Once you set the acquisition of stuff as your metric for success, you fail. Someone will always have something you don't have and there's no real satisfaction in acquiring things just for the sake of having them. It will always be an empty quest for more, more, MORE!

don't know who to attribute this observation to, but it's a good one, and explains a lot.


the real problem is the half-truth that the super-rich worked hard for their money.
for the most part, the DID work really hard. but they attribute too much of their wealth to hard work and not nearly enough to extremely fortunate circumstances and a knack for taking the lion's share of the loot.

just one example, the vast majority of non-startup ceos who made oodles and oodles from stock options sat atop companies that would have done quite well regardless. it's true that no single person has more influence on a company than the ceo, but much of their success can be attributed to government actions, competitors' actions, shifting customer tastes, and of course the stellar work of employees.

much of that success may be due to a brilliant idea from some division head, or rather from an worker in that division. the ceo approves the idea and the company stock price doubles. the ceo gets tens of millions of dollars, and the division head gets a nice bonus of maybe a few hundred thousand. and the actual low-level worker who came up with the brilliant idea gets an employee of the year plaque and maybe a $500 check. woo-hoo!

...successful. It's more than just hard work.

They also had perks that the woman working the drive-through at the Dairy Queen doesn't get, such as not having to be on their feet all day, but unless they inherited their wealth or CEO-ship, I'm sure they did work hard.

The part that really gets under my skin is that they seem to assume that income is exactly proportionate to how hard a person works, and that a person working 12 hours a day for minimum wage earning $100 a day somehow still isn't working as hard as they do for 8 hours (or even 12 hours) for $5,000 a day. I don't know whether they believe it, or whether they just haven't sullied their beautiful minds with what working-class people do all day, but they do imply it.

That's what drives me up the wall--the implication that people doing backbreaking labor or a stressful desk job aren't working hard.

(P.S. I'm certainly not disagreeing with you, by the way--just venting!)

of the diminishing returns of wealth relative to personal happiness. Which isn't news at all. I just wish, one of these decades, we could call off this failed exercise of profit maximization tilted to benefit of the tiny (and often miserable anyway) ownership class. Perhaps later in the century...

The bodies will notice.

you gotta wonder about people who will never want for anything begrudging others even food, shelter, health care. there's a real sickness in this country and i hope it can be brought under control before the whole experiment fails.

"It is easier for a camel to pass though the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

thank goodness I was drinking water!!!!

Edited to add...ten commandments-stone, Joseph Smith's tablets-golden plates. Hmmm

... breeding ever-smaller camels and building ever-larger needles.

RJ Eskow's piece is riveting.

And, they sure as hell don't want to pay for roads, bridges, the military that they want to send to war. And, they damn sure have already forgotten about the VETS! EITHER.

...to the point where they wanted to be seen as contributing to charity to a culture within the elite that HATES the poor for EXPECTING them to "hand it over."

They feel it's robbery. Plain and simple. Robbery of their money though the use of guilt trips when they don't feel they have done anything to feel guilty for. This sentiment has permeated their entire class.

They see a majority of the country as being a danger to them now and that can lead to something really ugly, especially since Mitt managed to screw up.

I bet some are thinking of a plot that I won't mention here but we all know what I'm referring to....

They just don't want to pay the people back what they stole from us. They've concocted this rhetoric which essentially accuses the poor of being the lazy, shiftless, dependent freeloaders the radical rich is.

Shrinks call it Freudian projection. I call it the superrich pot calling the poor kettle black.

Last edited Wed Sep 19, 2012, 05:58 PM - Edit history (1)

And that is a very brutal process.

into one of their exalted "quiet rooms". The more I see of their lives, their views on this country and its citizens, the more I despise these mother fuckers.

The Head Repugnant.

Thanks for the thread, Hissyspit.

These bastards are doing little more than "run up the score." They've already got more than they and their families could ever possibly use, but still they've got to have more, more, more- I suppose, just for the sake of having it.

The most angry and resentful guy he interviewed was the billionaire:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101634576

If we didn't need the money, we'd STILL have to do it.

Which is why the polls can be 100 percent Obama and I would still be on the edge of my seat.

We are used to Millionaires, the occasional Billionaire, but we are not prepared for the fact that there are enough Billionaires around that can coordinate their power. They have as little connection to the world we live in as the Bourbons and Rothschilds did to their day, actually, less. If an old aristocrat bankrputed their country, they knew their power would be lessened. This new, global breed of aristo does not need a home country, and frankly can drop them easier than they can drop a cheap gown.

Think of Peter Thiel, who is outright working on building a nation stae in the waters.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024761/Atlas-Shrugged-Silicon-Valley-billionaire-reveals-plan-launch-floating-start-country-coast-San-Francisco.html

We are literally talking about someone trying to make a nation based on Ayn Rand. A real life "going Galt." Of course, unlike the old empires, they dare not try this in the wilderness,, no,they know that, even if they say "fuck America" every day, they can go into the US mainland, and expect complete and utter deference!

Of course, let's look at Dubai, where the rich can have their own islands made, and even has slave labor.

The point is, the Billionaires are so used to getting their own way, they do not care if every American would hate Romney ala Ben Ladin...they do not care, because they are used to knowing that one way or another, they will always get exactly what they want.

Unless we stop them, that is.

resentful and bitter and feeling like they are victimized by people with less. IMO they believe that whatever "the lessers" have came out of their pockets and they spend all their time scheming to get it.

A lot of great industrialists died thinking they were great men. They only didn't live long enough to know they became the villain. Just as these people are trumpeting today. Still thinking they are God's gift when they are clearly destroying the future of every living thing on this planet. All for some extra homes, jet rides and expensive clothes. I guess, enjoy the ride while it lasts.
Some people actually have a calling to make the world a better place because of them, or at the very least, try not to make it too much worse. Sad that can't be a goal to be admired anymore. Only scoffed and belittled.