The belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning

[LC EFA]

kpete  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 07:33 AM
Original message
The belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning   Updated at 7:28 AM
   
Source: Los Angeles Times

Michael Hiltzik:
The belief that the wealthy are worthy is waning
With financial crisis and scandal as backdrop, Americans are questioning whether plutocrats are either indispensable or deserving.
Michael Hiltzik
March 19, 2009

The notion that the poor always will be with us has been ingrained in our culture ever since the sermons of Moses were set down by the anonymous author of Deuteronomy.

That the point is even open for discussion suggests that a sea change is taking place on the American political scene. For decades, the wealthy have been held up as people to be admired, victors in the Darwinian economic struggle by virtue of their personal ingenuity and hard work.

Americans consistently supported fiscal policies that undermined middle- and working-class interests partially because they saw themselves as rich-people-in-waiting: Given time, toil and the magic of compound interest, anyone could retire a millionaire.

That mind-set has all but been eradicated by the damage sustained by the average worker's nest egg, combined with the spectacle of bankers and financial engineers maintaining their lifestyles with multimillion-dollar bonuses while the submerged 99% struggle for oxygen.

Read more:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5295358

The kaput primitive found some new fuel to feed their hatred of anyone more successful than them self.

Grinchie  (937 posts) Fri Mar-20-09 07:51 AM
Response to Reply #2
3. Doesn't mean we can't torment them with it every day for the rest of their stinking lives
   
And refuse to work for them, utilize their money making schemes, and avoiding any indication of debt.

It's kind of like Gandhi, casting off the consumption and getting back to basics. These rich guys hate that.

Why do you think the Repugs hate Hippies so much. They have time to enjoy live, live a truly free life, while the repugs toild away for their fair share, which somehow the Hippies are taking away from them.

The Fiat currency and fractional Reserve System have outlived their usefulness. We are entering a time on Earth where 7% growth is killing us.

Feel free to stop working and "cast off consumption" any time, under the provision that you cast off consuming anything derived from taxpayers pockets at the same time.

Cary  (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 10:54 AM
Response to Reply #3
35. You give them too much credit
   
The article speaks of "dumb luck". The kind of thing you describe requires intelligence, organization, competence, and skill. I am not a psychiatrist, but I would have guess that these qualities are possessed by rightists only in their delusions.

Dumb luck describes any of their successes much better, I think. Dumb luck and our own missteps, perhaps.

Funny how all your intellectualism can't buy you a decent wage then isn't it.

EnviroBat  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 10:35 AM
Response to Reply #3
31. Wow! I never thought of it that way...
   
But you are right. The "establishment" has always despised the hippie culture for it's freedom from the restraints of indebtedness. People that don't fed from the great trough are seen as useless to them. I have this dream in which the whole of our society just "wakes" up one day and realizes collectively, "Hey, we have but one ****ing life here..." We all suddenly default of our home mortgages, and credit cards. Quit our corporate jobs. Give up the bullshit possessions we enslave ourselves to. We take care of each other. Train each other to do constructive things like build, and farm. Grow our own food, and live together.

You want to live on a commune and break your back in a subsistence living ? That would be a hoot to watch on pay per view.

northernlights Donating Member (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 11:02 AM
Response to Reply #31
38. if you default on your home mortgage
   
where do you plan to grow your food? All the land is owned by somebody.

Mark my words, starting a productive garden is *very* labor intensive, so you don't want to try starting it on bank-owned land, only to have it bulldozed up once they catch on to you. The initial work of rototilling, rock picking, testing and amending the soil, mulching the paths of a small garden is the hardest part...

Otherwise, though, I'm there. When my hi-tech career crashed, I specifically went through a master gardener's program and spent 2 summers volunteering at a small, commercial organic farm. This summer if I'm able, I'll spend some time volunteering at a local, commercial medicinal herb grower and maker. Chickens and ducks are easy to care for -- I've babysat them for a friend. I may also learn to keep honeybees, although that's a little scary...

Shush. I don't want you injecting any reality into the debate. It might spoil the plans for a new TV Mini series entitled "The DUmmune".

tonysam  (198 posts) Fri Mar-20-09 09:33 PM
Response to Reply #6
72. Horatio Alger is a Lie, a Filthy Lie.
   
The myth is you work hard enough, you will move up the ladder or get rich. The fact is, hard work or "merit" has little to do with "success." Connections have everything to do with it.

It's really a hard thing to grasp, but once one works a few years in the labor force, reality sets in. It's really unpleasant.

With an attitude like this is it any wonder they are a bitter failure.

primavera  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Click to send private message to this author  Click to view this author's profile  Click to add this author to your buddy list  Click to add this author to your Ignore list      Fri Mar-20-09 09:17 AM
Response to Original message
21. This is huge
   
I'm a firm believer that it's the misguided faith that Americans have that they live in a meritocracy that sustains the status quo. Americans believe that if people are rich, it's because they deserve to be rich, and, conversely, if they're poor, it's because they deserve to be poor. Yet we have income inequality which rivals feudal times and socioeconomic mobility that is actually less than it was during the Roman Empire. Our system is far closer to aristocracy than meritocracy. But there's been no way to change that so long as people labor under the misapprehension that our system is fair and equitable.

Clearly the ability to use a thesaurus doesn't imply rational thinking.

EnviroBat  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 10:44 AM
Response to Original message
32. My God... I there actually going to be a revolution in this country?
   
I've been waiting for this since I was a young boy. When I thought somewhere in the back of my young, impressionable mind, that something was fundamentally wrong with the way things "were". I saw how my parents struggled, and wondered to myself, "Is this what life is ultimately all about"? I've always seen it as the haves and the have-nots. Those that are oppressed, and those that are the oppressors. I pray the tide is finally turning.

They should be careful of what they wish for.

Two Americas  (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 07:40 PM
Response to Reply #32
68. 80 year cycles
   
Periods of massive social upheaval run in 80 year cycles, with smaller upheavals in between at the 40 year mark. Something to do with social amnesia, and the generations.

1690's, 1770's, 1850's, 1930's.... 2010.

We are right up against it now, and the likelihood of massive social unrest grows stronger every day. The signs are everywhere. We are sitting on a powder keg.

If you stupid primitives were motivated enough to revolt, you'd probably be motivated enough to get a damn job.

Terry in Austin  Donating Member  (653 posts) Fri Mar-20-09 11:04 AM
Response to Original message
39. Easy: the poor are poor because the rich are rich
   
We know for damned sure that the rich will always be with us.

Ergo, the poor will always be with us.

QED

Yet another of these morons that believe there's only one big pile of money and the greedy richers got to the pile first and stole it all from them took it all.

[Mr Mannn]

I read these posts and I realize these primitives are not democrats, they are communists. To Obama and Pelosi, class warfare is a propaganda tool, to DUmmies its reality.
Now that their party is in power, the rich become a lifeline. With no one else to hate, the successful are the new targets.

A DUmmy must hate. Their psychology is built around hate.
With Obama going Hugo on us, he will find a way to use that hatred against the people. I think we are going to find their fat asses in XXXXXL Civilian Security Force uniforms in the near future. They will work hand in hand with the Nation of Islam (also in uniform) to brink Ayers 20 million purge into reality.

I know people may dismiss my ideas, but with Obama/Pelosi laws creating Obama youth camps and making private gardens subject to govt regulation/confiscation....Something is up, and its no good. Certainly with ACORN working the census, we will be looking at the greatest voter fraud ever to occur in the USA...No matter how angry people are in 2010, we may be unable to overcome the fraud and affect the election.

[Vagabond]

Their epoch starting in the 1930s is the era of massive governmental growth and entitlement programs.  If it's any indication, the era after 2010 will feature perhaps the falling away of government in areas where it is neither needed nor desired.

[Carl]

Amusing little nitwits aren`t they?

History has long shown that leftists in power will immediately quash any attempts at a social uprising.
It isn`t us they need to fear..it is their own.

[NHSparky]

No poor man ever signed my paycheck.  You familiar with that concept, DUmmies?

[Texacon]

Someone should tell the DUmmies that it is easy to be rich.  You spend less than you make and you WILL be wealthy.  It's simple DUmmies and it doesn't matter how much you make.  That is the formula, live it and you too can be despised by dirty hippies. 

KC

[Celtic Rose]

This sort of mentality is so ridiculous 

My dad started working right out of high school.  He joined the navy for a few years, then he started working at a company.  My mom showed me their very first tax return last week, he made about 17,000 a year, and she made about 15,000 a year the first year they got married (1983).  Neither of them had a college degree.  My dad is now a high up manager for a company reporting to a VP, making significantly more. His company paid for him to get a college degree at one point. He was the son of a Navy man and an office worker, neither of whom ever got "rich".  Perhaps the DUmmies could explain how his "connections" helped him up the ladder?  It was his hard work, and if any connections helped him, they were connections he made while working.

I'll admit that my parents paid for my college education, but I got job through a temp agency, not through any connections they have.  I've been out of college for 2 years, and I'm making a very nice hourly wage, and my boss has promised me a promotion and raise as soon as the economy improves enough that the law firm will approve it.  I fully intend to be one of the wealthy one day, and I'm willing to work hard to get it, and it pisses me off to see the DUmmies fighting to tax those who have worked hard enough to become wealthy 

[BlueStateSaint]

Someone should tell the DUmmies that it is easy to be rich.  You spend less than you make and you WILL be wealthy.  It's simple DUmmies and it doesn't matter how much you make.  That is the formula, live it and you too can be despised by dirty hippies. 

KC

But . . . but . . . but how would they pay for their pot, unless they get those welfare checks from the sweat of our brows? 

[franksolich]

....."The DUmmune"......

Damn.

That is a stroke of genius.

"The DUmmune."

[franksolich]

Their epoch starting in the 1930s is the era of massive governmental growth and entitlement programs.  If it's any indication, the era after 2010 will feature perhaps the falling away of government in areas where it is neither needed nor desired.

Did you happen to notice the schizophrenic America primitive in his recital of the "40-year" cycles omitted.....the decade the Incompetent One was president?

[jukin]

Try to take away a good grade from the goons and they will kill you.

[delilahmused]

EnviroBat  Donating Member  (1000+ posts) Fri Mar-20-09 10:35 AM
Response to Reply #3
31. Wow! I never thought of it that way...
   
But you are right. The "establishment" has always despised the hippie culture for it's freedom from the restraints of indebtedness. People that don't fed from the great trough are seen as useless to them. I have this dream in which the whole of our society just "wakes" up one day and realizes collectively, "Hey, we have but one ****ing life here..." We all suddenly default of our home mortgages, and credit cards. Quit our corporate jobs. Give up the bullshit possessions we enslave ourselves to. We take care of each other. Train each other to do constructive things like build, and farm. Grow our own food, and live together.

Funny, they don't seem to realize THEY are the establishment...most of the uber-rich are dem-socialists (well, with other people's money, they don't seem to want to spread their own wealth around). They have congress, the White House, a good portion of the courts, the media, and the Hollywood propaganda machine. It's conservatives who are now the rebels fighting against the man (well, I guess we'd actually be fighting against wimmin and the metrosexuals they dominate...probably why Michelle has the biceps in the family). They never seem capable of figuring out who pays for the hippies while they're living their idyllic "free" lifestyle.

EnviroBatShitCrazy obviously has no idea how much hard work it is to live its "back to the land" dream. And I wonder if its considered the likelihood of Apple trading it a new Mac for a few dozen eggs and those extra zucchinis every gardener produces. I'm sure cable and DSL providers would be quite happy to provide her with Internet service in exchange for a months supply of organic tomatoes and herbs. Same for gas for the tractor and truck...it can be a little tricky transporting a half a ton of hay in a hybrid, animal feed, seed for next year's crop, hay and pine shavings for coops, barns, and pens. equipment repair, fencing, etc. Well, maybe the mechanic that does equipment repair will ask you to throw in a bushel of apples and a pound of cherries, too.

If communes were so successful I'd think there would be more of them. Hippies have been trying to live in them since those happy days of the 60's when mommy and daddy...after a stint fighting WWII and providing the ungrateful little bastards with wonderful childhoods in Donna Reedland...were still paying for them while they protested their way through college.

Crops don't pop up out of thin air, they don't weed themselves, they don't fertilize themselves (and so far they don't clean the coops and hutches and spread the fertilizer themselves) they don't water themselves, and they sure as hell don't walk to the kitchen on their own regardless of what one thinks after watching Veggie Tales or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Goats have to be milked twice a day (I don't know about cows but it can't be any less work), kidding season (now) means getting up to feed a kid every few hours because if does nurse their own kids there's no milk left for humans...multiply that by the number of pregnant does who never kid at the same time, and you've got a couple months of very little sleep. Livestock has to be grained and given hay, eggs gathered, cleaned, etc., etc., etc. So far, I haven't found my Lit degree to be helpful...chickens just don't have the same appreciation for Faulkner as humans do. Egg production appears not to go up regardless of how many times I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock to them, they just hop out of the nesting box, cluck, and wander off to scratch in the dirt.

It's hard enough pulling my own weight, I don't want to have to support some stupid hippie who thinks getting back to the land means sitting in the tall grass smoking pot. Besides, if they sit there while I'm mowing I might not see them. That could be kind of messy.

Cindie

[franksolich]

Funny, they don't seem to realize THEY are the establishment...most of the uber-rich are dem-socialists (well, with other people's money, they don't seem to want to spread their own wealth around).

I hope the primitives don't forget that one of their own, the kaput primitive, lives a life of more affluence and ease and comfort than most of them them do, in an upscale gated luxury community, in a house normally big enough to accomodate six families of six.

[BlueStateSaint]

I hope the primitives don't forget that one of their own, the kaput primitive, lives a life of more affluence and ease and comfort than most of them them do, in an upscale gated luxury community, in a house normally big enough to accomodate six families of six.

Almost worth burning a mole over?  I don't have any.

[Carl]

Funny, they don't seem to realize THEY are the establishment...most of the uber-rich are dem-socialists (well, with other people's money, they don't seem to want to spread their own wealth around). They have congress, the White House, a good portion of the courts, the media, and the Hollywood propaganda machine. It's conservatives who are now the rebels fighting against the man (well, I guess we'd actually be fighting against wimmin and the metrosexuals they dominate...probably why Michelle has the biceps in the family). They never seem capable of figuring out who pays for the hippies while they're living their idyllic "free" lifestyle.

EnviroBatShitCrazy obviously has no idea how much hard work it is to live its "back to the land" dream. And I wonder if its considered the likelihood of Apple trading it a new Mac for a few dozen eggs and those extra zucchinis every gardener produces. I'm sure cable and DSL providers would be quite happy to provide her with Internet service in exchange for a months supply of organic tomatoes and herbs. Same for gas for the tractor and truck...it can be a little tricky transporting a half a ton of hay in a hybrid, animal feed, seed for next year's crop, hay and pine shavings for coops, barns, and pens. equipment repair, fencing, etc. Well, maybe the mechanic that does equipment repair will ask you to throw in a bushel of apples and a pound of cherries, too.

If communes were so successful I'd think there would be more of them. Hippies have been trying to live in them since those happy days of the 60's when mommy and daddy...after a stint fighting WWII and providing the ungrateful little bastards with wonderful childhoods in Donna Reedland...were still paying for them while they protested their way through college.

Crops don't pop up out of thin air, they don't weed themselves, they don't fertilize themselves (and so far they don't clean the coops and hutches and spread the fertilizer themselves) they don't water themselves, and they sure as hell don't walk to the kitchen on their own regardless of what one thinks after watching Veggie Tales or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Goats have to be milked twice a day (I don't know about cows but it can't be any less work), kidding season (now) means getting up to feed a kid every few hours because if does nurse their own kids there's no milk left for humans...multiply that by the number of pregnant does who never kid at the same time, and you've got a couple months of very little sleep. Livestock has to be grained and given hay, eggs gathered, cleaned, etc., etc., etc. So far, I haven't found my Lit degree to be helpful...chickens just don't have the same appreciation for Faulkner as humans do. Egg production appears not to go up regardless of how many times I read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufock to them, they just hop out of the nesting box, cluck, and wander off to scratch in the dirt.

It's hard enough pulling my own weight, I don't want to have to support some stupid hippie who thinks getting back to the land means sitting in the tall grass smoking pot. Besides, if they sit there while I'm mowing I might not see them. That could be kind of messy.

Cindie

I have yet to read any of their drivel where one of them actually states exactly what they as an individual will contribute to the common good that they think should be given to them.

Not once,not ever,no specifics as to how they will add to society....just yearnings to take as needed/wanted and then escape from it.

Fuk them.

[delilahmused]

I have yet to read any of their drivel where one of them actually states exactly what they as an individual will contribute to the common good that they think should be given to them.

Not once,not ever,no specifics as to how they will add to society....just yearnings to take as needed/wanted and then escape from it.

Fuk them.

That's a pretty profound observation, Carl but you're right. They're constantly whining and moaning about how they think things should be, what they should have but not once to they ever talk about what they'd be willing to do to make these things happen.

Cindie

[MarshallLaw]

Besides, if they sit there while I'm mowing I might not see them. That could be kind of messy.

Cindie

You say that as if it were a bad thing.

[Karin]

Cindie, you're right, they haven't a CLUE what hard work it is to work the land.  This is far, far more work than they're willing to do of course.  I have great admiration for anyone who does it.   I would just love for one of them to try it and report back to his little friends there. 

I wonder if Envirobat isn't a mole.  He's just a little TOO hippy-dippy, and his spelling and grammar are pretty good. 

[delilahmused]

You say that as if it were a bad thing.

Well, I don't have a baler so gathering hay is pretty tedious as it is, I don't need the dead weight of a liberal to complicate things any further.

Cindie

[MarshallLaw]

Well, I don't have a baler so gathering hay is pretty tedious as it is, I don't need the dead weight of a liberal to complicate things any further.

Cindie

Just run over them a few extra times.

Chop 'em up small enough, you don't really need to pick anything up. Worms and such take care of it.


So I've heard, you know. No first hand experience or anything. Nope, not at all.
 

[dutch508]

Just run over them a few extra times.

Chop 'em up small enough, you don't really need to pick anything up. Worms and such take care of it.


So I've heard, you know. No first hand experience or anything. Nope, not at all.
 

We don't have a bailer either. We've used a rake tractor and slide stacker for 100 years...

[The Village Idiot]

don't they realize that most of the super rich are Democrats?? everyone else will be super poor if they get their way...

just like in a 3rd world banana republic

thats starting to be a theme...

[DixieBelle]

Damn.

That is a stroke of genius.

"The DUmmune."

Yes, it is isn't it? We have to remember that one...