Posted on 04/26/2014 10:45:41 AM PDT by Innovative
Avarice: Many people, it seems, can't get over how well investors are doing these days — as if they shouldn't be able to do OK if others aren't. Instead of taking offense, maybe the others ought to be taking notes.
Let's see if we have this right: Some people work to exhaustion, earning money for their security and that of their families. And instead of spending it on stuff they don't need, they set it aside.
The latest idea — coming from a French economist — is that eight of every 10 of their dollars should be taken away and given to people who do not — or will not — work, save and invest.
Wouldn't the big thinkers' time be better spent educating the "have-nots" about how the "haves" do it, so they too will know what's it's like to have others lust after their good fortune?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
LOL! I live like the 1% but dang if I can afford it. But hey, what’s a couple trillion give or take. If it’s good enough for our tax dollars, it’s good enough for me.
Even at minimum wage, if both couples are working, it is possible to afford a reasonably nice lifestyle.
Conservatives must come up with a CREDIBLE plan to rebuild the middle class or they will fade into irrelevance. Articles like this, that defend the corrupt and failing status quo are counter productive.
There is some truth in this article, but then, the post above yours contained the following:
“While U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren sleeps in her $5 million mansion in Cambridge, and got paid $350,000 to teach just one class at Harvard, “
If Elisabeth Warren and other persons of the effete class are actually doing “work” and being creative, it is in finding ways to use connections and position to maximize income while performing the smallest possible amount of actual, productive work that would benefit society.
IMO, this causes cognitive dissonance in average people and they realize that unless well connected and so on, most are doomed to barely scrape by before dropping dead, no matter how hard they work and/or how clever they are.
In Mexico, the dream of every parent is to have their child become a politician, the reason being obvious. We are not far behind in developing this “enlightened” mentality.
So everyone should stop working. Everyone should stop making real stuff. Everyone should stop making sure that the roads are maintained, the dams are checked, etc.
Everyone should stop what he/she is doing and become an investor.
But then what would there be to invest in? Who would work to build the stuff or provide the services that the investments are going into?
And is everything that is called "investing" really investing? Hedging is normally thrown into the same bag that investment goes into. As is shorting. These activities may help tame markets, but they don't directly contribute to the creation of wealth.
Is buying and trading stocks of established companies really "investing"? Or is it just gambling?
Certainly venture capitalists and people who buy corporate bonds are providing capital to companies so that they can generate wealth. But what percent of "investment" activity can really be counted as providing capital to generate wealth?
I'm sure if you consulted most "investors" they would probably say whatever you do stay away from IPO's, etc. because those are risky. Better to do XYZ, where XYZ is some sort of Ponzi scheme that depends on the gullibility of novice day traders.
That’s not true at all.
I earn close to minimum wage, but I work 80 hours a week. I can afford a reasonably nice lifestyle.
I’m not taking yearly trips to Europe or gambling in Monte Carlo, that’s true. However, I own a new car and I can afford an apartment in a better neighbourhood. If I were married and we both worked 60 hours a week, I could probably afford to buy a house where I live.
That’s how it used to be done by the poor, who had kids who went on to middle class.
Now which rich are we all supposed to work like?
Folks who got rich by founding a company based on a great idea, nursing it through the precarious start-up phase, building market share (or creating a market for something genuinely new) until profits started rolling in?
Or folks who got business degrees and walked into existing companies where they dutifully rose as drones until they hit the level in management where their fellow professional-managers contrive to give them fat bonuses unrelated to delivering value to shareholders?
Or folks who got rich by creating or running companies whose whole business model is dependent upon government intervention in the market against competition, be it direct subsidies, regulations which primarily function to prevent entry of competitors into the market (on whatever plea they were sold to legislatures and regulatory bodies) or expansion of patent and copyright beyond their constitutional purpose and their reification as “property”?
Or the folks who have worked at Goldman-Sachs since the company lost its soul and the investment bankers started managing other peoples money in their own interest rather the interest of the people who own the money (whom they call “muppets”) and their ilk elsewhere in finance?
Or congressmen and senators who got rich by exempting themselves from insider trading laws that are supposed to prevent fiduciaries from exploiting their position for their own enrichment, against the interests of their (theoretical) beneficiaries?
Or maybe trust-fund babies whose wealth is inherited?
Only the first class is worthy of emulation, and all but the first and last (the last because their parents or other ancestors had the right to dispose of their estate as they chose, and chose be use it for the benefit of their descendants), represent corruption, and ought to be vilified and legally brought to heel, not out of envy of their wealth, but because their method of accumulating wealth represents a harm to both society and the free market.
Income inequality is generally associated with effort inequality. Study harder, work harder, plan harder, live easier.
Paleface squaw speak with forked tongue.
I suspect that advice like this is proffered by mouthpieces of the 1%, when the 1% wants to unload its equities on to chumps at a profit.
Any "plan to rebuild the middle class" that doesn't include a push to reduce our expectations to what they were when the middle class was much stronger is futile and will never work.
Good post. What’s interesting is that most people who are fabulously wealthy and fit your first description never really had any interest in getting “rich.” When they started out on their path to success, people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs probably didn’t care if they ended up worth $5 million, $500 million or $50 billion.
The headline advises us to stop complaining about the 1% and work like them. I assume this advice means get elected to public office or get a Civil Service job.
They do.
I see you're new here, but stick around, or listen to Rush or some of the other talk show hosts a bit, and you'll begin to see what the problem is, and how the Conservatives want to change it.
Problem is, they can’t. Government debt & obligations require vast taxation just to tread water, and middle class is the bulk of where that money comes from (both directly and via proxy “the rich”). Can’t rebuild middle class until outright repudiation of debt & obligations; only then can drop tax rates to something middle class can thrive on. The Right would be politically destroyed if attempted; only solution is wait it out to crash & burn on Left’s watch.
Amen Brother. It is hard to fathom that so called conservatives want some brown shirts of either party to come up with a grand plan. Grand plans never work out. Just look at the Nazis and the USSR. They planned everything supposedly for their common people.
“Conservatives have no obligation to come up with a “plan to rebuild the middle class” at all, at least when it comes to politics. The problem is that any such plan would be a non-starter and would make any candidate who promotes such a plan completely unelectable.
“Any “plan to rebuild the middle class” that doesn’t include a push to reduce our expectations to what they were when the middle class was much stronger is futile and will never work.
More reasons not to want a central plan from anyone.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3148898/posts
Did the Founding Fathers know what centralized planning was?
PGA Weblog ^
Posted by ProgressingAmerica
Have you ever come across the suggestion that the America that existed during the time of the Founders is incompatible with “modern America”? There’s a huge problem with this. This idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
Its true. Progressives believe in centralized planning, which is an older concept than individual Liberty. All we have to do is ask Adam Smith. In his book “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” Adam Smith wrote the following: (Page 95)
The man of system, on the contrary,is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chessboard have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chessboard of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might choose to impress upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same direction the game of human society will go on easily and harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful, If they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of disorder.
Centralized planning was well known about in 1759.
Progressives are all “men of system”; that is, they all believe that there needs to be some system in place, we can’t just allow people to live their lives as they see fit! They all believe that their ideal system is best - much better than any natural order. They have told us as much. Here are two such examples. This, from a member of FDR’s Brains Trust. And as Smith rightly points out, every central planner thinks they all have the ideal plan of government at hand. They are the ones we’ve been waiting for. Adam Smith continues:
Some general and even systematical idea of the perfection of policy and law may no doubt be necessary for directing the views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into the supreme standard of right and wrong.
The essence of the rule of law vs the rule of man.
As most people know, the Founding Fathers were fond of the writings of Adam Smith, so yes, Adam Smith knew what centralized planning was and by extension so did the Founders. They just didn’t call it that.
300 years ago, they would have called centralized planning “Monarchism”. Who else would be arranging these chess pieces other than the Kings? The Lords? Quite possibly the Lords, but even if that were true the King would see the Lords arranging chess pieces and would want to arrange a few pieces of his own.
So no, modern America is not incompatible with the Founder’s America. Modern America is incompatible with the world view of the Kings, and of the Pharaohs, and any other tyrannical ideas that progressives model themselves after.
I don’t know much the rich, but I know this about liberals: when you win, they want a cut, but when you lose, you lose alone.
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