The lamentations of the rich

[blindpig]

The lamentations of the rich

Recent months have seen the eruption of popular anger throughout the United States at the staggering levels of social inequality, with the Occupy Wall Street protests gathering broad popular sympathy and support.

This development, unforeseen and unscripted by the media, has left Wall Street’s “masters of the universe” wallowing not only in money, but also in self-pity. What have they done, complain these tender-hearted architects of hedge funds, collateralized debt obligations and countless other forms of financial swindling, to merit such popular disdain? The Financial Times web site reported in an article posted Wednesday that the rich are “indignant,” resentful of the “class war” rhetoric that is being heard in public protests.

The protesters, they argue, have been misled into believing that higher taxes and the imposition of limits on the accumulation of personal wealth would have any significant impact on the national debt. The attention being given to their multi-million- and even billion-dollar annual winnings, the indignant rich maintain, is without the slightest economic justification.

According to Steven Schwarzman (CEO of private equity/corporate raider firm Blackstone Group), whose net worth is estimated by Forbes at $4.7 billion, “Just raising taxes on the wealthiest two percent, for example, will not reduce a $1.3 trillion annual deficit enough to restore fiscal balance.”

more.....

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/pers-d22.shtml

[ananda]

1. Wouldn't it be nice to just occupy . . .

. . . the bank accounts of the whiny 1&ers and
use that money to pay for the college education
of every student, the healthcare of every person,
the retirement of every senior, and so on?????

[blindpig]

3. That's the plan.....n/t

[socialist_n_TN]

6. Yep. I say tax the 1% at 99% of their wealth

and take away their ownership of production. We ALL have a MORAL right to the means of production no matter WHO says they "own" that means.

[blindpig]

7. Once they are separated from the means of production their wealth will dwindle rapidly.

Gonna be hard to keep up them mansions and yachts without stolen labor.

[socialist_n_TN]

12. Yeah, that's too bad ain't it........

I'm so fucking TIRED of these parasitic scum sucking at the teat of labor. The Wobblies were right. We have a MORAL obligation to own the means of production.

[Turbineguy]

2. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Some get rich inventing a new product that everybody wants. But most get rich in the process of destroying others. It's not whether you are rich, it's how you got there that counts.

Our current situation has evolved to where the best way to get rich is to invent or provide something totally without substance or throw people out of their homes.

[PETRUS]

5. Are there any billionaire Robinson Crusoes?

Any severe concentration of wealth/ownership - regardless of the origins - is inherently anti-democratic and unstable. Also, I doubt it's possible to find examples of extreme wealth that don't involve exploitation.

[carla]

10. I see it this way,

the rich are entitled to the fruit of their labour and ingenuity. They are entitled to entrepreneurship as a facet of their liberty. They are entitled to their opinion regarding others work value. They are entitled to their property.
However, they are not entitled to interfere in the societal web of relations just to secure more wealth for themselves at the expense of an entire class, namely, the middle class. They are not entitled to promote a politics of disenfranchisement and exclusivity of election. They are not entitled to lie to the nation so as to further war aims that fit their bottom line. They are not entitled to be protected from the consequences of their failed financial foresight, especially not when the world economy is affected so negatively by their little games.

Society is a balancing act. The rich need to participate fairly in that act.

[blindpig]

11. Labor, what labor?

How are the hours they put in worth more than a worker's hours? Why is their 'liberty' to exploit the labor of other humans sacrosant? Did they build the factories themselves, write the software, plant the corn?

[Buns_of_Fire]

4. So they're ticked about what people say about them. Poor babies.

Sticks and stones, sticks and stones. Worry more about the people who are muttering darkly about "fava beans and a nice Chianti..."

[Cairycat]

8. Taxing the rich might or might not

restore fiscal balance ... but it would go a certain distance toward creating economic justice!

[hfojvt]

9. ironically they are correct

taxes really need to go up on the top 19% as well.

Of course, my own brother is in the top 25% and he laments that he is underwater. Spending more each week than he earns.

[onethatcares]

13. they continue to throw the same shit against the wall and

too many of the 99% start to think that if it wasn't for the taxes they pay to support those damn illegal aliens and them brownskinned folks, why, they'd be rich too. If it wasn't for those teenage welfare mothers on drugs, they'd be in high cotton and eating sturgeon eggs on ritz crackers.

that class warfare act is a prime example.

oh, and for your brother. Tell him it's stupid for someone to continue to do that. He's more intelligent than that.