Comment

Comment by fireguy on December 10, 2010 at 2:58pm

Absolutly.  Rid the world of all Royalty, Aristocrats, Oligarchs etc. 

 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Comment by fireguy on December 10, 2010 at 12:06pm

Exactly why the class envy thing always backfires. Hurting the middle class and the poor worse than the people that are suposed to feel the pain. Besides the fact that individual income taxes are regressive and unconstitutional.

Painting all the 'rich" with a broad brush smears the good the bad and the ugly.

Comment by Marklar on December 10, 2010 at 10:04am

True enough. The dollar is so worthless these days that to be considered rich probably requires at least a second million or so. The people I'm talking about though are usually the MBA CEO types who have no need to keep their wealth tied up in anything but fancy cars and $3,000 special edition putters. But as I said have have met the other kind as well. A former employer of mine was a great guy and made many tens of millions as the founder of over 14 electronics corporations in the area and is widely credited with building the high tech corridor of Seattle in it's early days. Another is a engineer that formerly worked for NASA and was one of the head engineers on the Saturn missile project. He's retired now but holds multiple degrees (engineering, physics, law) and has worked as our patent attorney  in exchange for stock that may never be worth anything simply because he believes in the ideas we are developing.

 

As with any group the bad apples are so damned annoying that they get most of the attention even when they are not the majority though.

Comment by fireguy on December 9, 2010 at 3:41pm

Good observations Mark.

I really don't consider simple millionaires to be rich especially these days. Thankfully I have never known any "rich" people that were not working stiffs, Ranchers, Loggers, Construction Contractors, a pot grower or two ;-) and more recently some of the Wildland Fire Contractors.

Most of these people have all their money tied up in land, equipment, vehicles, tools and 2nd or 3rd mortgages; so while the net worth of their companies or LLC's are in the low millions of dollars, they live year to year building their wealth, employing the workers and managers of their enterprizes.

I know there are many of these kinds of "rich" people across this nation and around the world and these folks get lumped in with the ones like you have known. That is why this contrived jealousy and class warfare is so messed up.

The average dumb-ass watching CNN and Fox and even CSPAN only sees the Rethuglicans and Demobstercrats fighting over tax cuts for the rich and extending unemployment benefits for the rest of us.

They think that the ultra rich are going to get stuck with a punitive tax bill when the reality is, they could give a crap about taxes because they have an army of lawyers to deal with those kinds of inconvieniences.

That is why I posted this.

Comment by Marklar on December 9, 2010 at 12:18pm

I've met a fair number of millionaires and while some fit that description most have been priveledged fops, born into money, who have had an easy ride through life and never once a good idea beyond shady ways to improve their stock portfolios through confidence games and deceptions and leeching off the talents of people who actually had the good ideas.

The later kind are rather unlikeable people with a marked disdain for anybody unlucky enough not to have a rich daddy like them and have the general demeanor of spoiled rich kids who have never had to work for anything in their life and then became adults without ever advancing beyond such stunted mental development. They tend to be happy, gregarious and quite fun to be around at first until you get to know them and start to understand that they would gladly throw you under a bus in order to look good to the cute waitress they've been ogling.

Society is built to advance just this kind of semi-psychotic into positions of power because they are most easily manipulated by the true elites by playing to their false vanity and inflated egos. This is, of course, why the Neuvo Riche (newly rich) who actually got their money through hard work and innovation are so disdained by old money rich folk, because they are not so easily manipulated nor are they well indoctrinated into the "proper" way for rich people to behave and think from birth.