@snakebitcat, my grandmother could be considered rich. She has managed to accumulate millions of dollars of wealth after 50+ years of her and my late grandfather’s working life earning and saving money. She does not use any government assistance other than which was mandated to her, she has paid more than her fair share in taxes over the years, and she has never exploited or used anyone in her entire life. She now lives quietly and peacefully in a retirement home by herself.
Can you please explain how she is your enemy?
Did you ever respond to any of the people who asked you how people with no wealth at all were “using government to control you”, out of curiosity?
Because while specific individual rich people may be perfectly fine folks, the rich as a class have been using the government to concentrate wealth and power upward and leaving the rest of us seriously in the lurch for decades now, while slashing the social safety net in order to pay for it.
They’re the ones who have busted unions and put people out of work in order to reap short-term profits at the expense of long-term viability for the companies they owm.
They’re the ones who have driven major companies to destruction via leveraged buyouts that send the companies into a fatal spiral of bankruptcies, and then raided those companies’ pension funds in order to pay themselves huge bonuses.
They’re the ones who nearly destroyed the world economy by pulling the CDS/CDO bullshit that crashed the housing market in America q decade ago.
And they’re the ones making billions in profits while paying their employees so little that they have to go on welfare and/or food stamps in order to survive.
But I was trying to humor you. So again, what poor people, exactly, are “using government to control you”?
Does your right to vote, to protest, and to politically campaign require great sums of wealth? I’m always surprised when advocates for democracy have little faith that their process is even worth a damn. But to answer your question, progressive Democrats always attempt to appeal to poorer individuals – usually the younger voters, because they have not yet acquired a lot of wealth or higher incomes – by making a lot of promises of government goodies like free healthcare, free college, tuition forgiveness, public works, public transportation, higher wages, etc. These of course all come at the expense of the higher income earners who carry the heaviest burden in taxes. But they’re somehow punishing the little guy by paying all the taxes in order to pay for all these big government programs and services. Yes, the perfect sinister plot.
Next, I’m curious how one “concentrates wealth” in the first place. This has long been the defining ignorant premise of all class warfare arguments: the Scrooge McDuck theory of economics – the concept that there is some kind of fixed pie of wealth that is “concentrated” by the rich. Pure laughable nonsense. No leftist can prove this to me by the way, yet they always say it with complete confidence. It’s almost like they really believe it’s happening. In truth, it is sheer ignorance of how wealth is acquired and envy in the success of others that do it well.
You claim that these evil rich folks have been “paying” for this concentration of wealth – again, a completely idiotic understanding of how wealth is accumulated – by raiding the precious social safety net. Well, where is your evidence? Because by all statistical data that we have, entitlement spending across the board has never really ever been cut. That’s because most of it is allocated as mandatory spending.
This is always why these programs like Social Security and Medicare are bankrupt, and why fiscal conservatives are always pushing for entitlement reform.
Next, you claim that “they” [again, assuming you’re talking about “the rich” still] somehow “busted unions”. I’m not even sure what that means or what evidence you could possibly have to provide to corroborate that claim. Unless you are talking about how public unions can no longer require mandatory dues from non-union employees. Oh, the horror of not being forced to participate in something.
But then you follow it up by saying, “they put people out of work in order to reap short-term profits at the expense of long-term viability for the companies they own.” Here you provide yet another profoundly uneconomic understanding of how businesses work. Pray tell, how does a business reap “short-term profits at the expense of long-term viability” by cutting labor? Labor is used in order to produce goods and services which in turn hopefully will turn a profit usually in the long term. But many businesses in fact do not even turn a profit at all in some years; they take a loss. And unless a company is on the verge of collapse and has to scale back its labor production just to stay afloat, they will never sacrifice long-term profitability for a short-term gain. That is just so incredibly ignorant of how even the most rudimentary of businesses operates, I don’t even know what to say. It’s almost as if you are just combining a bunch of words that sound progressively provocative in a sentence together.
You mention the subprime mortgage crisis, but any thorough explanation of what you probably do not understand about that would be wasted here. Just understand that most wealthy people did not actually participate in that all. It was actually more about a problem with poorer people with bad credit being able to buy home mortgages in which they could not afford. There are numerous culprits involved, Democratic politicians being the most culpable. After all, part of the progressive goodie-bag of promises is “everyone deserves to own a home.”
“They’re the ones who have driven major companies to destruction via leveraged buyouts that send the companies into a fatal spiral of bankruptcies, and then raided those companies’ pension funds in order to pay themselves huge bonuses.” What? How? Who? Where is your evidence? Where is an example? This is just a bunch of terms strung together to sound ominous, but which are really nonsensical, empty, and meaningless in this sentence.
“They’re the ones making billions in profits while paying their employees so little that they have to go on welfare and/or food stamps in order to survive.” I actually just explained why this also a flawed understanding of how voluntary wage arrangements operate along with perverse government incentives just the other day. No reason to rehash it all again here.
But again, I’m going to ask you what “class” are my grandmother and the majority of other retired wealthy people in exactly that they somehow “concentrate wealth” together, other than by saving and investing individually? And what alleged power do they have over you if they have no other special involvement or privileges in the same democratic process that you do? My grandmother has not even voted since the 90′s I believe.
Despite your little empty rant, you managed to entirely sidestep my original question: how is my grandmother, who is considered rich by many standards, somehow your enemy? You made the assertion, now explain without pointing at all this outside nonsense that you do not even fully grasp.
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