But all we have to do is look at what the rich did to the World Economy to know how stupid they are. If any of us failed that spectacularly we would never work again.

I hope you win in November, Rep. Grayson we need a hundred of you in Congress, more would even be better. Let us know how we can help!

For instance, the Koch brothers are thousands of times richer than Mother Teresa was. Therefore, they must be thousands of times more virtuous than her.

While in Utah, I heard this, "God must love us because we have all this", indicating a wealthy lifestyle. It also explains why someone like Romney moved up in the world.

was that poor women in 3rd world countries should be chained to their reproductive organs and churn out children and stay in abject poverty, all the while taking big money from rich people to further her keeping to said mindset of women being chained to their reproductive organs, I'd say that woman had no virtue.

To hear her tell it: ""I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Missionary_Position
From the book "Missionary Position" by Christopher Hitchens:

OK, I did not know the criticisms of Mother Teresa that you brought up. Maybe she is NOT deserving of sainthood. But are you really intending to say the Koch brothers (Charles, David, and, I think, Fredo) are a thousand times superior in virtue? Pretty sure Mother Teresa actually did go out of her way to sometimes help other people. Not sure the Kochs ever have.

anyone who thinks it's better for women to be chained to breeding mode so she can fantasize about how glorious suffering is is going to get a real, good rip from me. If you don't like it, use the ignore button so your tender sensibilities won't be offended.

Now, did I mention anything about the Kock brothers? No. I did not. That's your argument and you attempting to put your words into my mouth and make me own them. I won't. I didn't have to intend anything in that post. I meant what I wrote and what I intended is in what I wrote. Stick to that.

say it again!

We might make a little money in our IRA's if the stock market goes up and if companies that actually produce things are doing well.

But the ultra-rich look at every situation with an eye towards how it can be exploited to expand their wealth.. They can do very well during recessions by buying up assets at bargain-basement prices, through private equity funds that we have no access to. When Republicans are in power, they are busy trying to sell of public assets to their wealthy benefactors in the private sector, and provide subsidies to booming businesses. So for these folks, it doesn't really matter if the economy is boomiing or tanking: each is just a different kind of opportunity. Now, if Republicans actually stayed in power long enough for the impact of their policies to fully play out, we might see an economic colllapse--and that would matter to the 1%--but Democrats come in to mitigate the damage just enough to keep this from happening (at least, so far).

For the ultra-rich, its a competition. Their gains are less important than everyone else's lose.

They hate democratic terms because EVERYONE does better; under republican terms, only they do better.

If actual leftists took power, their could be reasonable tax rates, especially on capital gains, and they can't have that. There could be real banking regulation that would actually hurt them. There could be trade and labour laws that would cut into their profits in a significant way. If they keep pushing the right they are able to portray the moderate positions which help them as being leftist. It enforces a dichotomy that ensures that the left will never be in power.

that the rich would rather have a smaller pie, it if meant they got a larger percentage of the total pie.

Blue Meany has a good point:
The rich will do well in good or bad times, it's all just an opportunity to them.

Strong Black Man has a second good point:
To the rich, it is more satisfying to ruin others rather than get even richer yourself. Their
own gains are less important than causing others' losses.

And my point is:
They really have all the money they could ever want - now they want life-and-death power
others' lives by buying up land, water sources, public utilities, anything that will make them
money AND let them hold others in thrall.

In short, they're psychopaths.

At some point it no longer contributes any more to "living the good life." Many of the rich become so consumed with "the game" that they do not, in fact, enjoy their lives. They're too busy, too engrossed, too desperate to "win" the next deal.

The issue isn't money or affluence, it is about the power that it buys.

The federal government controls and wields more assets than any corporation, more than any group of people of wealth. Therefore, the affluent see the government as a competitor for authority. A very potent, almost intractable competitor. The federal government DWARFS its competitors over reach and influence and wields more fiscal authority than any other entity in the country.

Is it any wonder they want to infiltrate it? To destroy it from within? Without a strong, well-funded government, the people of this country become a cheap commodity, forced to essentially deal with whatever economic realities that corporate wealth will ostensibly create in its absence.

Republicans are not interested in governing, Alan. Essentially, that party is nothing more than a bunch of paid moles, shills, and obstructionists to make sure that the case for government is weakened in the eyes and mind of the American populace. They need us to be complicit in its defanging. They need us to feel that government is bloated, ineffectual, and a total WOMBAT (waste of money, brains, and time) so that they can justify election to "give back your money because you're better at deciding how its used."

Republicans don't need to show growth or economic stability, because that's not the point. The point is to TANK the economy and hold on to power long enough to convince people that the fault is government intervention in glorious free-range capitalism with all of its invisible hands and feet and ears and eyes. They'll introduce deregulation to an industry, and when that industry starts getting out of control, their argument will be "well, it's this way because we didn't deregulate ENOUGH". They'll lower taxes on the rich and deregulate so they can move jobs overseas with impunity, and when the wealth gap in the country grows so large that the middle class effectively disappears and so few jobs exist that there is little hope left for resurrecting it, they'll say "well, the job creators aren't creating jobs because the conditions for direct American investment are unfavorable, so we should probably lower taxes MORE and give them MORE freedom to correct it." And when the entire of the American economy crashes (as it inevitably will when venerated "free market capitalism" is allowed to run around without a leash) they'll say "SEE! Government doesn't WORK!"

“Men nearly always speak and write as if riches were absolute, as if it were possible, by following certain scientific precepts, for everybody to be rich. Whereas riches are a power like that of electricity, acting only through inequalities or negations of itself. The force of the guinea you have in your pocket depends wholly on the default of a guinea in your neighbors pocket. If he did not want it, it would be of no use to you; the degree of power it possesses depends accurately on the need or desire he has for it, – and the art of making yourself rich, in the ordinary mercantile economist's sense, is therefore equally and necessarily the art of keeping your neighbor poor.” – John Ruskin “Unto the Last”

Last edited Wed May 30, 2012, 06:40 PM - Edit history (1)

article Alan Grayson refers to (it's got great charts, see below - click on chart to go to article):





""If you're so rich, why aren't you smart?" good question!

..... most of the guys who have made lots of money I've heard talking on tv know how to make money but no NOTHING about economics. (very few of them realize if there wasn't a sizeable middle class with enough disposable income to buy the products or services they offered for sale - they wouldn't have made very much money at all. But that is not there scope of thinking. They are thinking about how to turn a profit running a business. They aren't in the 'business' of understanding how economies work (especially, how they work BEST).

recommended.

Perhaps these "dumb rich people" are not out for their own personal gain, but simply believe that personal property should not be appropriated by the government because the public thinks they deserve it. Perhaps the fact that the majority of people benefitting from taxes and public assistance programs are not the "dumb rich people," but the smart poor people who don't have jobs or educations. The conclusion that I would draw from this is... Obama said Republicans were in cahoots with "wall street", and yet wall street does much better under the democrats. How does that work?????

"buy low, sell high". It's worth losing a few hundred million in a crisis if you can use your remaining hundreds of millions to buy assets at pennies on the dollar because of that same crisis.



Sometimes you have to destroy a village to save it. And by "save it" I mean "own everything and everyone in it for 5 cents on the dollar".


The extremely rich do just fine under Democrats, but they make out like the bandits they are under Republicans - and Republicans give them the power they need to break, buy, and re-stabilize and then wash, rinse, repeat.

And that's how wealth gets redistributed. Upwards. Sometimes slowly, more often in some quick cataclysmic spasm - but ALWAYS upwards if the extremely rich have any say in it, and unfortunately they seem to have the only say in it. Since, you know, the rest of America has been tricked into doing their bidding.