What a scum bucket of a person is Koch! Time to reverse his fortunes...let's talk about this.

My thoughts about "the rich" changed a lot when I worked in Africa and realized I'm one of them.

For that to be true, the 99% would have to make less than that.

don't doubt it.

If we bought food straight from farmers at a town market, if it weren't transported across the country or across the world, if it weren't packaged in paper and plastic, we could live on a lot less money.

If we did not have a municipal sewer system, computers, electric lights at night, heated homes, several changes of (often new) clothing, leather shoes, refrigerators and freezers, more than one pot or pan, a gas or electric stove, an asphalt or tile roof (something other than straw), glass windowpanes, cars, etc., we could live on a whole lot less money.

If we did not have good medical care or education, think of the money our government could save.

That is the Koch brothers' vision for Americans -- a life without the things our forefathers worked for.

If $34,000 per year is the 1% of the world, in what percentile are the Koch brothers?

And if we lived like people do in most of the world, we would not be able to buy their products, and they, too, would be poorer.

or Latin America.

Or Southeast Asia.

Bryant

he could just give them debit cards that can only be used at a company store

remember how romney waxed poetically about how eager the chinese workforce was to work for pennies?

laws and regulations for currency, taxes, labor protection, and of course the rights given to the people by the Constitution.

http://www.wvculture.org/history/wvhs1503.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303901504577462512713336378.html

Asshole is right.

no violence, just a nice midnight aneurysm would clear up that social disease of a man.

I'd rather see him have a health scare that causes him to question his priorities and converts him from a self-serving psychopath to a tireless crusader for social justice. Let him use his immense wealth and resources to do good for a change. Of course, all that would happen is that an "accident" would be arranged for him, but he might actually manage something positive in the intervening period. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

God Bless us, everyone!

With the ghost of Ayn Rand taking the role of Marley.

This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate....

what a fucking low life.

His long yawns are worth $75. Not bad for three second's work.

Can join the big boys club of the 1%. Then that means, you don't have to pay any taxes.

I'd say that is quite a difference no matter how he wants to make it seem.

Earth and he's tied for 6th richest with his brother.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_100_wealthiest_people#2013_Top_10

of upward mobility it's food stamps and minimum wage. See if we were only allowed to pay you 1.60 an hour then you would do something to make your life better. Drive a cab or become a hairdresser. I wonder how much a guy worth 43 billion tips his cabbie?

Oh and the man who is spending $200,000 in TV commercials to tell you you make too much money already.

But he might be right, in raw terms. Something like 3 billion people live on $2/day or less, and world medium income is estimated to be only $2k. It's entirely possible that there are only 75 million people worldwide who make more than $34k/year.

In the end, this is the problem with decoupling income statistics from cost-of-living statistics. Oh, and with being an evil douchebag. That too.

...even the natives in the South American jungle are counted as "Wage Earners"

Shit...Let's go even further and count "Beings" (Rabbits, Lions, Bugs..etc..)...Damn, that way if you make over $3.67 you're in the One Percent !!... Hallelujah !!!!

And he knows it. What a lowlife!

This is kind of like that old joke about how if Bill Gates walks into a bar, every person there is a millionaire. Only the opposite.

You can skew your average depending on who you include in your sample. If you include millions of people making $1.00 a day then, sure, $45,000 probably falls in the top 1%, or something like that.

I can't stand people who are manipulative . STFU Chuck!!

n/t

Lying sack of shit. I hope nothing but severe poverty for his entire family and future generations.

Oh yes, "Karma's a bitch". I wouldn't have his karma for NOTHING!

Yes. He makes more money in 23 MINUTES than the average worker making just over $15 dollars an hour makes in a YEAR.

And that figure assumes a paltry 3% yearly interest . . . AFTER the whopping 15% Capital Gains tax is applied.

He should be given a set of elephant balls for his bullshit.

It's really funny how America's poor/working/middle classes get compared by conservative pundits to their Djibouti and Chad counterparts rather than their Scandanavian and European ones. Or not.

The 1% really are all about "Let them eat cake."

And they want MORE. They want it all. They earned every penny, doncha know.

Probably doesn't bother to get out of bed in the morning.

as well as a completely sociopathic greedhead.

I'll be glad when and David finally croak.

Born into a crackpot family and will die as a crackpot.

There are simply some people who have too much money and too much time on their hands, and they are doing tremendous damage.

I don't care if it is Gates, Walton, Koch, Broad, Peterson, or any other filthy rich plutocrat. They are ALL dangerous.

What e certainly is is a shameless liar.

that the poor here get to eat and when lucky enough to have a place, do not live in a shelter made of scraps pulled out of the landfill. When compared to the world standard, our poor are lucky enough to experience indoor plumbing and flush toilets.

Mr. Koch want to take us to a place where none of these "luxuries" are available to the poor.

Of course the real problem with this notion is that we would condemn and demolish shelters cobbled together from scraps as "unfit for human habitation" in most jurisdictions.

Time to bring back the guillotine, just for people like him.

for 3 months. To really experience what you are extolling as such a grand salary, you can not pull in any financial resources. You have to live at a shelter or rent a room on that salary, until you have saved enough for a deposit for housing.

As you are willing to invest so much of your money "on making America better" for all (your claim) and not for personal financial self-interest, then you should experience the realities of those who live on this grand salary.

Please note that this is a much higher income level than many Americans.

Until then, your proclamations that your efforts are to "make America better" rather than using your outsized (inherited) wealth to influence policy to enrich yourself will continue to be met with extreme skepticism.

He obviously meant to say that $34,000 an HOUR* puts you in the top 1%. Seems about right to me, and he probably makes more than that, so from his lofty perspective...............

*Year, hour--they both have four letters and end in "r" which in Republicanese grammar counts as "close enough."

and $16.50/hr is more than twice the minimum wage. So I really don't get where either those comes into his argument.

. . . instead of Sweden and France's actual middle/working/poor.

"Yew don't live in a tent in the sand or eat bugs fer breakfust . . . and yew have one of them newfangled DVD players. Yew ain't POOR!"

To me, there is nothing more chilling than hearing an earnest young Christian student explain how America "has no poor people, only lazy ones." We need to focus on Africa, "where people really ARE poor."

There is some sick indoctrination going on in some of our fundy churches on this very topic. And the Koch Bros. love every minute.

Since the 1% in other countries make so much less than the 1% in the US.

lived by most in Sub Saharan Africa or most other developing countries.

Of course the stat is also meaningless because unless I'm mistaken, they are going to count a subsistence farmer's income as $0 (or close to it) in a developing country, but that doesn't mean you could go live in a developing world country on $0 (or $100 or whatever) unless you are also doing your own subsistence farming.

He's proven that beyond a doubt!

And the NSA can quote me on that if they'd like.

Right-wing-ding economics is THATaway. Corporate lurve and worker suppression isn't a progressive trait.

The premise is economic freedom, you know those vague terms that could mean anything. They run a list of countries that have more economic freedom than we do. I never had the stomach to watch the whole thing, I just leave the room. But I was cooking supper and I could hear my husband yell from the front room "you dingy SOB just send your daughter to China to get a job there and tell me about economic freedom then" . They still have jobs there that amount to little more than slave labor. Ha-god, I knew what he was viewing then. They are using us as a test market to see how successful they are. If they consider them successful you may be getting them in your area. Oh boy something to look forward to. I could go on and tell you about the Huelskamp robo-call Poll I received last night, but I will stop here.

The terrible thing is the people who swallow it. Again and again and again.

. . . dickheads like Chuckles Koch will get away, continually, with saying stupid shit like this . . . again and again and again.

and without first world living standards, he would be dead

I'll be able to live like a queen on my retirement savings but I'll have to move to Bangladesh to do it - I'm right!

I'm rich. Oh wait, I have to pay bills with this income?

Nevermind.

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Could NOT get it through the heads of most of my workers the difficulties of living off what amounted to about $3 per hour compared to their $30+ per hour wage WITH BENEFITS.

There is only one group of people that can advise the poor how to survive poverty.

THOSE THAT HAVE BEEN THERE!

So those Billionaires, Millionaires, etc., can shove it

where the sun don't shine.

DAILY!

CC

exactly that (no advanced paychecks though), just enough groceries to last until payday, and the deposit and first month's rent paid up front. He also can get a 10 year old car for at the start, but it breaks down at a random time during the 12 months at least once and he has to figure out how to get it fixed or get a new one.

Of course no drawing on any outside money. Come on Charles, do it for a year to prove how easy "the 1%" have it and how it's not that different from the 0.0000001% have it.

doing.

be that effing rich? I know that some inheritance was involved, but you'd have thought that someone so utterly clueless would have blown it all by now.

Just try it, you fucking asshole Koch.

Americans making $34,000/year should be grateful they're better off than people in Somalia, Zimbabwe, Liberia, etc? What amazingly high standards! I guess we should also be grateful all of our water isn't infested with dysentery, all our cattle infected with Mad Cow disease and that we don't sleep on dirt floors in the middle of a war zone.

$34k is where the top percentile worldwide kicks in.

(as opposed to percentages of working age people - then it might be the top 3%). I tried a rough calculation in #30 - the people earning $34k or more in the USA get you most of the way to 1% on their own, and there are many more from other industrialised countries to take into account, plus a few from the richest sections of developing countries.

Unfortunately, because they aren't, it doesn't.

The measure of the prosperity is income divided by cost of living, not raw income.

what standing is he at in the world?

...for the torches, pitchforks, tumbrils, and guillotines, the Kochs should be the first in line.

is a rich TROLL. He is not speaking to all of America. He is speaking to a specific group of people. His buddies that reside with him under the bridge