[Politics]How long until we eat the rich?

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

So's lust and we have whole industries that run on it. What's your point?

 

[Neurotic Void Melody]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

Not everyone is a Christian. And not all Christians believe in deadly sins. If we were to ignore those for the initial blanket assumption, greed and hubris are also deadly sins. When hard working families can't afford to pay for their food and healthcare in tragic situations, why shouldn't they be afforded a little envy in the face of others who have had the privilege of needing to do nothing but hit the biological lottery of birth into a family of wealthy psychopaths? It is cruel to expect repression of natural human emotion when survival is at stake.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

I don't think that thinking they are a Pathetic waste of life counts as envy though.

 

[stroopwafel]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

I don't think that thinking they are a Pathetic waste of life counts as envy though.

''Pathetic waste of life'' really? Way of showing your true colors there. What about your own sense of entitlement? Just b/c someone is richer doesn't make them worse than someone who is smarter or better looking than someone else. Life is full of unfair advantages.

 

[Thaluikhain]

''Pathetic waste of life'' really? Way of showing your true colors there. What about your own sense of entitlement? Just b/c someone is richer doesn't make them worse than someone who is smarter or better looking than someone else. Life is full of unfair advantages.

Again, I think it depends on which rich people. And any number of people who aren't rich, but who thus don't have the power to do anything lots of people want to eat them for.

 

[Batou667]

Is your list supposed to be ways of becoming rich or how the rich are productive members of society? Either way these aren't things the rich do. Because of how the copyright works, the people who advance technology are often not the ones who benefit from it, the company does. Games industry is notorious for having lower wages and worse working conditions than many other software development fields. Layoffs and cutbacks are all the rich seem to want to do. And rich people pay lower taxes than anyone else. You can apparently pay for your fancy cars and other expenses through a corporation with before tax dollars and then funnel whatever's left into an overseas tax haven for lower rates.

And since you brought up entertainment, there's far too much focus on it in our society. Imagine if all the money and effort that went into making all the movies, music, and games out there went into something like space exploration. We'd have colonies on Mars by now.

That (incomplete) list was a set of examples of the ways capitalism, and by extension rich CEOs, benefit everyone. A competitive marketplace is almost always a good thing - it goes without saying that corrupt or illegal applications of capitalism is bad, same as Socialism can be corrupted into a tool of the corrupt and tyrannical, so let's not waste our time talking about the extreme fringe examples of when the system goes wrong. And yes, these are things the rich do - not all rich people, and not only rich people, but if you want to enact societal change, get a revolutionary new product or invention in peoples hands, advance the applications of science, be a philanthropist; you'll find it considerably easier to achieve these goals if you've got wealth behind you.

It's a real, tiresome fallacy that the rich are continually taking and the poor are always giving. The welfare system and marginal tax rates simply disprove that. Yes, it's possible to legally reduce your tax bill. Yes, some people cheat the system on both ends of the scale. But in general, corporations and rich individuals consistently put more into the pot than they take out - in the UK, for example, the continually-bashed top 1% contribute over a quarter of total income tax revenue. A quick and lazy Google search shows that in 2009, the top 50% of earners paid 89% of income tax (more recent figures can surely be found, but this statistic is accurate and I believe still relevant). Don't tell me the upper middle class, high earners and super rich are contributing nothing.

I'm not an advocate of completely unregulated markets though - one example of this is environmentalism. Profits-led corporations combined with an apathetic or uninformed public leads to short-term thinking. Sometimes government needs to take a firm hand and pass down new regulation, and businesses will have to adapt. Recent levies and/or bans on single use plastic are a good example. It may not be what either business or the public asked for, but in hindsight it's absolutely the right thing to do. Going forward there will have to be a transition toward 100% renewable energy too.

And I agree, it's sometimes depressing where the market forces decide to allocate their resources. We don't *need* all these incrementally slightly better consumer electronics. We don't *need* such large defence budgets, even if we get the occasional silver lining trickling down. But who's to say capitalism is the enemy here? At the current trajectory, it's most likely that Elon Musk will put the first human on Mars. Private aerospace companies have stepped in recently to fill the vacuum left by the discontinued Shuttle programme. All profit driven, but with a benefit to humanity (proof that what people want isn't always bad for them!). Also, don't get too nostalgic for the past - the Space Race and Apollo missions were driven by the Cold War, remember.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

I don't think that thinking they are a Pathetic waste of life counts as envy though.

''Pathetic waste of life'' really? Way of showing your true colors there. What about your own sense of entitlement? Just b/c someone is richer doesn't make them worse than someone who is smarter or better looking than someone else. Life is full of unfair advantages.

I thought I was pretty clear in my earlier post in this thread. It isn't about "Someone being richer", it is about hoarding wealth vs using it to make the world a better place. Many can choose to hoard their wealth, yes that makes them a waste of life when they could have used it to save lives. Their actions are malignant to society and cannot be sustained. Wealth=resource. People literally die because of resource hoarding. Of course being " rich" doesn't make them better than anyone else, it makes them WORSE. Many people earn enough to be considered " rich" they just choose to use that wealth to fund medical charities, build hospitals, cure disease, feed the hungry and house the homeless. Yes, I do think that those who choose to stockpile needed resources and use it on themselves instead are a waste of life and the world would be a better place without them in it. If they did not exist, the resources they drained from communities would be used to save live's and help create a better world for everyone else in it.

My sense of " entitlement" is that I think that people born onto this world are "entitled" to have equal access to it's resources. People have no say on where they are born and what they have made available to them. Allowing a few people to hoard the earth's resources by force and make the masses suffer is not sustainable and yes should be considered malignant behavior that should be eliminated for the betterment of society. Just as we do not allow people to suffocate one another with their pillows, we should not allow them to kill others by taking away what they need to survive. Hoarding resources is no different than locking people into a room and removing all the oxygen and then wanting to sell it to the highest bidder to survive. The current system allows the wealthy to pick and chose who lives and who dies.

 

[stroopwafel]

I thought I was pretty clear in my earlier post in this thread. It isn't about "Someone being richer", it is about hoarding wealth vs using it to make the world a better place. Many can choose to hoard their wealth, yes that makes them a waste of life when they could have used it to save lives. Their actions are malignant to society and cannot be sustained. Wealth=resource. People literally die because of resource hoarding. Of course being " rich" doesn't make them better than anyone else, it makes them WORSE. Many people earn enough to be considered " rich" they just choose to use that wealth to fund medical charities, build hospitals, cure disease, feed the hungry and house the homeless. Yes, I do think that those who choose to stockpile needed resources and use it on themselves instead are a waste of life and the world would be a better place without them in it. If they did not exist, the resources they drained from communities would be used to save live's and help create a better world for everyone else in it.

You sound like Joseph Stalin there. You seem to forget it is still their money. How much tax have you paid in the previous years? According to a quick google search in 2016 the 1% paid USD 538 billion in taxes that is more than the bottom 90% combined. How is that not contributing? Never mind that not everyone in the 1% was born rich, many struggled to get there.

Like I said it's the same thing with some people being smarter or better looking. You might say 'not fair' but that's just the way life is.

My sense of " entitlement" is that I think that people born onto this world are "entitled" to have equal access to it's resources. People have no say on where they are born and what they have made available to them. Allowing a few people to hoard the earth's resources by force and make the masses suffer is not sustainable and yes should be considered malignant behavior that should be eliminated for the betterment of society.

They also create jobs, products, services and gigantic amounts of tax revenue. Your post is like something Maduro would say and just look how Venezuela ended up.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I thought I was pretty clear in my earlier post in this thread. It isn't about "Someone being richer", it is about hoarding wealth vs using it to make the world a better place. Many can choose to hoard their wealth, yes that makes them a waste of life when they could have used it to save lives. Their actions are malignant to society and cannot be sustained. Wealth=resource. People literally die because of resource hoarding. Of course being " rich" doesn't make them better than anyone else, it makes them WORSE. Many people earn enough to be considered " rich" they just choose to use that wealth to fund medical charities, build hospitals, cure disease, feed the hungry and house the homeless. Yes, I do think that those who choose to stockpile needed resources and use it on themselves instead are a waste of life and the world would be a better place without them in it. If they did not exist, the resources they drained from communities would be used to save live's and help create a better world for everyone else in it.

You sound like Joseph Stalin there. You seem to forget it is still their money. How much tax have you paid in the previous years? According to a quick google search in 2016 the 1% paid USD 538 billion in taxes that is more than the bottom 90% combined. How is that not contributing? Never mind that not everyone in the 1% was born rich, many struggled to get there.

Like I said it's the same thing with some people being smarter or better looking. You might say 'not fair' but that's just the way life is.

My sense of " entitlement" is that I think that people born onto this world are "entitled" to have equal access to it's resources. People have no say on where they are born and what they have made available to them. Allowing a few people to hoard the earth's resources by force and make the masses suffer is not sustainable and yes should be considered malignant behavior that should be eliminated for the betterment of society.

They also create jobs, products, services and gigantic amounts of tax revenue. Your post is like something Maduro would say and just look how Venezuela ended up.

Oh please, don't give me this " buuu.. look at Venezuela" nonsense. You act as if people would make nothing and do nothing if it weren't for the wealthy. Yes, people are naturally inventors, artists, builders and creators and have never needed the wealthy to do these things. Instead, those who become most wealthy from them are not the actual creators, it is those that prey upon them and use them to profit from their works instead. Hell they now have tried to take it so far to think they have a right to the "thoughts" of creators even when they are no longer working for them For example, when Zenimax sued for John Carmack's brain claiming he thought things while working for them. Seriously it has gotten that bad to take away the work of creators and profit from it.

http://rampantgames.com/blog/?p=7299

You left out the rest of the quote above:

My sense of " entitlement" is that I think that people born onto this world are "entitled" to have equal access to it's resources. People have no say on where they are born and what they have made available to them. Allowing a few people to hoard the earth's resources by force and make the masses suffer is not sustainable and yes should be considered malignant behavior that should be eliminated for the betterment of society. Just as we do not allow people to suffocate one another with their pillows, we should not allow them to kill others by taking away what they need to survive. Hoarding resources is no different than locking people into a room and removing all the oxygen and then wanting to sell it to the highest bidder to survive. The current system allows the wealthy to pick and chose who lives and who dies.

No, we should not be entitled to hoard resources and force others to die. That is not only inhumane and unethical, that should be illegal.

You do realize that the ONLY reason the top 1% pays more in taxes is because they are hoarding all of the resources?

You see, the problem here is that the people on the left do the work, and the people on the right here take everything everyone else should have earned. Them paying more taxes due to doing that isn't even solving the problem, they need to give that lost earned wealth back to all of the people who did the work already for it. They are not paying more because they earned more, they are paying more because they took what others should have earned away from them leaving them with nothing to show for their work.


The majority of the people have nothing left to pay in because the hoarders have already taken it all. You see, we are already locked in the room and the wealthy own everything. Our ability to have shelter for ourselves is already going to the highest bidder. Our ability to have access to medicine is going to the highest bidder. Our ability to have access to clean water is going to the highest bidder. Our ability to have food is going to the highest bidder. All that is left now is clean air right?

https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/jan/21/fresh-air-for-sale
( yes that is in jest btw)

I am not saying that it is " unfair" I am saying that has been proven to be unduly harmful to the existence to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and should be illegal and will ultimately lead civilization to collapse as it is unsustainable.

A new study partly-sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists

Just as murder has been deemed illegal for the betterment of society, so should wealth and resource hoarding, as both result in deaths.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Correct, capital is not produced by ownership, capital was at some point earned. If I work very hard and am rewarded a lot of money for my labor that's my earned capital. At that point I can decide to invest that capital to help companies or people produce more value. I believe it's normal the money i invested is remunerated because without my earned capital that company would have not been able to produce as much value.

"If I work very hard and am rewarded a lot of money"..?

Why would an employer reward you a lot of money just because you worked hard? Better to just fire those who don't work hard.

And as for capital "at some point" having been "earned", even were that an appropriate description of the primitive accumulation of capital-- even if the primitive accumulation that happened in reality was not a matter of mostly violent theft of land and labor; even if the fortunes of the original capitalists were not founded on colonialism, serfdom, imperialism, or slavery, but instead some idyllic fairy story in which some people were responsible and diligent while others were slothful and indolent and the former became rich while the latter had no recourse but to sell their labor; even if overseas expropriation did not remain a necessary component of capitalism to forestall collapse-- it still wouldn't justify the existence of a process by which one gains more and more of the output of society by doing virtually nothing at all.

The problem with a system in which having lots of resources means you get lots and lots more resources should be pretty obvious; shills for capitalism have done a pretty incredible job of confusing people otherwise. Maybe, instead of expecting that gaining a certain amount of wealth should mean neither oneself nor one's descendants should ever have to work again, we could organize the economy such that workers decide what to do with their surplus rather than some other guy who might come from a family in which someone "worked hard" at some point.

 

[generals3]

"If I work very hard and am rewarded a lot of money"..?

Why would an employer reward you a lot of money just because you worked hard? Better to just fire those who don't work hard.

If you don't think there are employees who earn a lot of money through/thanks to hard work you really need to broaden your horizon.

it still wouldn't justify the existence of a process by which one gains more and more of the output of society by doing virtually nothing at all.

The problem with a system in which having lots of resources means you get lots and lots more resources should be pretty obvious; shills for capitalism have done a pretty incredible job of confusing people otherwise. Maybe, instead of expecting that gaining a certain amount of wealth should mean neither oneself nor one's descendants should ever have to work again, we could organize the economy such that workers decide what to do with their surplus rather than some other guy who might come from a family in which someone "worked hard" at some point.

Ok, so let's say you have a manufacturing company. The customers are happy, so the product is good. Unfortunately the machinery and software are outdated, as such productivity is low. Consequently margins are negative and the company is going to go bankrupt if things continue like that. Why should a potential investor, who potentially has earned a lot of money through hard work and limiting spending try to help that company by giving them the capital needed to upgrade their machinery and IT if he won't be rewarded for it? Even worse, he won't even be able to have any say in the company. This is pretty much how charities work. But how often do you hear about people wanting to donate money to companies?
Clearly what will happen is that the company will fail due to a lack of investments. The only way to bypass that is for a government to force banks to borrow money to companies regardless of the risks (which is likely to lead to a credit crisis) and/or to take sufficient money away from people so that they can act as the ultimate capitalist investor. And as history has shown the latter just creates a new class of rich capitalists (the party and their cronies) and less efficient economy.

So no, your proposal doesn't work, it can only work if the government takes over the role of the capitalist class and I don't see how that can end any better than the current situation.

 

[Satinavian]

Ok, so let's say you have a manufacturing company. The customers are happy, so the product is good. Unfortunately the machinery and software are outdated, as such productivity is low. Consequently margins are negative and the company is going to go bankrupt if things continue like that. Why should a potential investor, who potentially has earned a lot of money through hard work and limiting spending try to help that company by giving them the capital needed to upgrade their machinery and IT if he won't be rewarded for it? Even worse, he won't even be able to have any say in the company. This is pretty much how charities work. But how often do you hear about people wanting to donate money to companies?

Yes, that is how capitalism works. People who have money are rewarded for investment decisions. And the reward is proportional to the investment, not proportional to the time needed to research good investment opportunities.

Which means the investor gets rewarded way beyond what he should get for his effort. And because this reward has to come out of company profits, the people paying for this are the workers and customers.

Clearly what will happen is that the company will fail due to a lack of investments. The only way to bypass that is for a government to force banks to borrow money to companies regardless of the risks (which is likely to lead to a credit crisis) and/or to take sufficient money away from people so that they can act as the ultimate capitalist investor.

Basically yes. Note that a planned economy tends to have no private ownership of means of production (and investment) anyway so it can invest without actually taking away money from anyone. All this "take away things" has aleady happened when capitalism was abolished. The gouvernment owns all industry production and can invest or distribute it as it sees fit.

And as history has shown the latter just creates a new class of rich capitalists (the party and their cronies) and less efficient economy.

Yes. Those tend to be less corrupt and there is no expectation or legal of getting rich just with investment decisions. The result is a more equal society - which is also true for nearly very single failed communist experiment.

The less efficient economy is the problem. It is hard to correct mistakes if you don't have sales numbers and quaterly losses telling you. It is also hard to produce what people want if you don't have free floating prices and sales numbers
telling you. Planned economies had always problems with plans based on guessing, wishful thinking and ideology (some of them produced not what people wanted, but what an ideal socialist model citizen was supposed to want). Oh and most importantly, missing or ignored feedback. That is where freedom of speech comes into play.

So no, your proposal doesn't work, it can only work if the government takes over the role of the capitalist class and I don't see how that can end any better than the current situation.

Nowadays you can track every single sale in real time. You can plan production perfectly fitting demand which is how just-in-time-manufacturing works. You can even do custom jobs automatically. And you can easily make and even evaluate customer surveys electronically.

The benefits of the market over planned economy are dwindling by the day through technological progress.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

So is Greed and yet we have the rich in the first place

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

Post Error. Trying Again.

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

So is Greed and yet we have the rich in the first place

And people are envious of the rich enough to eat the rich and enrich themselves with their wealth. Who is the real Greedy ones here?

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

So is Greed and yet we have the rich in the first place

And people are envious of the rich enough to eat the rich and enrich themselves with their wealth. Who is the real Greedy ones here?

The rich, for hoarding all the cash in the first place. As opposed to the people who are envious of that wealth because they would like to buy groceries this week. That was a real easy question

 

[Samtemdo8_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

So is Greed and yet we have the rich in the first place

And people are envious of the rich enough to eat the rich and enrich themselves with their wealth. Who is the real Greedy ones here?

The rich, for hoarding all the cah in the first place. As opposed to the people who are envious of that wealth because they would like to buy groceries this week

Groceries or Ferraris?

 

[Satinavian]

And people are envious of the rich enough to eat the rich and enrich themselves with their wealth. Who is the real Greedy ones here?

Wanting equality is not greed.

It is still envy. But that is a natural instinct that humans developed to get rid of asocial individuals, often violently and terminally. You can find similar behavior in other animals that live in groups.

Now it is not always the best idea to follow your instincts.

 

[Agema]

You sound like Joseph Stalin there. You seem to forget it is still their money. How much tax have you paid in the previous years? According to a quick google search in 2016 the 1% paid USD 538 billion in taxes that is more than the bottom 90% combined. How is that not contributing? Never mind that not everyone in the 1% was born rich, many struggled to get there.

No, the top 1% paid $538 billion in income tax, more than the bottom 90% paid in income tax. But there are a lot of other taxes: payroll tax, sales taxes tend to hit the poorer more, as do most local government taxes.

In fact, the top 1% pay about as much in tax as a proportion of total tax intake as they earn as a proportion of national income; i.e. they earn about 20% of the income and pay about 20% of the taxes.

You seem to forget it is still their money.

Yes, it is their money. But WHY is it their money?

It's not their money just because they are super-awesome. It's their money because of an entire societal, political and economic structure that allows them to have it. A system where for instance 10 brilliant engineers design an amazing gizmo which sells zillions, for which they get the same $100,000 a year salary as they got last year, and the CEO hands himself a bonus of $100 million and the shareholders get billions of dollars in share appreciation and dividends. Or the city which decides to build a new local transit system, and a property developer sees his shitty land massively increase in value because the taxpayers gave it a good transport connection to the city centre. Top corporate salaries used to be about 10 times the average pay of their workers. It's now ~200 times. Why? Are they truly worth it? They did it because they could, and why not stuff your pockets when nothing and no-one says otherwise? The rich pour huge sums into lobbying to make it easier and easier to earn lots of money.

None of it HAS to be this way. It's this way because society as a whole has decided it can be. There's nothing "natural" about modern capitalism. It's a deliberate, societal construction formed by our laws, with no inherent reason or cosmic justice why the top 1% earn 20% of the income. We could still have a highly profitable and functional capitalist economy with things substantially different from now. At any rate, if the amount the super-rich can and do earn is a construction of our society... then there's no earthly reason the society that allows them to make it can't reasonably tax a big chunk of it back, either. It's all just rules we make up for own satisfaction.

 

[Palindromemordnilap_v1legacy]

You are all just envious that they are rich and you are not.

I am sorry I just had to say it.

You say that like its a bad thing. Why shouldn't we envy those who have quite often just been born into wealth and continue to hoard more of it for themselves?

Well isn't Envy considered a Deadly Sin in Western Christian Culture?

So is Greed and yet we have the rich in the first place

And people are envious of the rich enough to eat the rich and enrich themselves with their wealth. Who is the real Greedy ones here?

The rich, for hoarding all the cash in the first place. As opposed to the people who are envious of that wealth because they would like to buy groceries this week. That was a real easy question

Groceries or Ferraris?

You're avoiding the point. Having wealth and yet demanding and hoarding more wealth is the textbook definition of avarice. Comparing that to people who have nothing but would like some is like looking at a guy dying of dehydration in a desert and a guy swimming in his own reservoir and saying "but who's really the thirsty one?"