I know I don't know any of them. Will somebody please point in the right direction so I can get a free lunch?? Please??

 

[Craig234]

Nonliner,

"You would not believe how much we agree on. It's actually quite staggering. "

I'll take you at your word on the adjustments of 'misunderstanding'.

But I hope you understand that defending something that might be 'theoretically clear' while people are facing disastrous consequences because it's not that simple as a practical issue, isn't a non-issue for me. Both matter. I just posted in my last post in another thread the difference between those who would defend the 'theoretical' cleanness of 'separate but equal' from the 'judicial activism' who said 'who cares how clean it is in theory, justic matters in what's actually happening too'.

The ease of determining monopoly practices - which are but one issue of concentrated wealth - has little benefit if they're relegated to 500-subscriber newsletters of 'liberals' while the government is appointing people who are directed not to enforce the protections against them, and blowing it off to say 'well, the people can vote them out if they don't like it'. If the wealth has a perpetual dominance in the system to keep 'their' people in while referring to the vote, that's not healthy democracy.

So it's not so much disagreeing with that point, as saying you need to not just look at it.

This is also where ideology can be so blinding. So many people put the ideology on policy ahead of the issues. They're against a tax increase on some ideological basis without any real consideration of the situation and effect of the increase. They're against some new measure against corporate abuse on some ideologal reason about 'it's their property' without any concern for the issue.

As an example, I'm reminded of those who put the public service providers' (hotels, restaurants, etc.) right to 'do what they want with their property' ahead of any concern for the blacks who were denied service because whites were more comfortable to eat at a place without a black person next to them.

Similarly many - and this goes up to people like Greenspan - get caught up ideology and ignore the issues.

When credit default swaps are invented as a tool to evade insurance regulations, defend them as 'the freedom to do what they want with their money' rather than address the problems they bring and calling for new regulation to call them what they are, insurance, and require the protections that work for insurance. This allows the finance person to get rich with the excessive risks it allows - and bring risk to the financial system.

 

[ericlp]

No..

It's bad to be "poor"... It's what you think. If you think you are poor then you'll probably poor... I tend to think I am rich! Therefor I am.

 

[marincounty]

Yeah, sure it's all the politicians fault for H1b visas and such, not the businesses that spend millions lobbying them for favorable treatment?
And Bill Gates the big philanthropist? He didn't give away crap until his company was sued for anti-competitive practices. He could sell his operating system for $29 and still make a fortune, but no it still costs $100 and up. I'm not impressed by robber barons who loot the public and in retirement give some away.

 

[marincounty]

The problem is well illustrated in your list of what we "gain" from taking part in society:
1. Public schools: public schools are a huge scam, are much more expensive per student than private schools, and nearly always give an inferior education. There are always exceptions, but here they are few and far between. Thus, if the government stopped spending the money of private citizens on public schools, private schools would pop up to fill the supply gap and the quality of education would likely increase while the percentage of GDP spent on this education would decrease.

2. Hospitals: the best hospitals in this country are private. Public hospitals generally perform at a far lower level than an equivalently funded private hospital. If you were sick in St. Louis and had a choice, would you go to the John Cochran VA hospital (a government-run hospital), or to Barnes-Jewish (a private hospital associated with Washington University School of Medicine)? Only an idiot would choose the government hospital. Yet the budgets for the two are very similar, and the same arguments I made for public schools largely apply here.

3. Fire departments: fire departments used to be private, and why not? Early in this country's history, fire departments were private and citizens would pay to cover their houses. If you go to Charleston, SC, you can still see the emblems of the various fire companies on the houses they covered. Now, fire departments are unionized and have driven their costs through the roof in many cities, forcing the cities to make hard decisions about how many employees they can afford. It's not politically feasible to fire a fireman, after all, and since it is a public monopoly, there is no rational basis for setting a wage. If you look at the news from my home town of Muncie, IN, you will see that this is a real problem, especially in smaller communities. Its population has declined from 80,000 to close to 60,000 over the last 20 years, but the number of firefighters has stayed the same. The per capita income has similarly dropped, but the wages of firefighters has continued to rise. Privatizing these fire companies would force them to break even, setting a rational basis for wages and likely decreasing costs for everyone who wants coverage. If you have a mortgage, your bank would probably require you to have coverage from one of these companies, so they could negotiate the rates for you.

I think these points are an excellent way to illustrate that things which have always been seen as necessary functions of government are actually better performed by non-government entities.

Didn't you go to a public university? Then you are scam artist and owe us a bunch of money.
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is one of the world's leading centers of health sciences research, patient care, and education. UCSF's medical, pharmacy, dental, nursing, and graduate schools are among the top health science professional schools in the world. The UCSF Medical Center is consistently ranked among the top 10 hospitals in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.

 

[blackangst1]

Yeah, sure it's all the politicians fault for H1b visas and such, not the businesses that spend millions lobbying them for favorable treatment?
And Bill Gates the big philanthropist? He didn't give away crap until his company was sued for anti-competitive practices. He could sell his operating system for $29 and still make a fortune, but no it still costs $100 and up. I'm not impressed by robber barons who loot the public and in retirement give some away.

Really?

United States vs Microsoft = 1998.
Creation of the Gates Foundation = 1994.

 

[dmcowen674]

Rich, middle class, and poor ALL exploit and cheat the system. As a general rule? No. But it happens.

I certainly dont think as you accumulate more money you shed morals.

What the poor contribute in labor, the rich contribute in dollars to non-profits, charities, etc, and jobs for those that labor.

Money doesnt inherantly make you "evil".

As a very wealthy friend of mine told me 20 years ago "Money makes good people better and bad people worse". I agree with that.

Bullshit, what a bunch of bullshit. Incredible the crap you actually believe.

The bolded words suggests right there that you are in fact rich yourself despite the fact you deny it. That river is long.

 

[soccerballtux]

The good thing about being rich is that money is a rating of value and if you have a lot of it it should imply that you yourself, via your capacity to acquire what is of value indicates that you also have value. This can be very good for combating the feeling we all have that we are the worst in the world. It can't be possible that the worst person in the world also managed to get rich.

The bad thing about being rich is that, instead of acquiring a sense of real worth via one's obvious capacity, that feeling goes to feed the ego. In this case all the benefit of obviously not being the worst person in the world, the eating away of that lie of a feeling, goes into the wall we erect to deny that we feel that way. Here, instead of acquiring a more positive feeling of one's true value, one feeds the false ego and just becomes a bigger asshole than one was with the usual self contempt. Now we have a self hater with hubris and strut who feeds of the inferior wealth of others as to feed his pride.

At any rate, people who are successful in life are usually better able to be to have a positive attitude about everything and this makes for greater personal gratification in living, in my opinion. People who become addicted to making money, however, I think, miss out on a lot of time they could have in loving relationships with others. Their lives, in some respects, will have been wasted.

The best think to do, I think, is to first know about your own self hate, and then work to see that it is a lie. What we may feel is the truth isn't.

nothing but God can give us validation.

 

[blackangst1]

Bullshit, what a bunch of bullshit. Incredible the crap you actually believe.

The bolded words suggests right there that you are in fact rich yourself despite the fact you deny it. That river is long.

Compared to alot of the rest of the world Ive travelled to, yes I am. So what? So are you.

 

[dmcowen674]

Quote:
Originally Posted by dmcowen674
Bullshit, what a bunch of bullshit. Incredible the crap you actually believe.

The bolded words suggests right there that you are in fact rich yourself despite the fact you deny it. That river is long.

Compared to alot of the rest of the world Ive travelled to, yes I am. So what? So are you.

Takes money to travel the world. I have never been off this rock.

Right there is your answer.

I am real, you are real, your real hate for America is clear.

That's what is "so what".