For the overly wealthy, it's not just about having more -- it's about making you have less.

[byronius]

This is classic hoarding-frenzy behavior, goes back all the way to when we split off from reptiles. It was always a significant attribute of royalty, historically very common in the upper merchant classes, and it goes like this: having more than you could ever need is not stimulating enough unless you know for a fact that others are suffering from having less than they need.

It is a clear fact of the hoarding disease -- and it is a disease -- that the hoarder's peak enjoyment comes from the vicarious thrill and guilty pleasure of watching other people starve. For the hoarder, too much becomes ever so much more enjoyable when the difference between themselves and the starving or stress-ridden lower classes grows wider. For them, it's like being a timid person watching a scary movie -- but it's all real.

Wealth is poison. Enough is as good as a feast, and too much in this case is a ticket to disturbingly psychopathic behavior. We all know this, and unfortunately our laws have been warped to satisfy the dark urges of addicts, weakening the nation and casting doubt on the survival of the human species.

Think of it in tribal terms. Say an ancient island culture of perhaps 100 individuals creates a monetary system based on shells. One hoarding-obsessed individual spends their entire life focusing not on work, or building -- but on gaming the economy to get hold of all the shells. Once they have most of the shells, they will still scheme to get the remainder, even though the rest of the tribe will be forced into starvation. How long do you think the other 99 members will allow this to go on? Awhile, perhaps. It's the nature of systems. But when the markers become more important than their meaning, the tribe is doomed unless it acts. They will either seize the shells and cast out the hoarder, or simply disregard the markers and make new ones. It's difficult for larger and more complex cultures to take these steps, but the principles are the same. Money is just an agreement. It is not a thing of value in and of itself, shells or dollars.

First chance we get, let's solve this problem. A 99% confiscatory tax on all incomes over a million dollars per year would certainly help to begin correcting this extremely damaging habit. Simple, fair, clean -- and the hoarding class would still get some pleasure out of maximizing their remaining one percent.

[NRaleighLiberal]

1. wealth is poison, power is poison - put them together and, well....

trump.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

2. Vast wealth allows them to change laws to make whatever they do legal,

despite how much the society would benefit from it being illegal.

This whole thing is repulsive. Republicans embody the worst of humankind.

[handmade34]

3. excellent assessment...

The wealth of the top 1 percent increased by an average of $4.9 million over the past decade, while the average holdings of the bottom 99 percent declined by about $4,500. Wealth inequality is now the highest it has been since the Federal Reserve began collecting this kind of data in 1983. A full account of just how bad things have gotten is difficult to wrap one’s mind around. In 2016, according to my calculations, the top 1 percent had an average wealth of $26.6 million, while the net worth of everyone in the bottom third combined was less than zero (because of a mixture of low accumulated savings and high debt).

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/inequality-social-wealth-fund.html?em_pos=large&ref=headline&te=1&nl=opinion-today&emc=edit_ty_20171130

[Dreamer Tatum]

4. Laughable nt

[Irish_Dem]

5. The wealthy make the laws. How do we get around that? nt

[world wide wally]

6. Your typical Trumpophiles on the street sees this as a good thing.

[moondust]

7. A system that lavishly rewards sadistic behavior

is bound to end badly, although it could stumble on and do a lot of damage for a long time before it finally dies.

Should fierce systemic greed be punished or rewarded? Wall Street says...

Of course if you have m/billions to burn you can easily afford the armies of lawyers and whatever else necessary to defend yourself from all the victims your brand of greed and sadism creates--particularly if the victims have nothing. Hello Weinstein? Trump?

K/R

[Calculating]

8. I agree that the wealthy need to pay more, but

99percent is kinda silly. We just need a proper progressive tax code which gradually ramps up to maybe 75percent for incomes over 1 billion per year.

[Atman]

12. My very wealthy brother admits as much. No shame at all.

He has two homes on the beach in Maine, one for personal use, one for rental. His primary residence in New Hampshire is over 4,000 sf and is absolutely stunning. He also has a 3500 sq ft penthouse in Delray Beach, FL.

On a recent visit to his beach house my wife was pretty blunt with him. She asked him "With all you have, all the cars, all the houses, all the money, what would change in your life if you had to pay more in income taxes?"

My brother was unabashed in his response: "It wouldn't effect me at all. My life wouldn't change in the slightest. It's just the principle. I shouldn't have to pay for anyone else." Another Republican who made his nut now wants everyone else to piss off and leave him alone. He has enough money and property to survive anything the economy can throw at him. That's the underlying philosophy of our Congress. They're rich as shit, so who cares what anyone else thinks.

[gratuitous]

13. It's not enough for your brother to win

But others (and you can bet he has a list) must lose.

He has no recognition at all that a good portion of his success is built on the efforts of others and the structure of the system that protects his success. But pay for what he gets? That's against his principle, which can be encapsulated in the notion of "Me first, and fuck you."

[A HERETIC I AM]

14. " He has enough money and property to survive anything the economy can throw at him"

Right up to the point of a total economic collapse.

Then.....well.....all that "money" will be worth doodly squat and he'll be hunting and/or trapping his food or scraping trash cans like the rest of us.

Next time you see him, ask him what he would do if his nearest grocery store was empty and no trucks were coming to replenish it or any other grocery store, for that matter. Ask him what he would do if every ATM he tried was empty and every merchant began refusing his credit cards and checks.

"I shouldn't have to pay for anyone else"

Does that extend to the education system also? Does he want to live in a country full of morons? Because that is where conservative political and economic ideology is driving us.

I'm also curious if he is pro military, and all that insinuates. Is he fine with spending a billion and a half a day on a bloated military while children within 100 miles of him go hungry tonight? Remind him that tax dollars make the CEO's of the top defense contractors millionaires. Is he fine with that?

My oldest brother has done very well for himself also, but he is the most progressive minded individual I know.

[TexasBushwhacker]

16. "I shouldn't have to pay for anyone else"

Why the hell not? In most industries, the executives get wealthy by screwing the employees at the bottom.

[Atman]

19. He's said that, too.

Shortly after W got selected. He was rooting for Bush because he had 18 employees and he didn't want to have to pay for their health care. Mind you, he has FOUR homes, and a special heated bay in his four-car garage to house his Porche 911. But he was concerned that his eighteen employees might get too much free stuff. He's never seems to question who actually bought him that Porche and the four houses. He did that all by himself, apparently.

[TexasBushwhacker]

31. Regarding healthcare

That is one of the big reasons we need to go single payer. Everyone is covered and everyone (employees and employers) pays for it. None of this full time vs part time bullshit either. We also need to raise the minimum wage because of people like your brother.

[DonCoquixote]

28. of course the fool ignores

That sooner or later, the Billionaires will eat the Millionaires. A lot of people are going to find this out when Trump tax plan bites into THEM.

[smirkymonkey]

15. Bring back the guillotines!

[TexasBushwhacker]

17. Don't forget the rotisseries, knives and forks n/t

[Steven Maurer]

18. Soros, Gates, Buffet, and many others might dispute this

There are plenty of billionaire liberals. And they're not the backbone of the right wing at all. Rather, it's the tin-pot dictators running their own little empire of two McDonalds they own in the middle of bumfuck Kansas that the the problem. That and the pharisaic "Christians" who love sex-predators who try to cram their idea of religion down the throats of others.

[Honeycombe8]

20. Their "more" comes from somewhere.

They would have others believe THEY generate the "more" from pure air, because they are so productive and wonderful! But the "more" comes from the pot of American money the country has. It doesn't come from air. The pot comes from ALL contributions by the citizens. Even the poor ones contribute to the pot. We all pay taxes. Property taxes (directly or thru rentals), sales taxes, car taxes, gasoline taxes, taxes on our utilities, etc.

[BigmanPigman]

21. There is some saying that says,

"pull up the ladder once you get to the top" or something to that effect. I think that was the first sentence that Ryan was able to read as a 5 year old. He liked it and made it his motto for life.

[ThoughtCriminal]

22. Cats must also fail

[Poiuyt]

26. Hilarious!

[trixie2]

23. Your title is the most concise definition I have ever seen

It's all right there in a single sentence.

[dalton99a]

24. The French had a nifty mechanical device to solve this problem

[burrowowl]

36. Too swift, long cures are better

Like buried up to the neck in sand and dumping fire on the head.

[Farmer-Rick]

25. But that is exactly how capitalism is suppose to work

The more you get the more you can get. The less you have the less you can get. Capitalism is designed to make those with capital more and more and more....

You can try to regulate it like FDR did. But notice that America is right back to where we were in the 1st RepubliCON Great Depression when it comes to wealth distribution. We crashed back then and we are going to crash again. It's a feature of capitalism.

The only way out is a new type of economy.

It's more than taking what little someone else has. It's about using your capital to its fullest extent. Yeah, it means the poor suffer and suffer but they had the bad luck to be born without capital. It's a feudal system in many ways. But it's what America signed up for when they chose to save capitalism from itself in 1933.

[ClarendonDem]

29. I'm perfectly ok with captalism

We don't need a new type of economy, and certainly not the disaster other countries like Russia and Venezuela tried.

[Farmer-Rick]

39. Well as long as you understand capitalism is designed to concentrate wealth

In a handful of already rich people. IF you are ok with periodic economic crashes that consolidate wealth more and more. If you are ok with a government corrupted by those wealthy few to run at their bidding. If you are fine with an ocean of poor people who barely make enough to eat....then you should be very happy with capitalism right now.

So what's there to complain about? Capitalism is functioning as it should.

[TexasBushwhacker]

34. The problem is that we aren't doing what's needed to save capitalism

BEFORE everything crashes.

[Farmer-Rick]

40. Why save it?

We could start something new.

Surely every economic system imaginable has Not been tried. I find it hard to believe we can't find a better system.

[TexasBushwhacker]

43. Why save it? Because we are the biggest, most powerful nation on the planet

and you aren't going to be able to come up with something new and different on such a broad scale. Our size works against us in that way. We're starting to see some experiments with Universal Basic Income and it will be interesting to see how those work out.

[Farmer-Rick]

44. Feudalism had some big and powerful countries using it too, still has

But true unadulterated feudalism has largely disappeared. We haven't heard of people not being allowed to leave the farms or villages or occupations they were born into without the permission of the Lord. Lack of liberty for the serfs was a common feature of feudalism. The few kings and queens remaining are all using some form of capitalism in their economies. In fact they prefer it. It relieves them of responsibility to the serfs...not that kings or Lords were all that responsible to the poorest class of people. Religion kind of gave the powerful an out on responsibility as it does with the uber rich today.

This is what the oligarchs and kleptocrats are really afraid of. People wanting to do away with the economic system that makes them so rich and powerful. They are wedded to capitalism like a king to feudalism.

But you got to start somewhere and smaller countries are more socially flexible. So it's quite likely it starts with the little ones, or along the fringes, then it moves into the bigger, older, more calcified countries and regions. I suspect if the economic system of the US changes, I wont be alive to see it.

Sorry, I got off on a tangent. I think I will drop in on the economic forum.

[ffr]

27. Tax the poor and middle class and redistribute the wealthy to the few.

Reverse Robin Hood.

[ClarendonDem]

30. Who is "overly wealthy"

Serious question. At what point does one have too much money? Sure, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are "overly wealthy." But is the person who makes $150k a year in Nebraska, or $500k a year in NY City, overly wealthy?

[TexasBushwhacker]

33. I would say anyone who makes more than 10 times the median wage

in a specific area. It would also depend on accumulated wealth. Is someone who makes $500 K a year in Manhattan overly wealthy? If they have no debt, I would say yes. But if they still have a mortgage and/or a couple of kids in college, then I would say no. Given the taxes in NYC and the state of NY, I would still say they are wealthy, but not overly so.

[logosoco]

32. You are spot on!

You would fit right in with the conversations I have almost daily with my husband and grown kids, or my sister and brother in law when we get together!

This is a very good sign for me, to read someone else saying the same thing because I know we are not alone. It is just taking so dang long for others to see this!

It seems to me, even in the days when my sister and I watched Saturday morning cartoons (and you had to catch them then or wait a whole week!), when it was about some bad guy(s) who wanted all the power, we figured out if just one faction has all the power, isn't it really useless?

We have the people, but so many of them just haven't figured it out yet. But it sure is nice hearing from those who can see (and speak about it so well!).

[pansypoo53219]

35. now they want ALL the pie & we might get a whiff.

[Hamlette]

37. there are many people who do not fit your mold. How do you explain that?

[byronius]

38. The Medicis.

The Medici family of Florence invented merchant banking in the early 1400's. Over generations they amassed incredible wealth and power, supplied three popes, two regent queens, and built a slew of monuments and public buildings, churches and almshouses. They gave to the poor, and supplied towns with public works for free.

To this family, hoarding was an absolute obsession that did not square well with their assumed mantle of deep religiousity. Remember that back then religion had far more power than it does now, and the Medicis wielded it without conscience in the name of business.

But there was a strain of deep guilt that ran through the family. The bible clearly says a rich man cannot enter heaven, and that the rich must give away everything to the poor or face damnation. So, on its face, their holy mantle was false, and this falseness created a repressed guilt powered by their own faith that caused them to seek relief in odd ways.

Their popes were generally awful, concerned only with power and greed, murderous, vicious, hated. The family routinely assassinated rivals, fomented wars for profit, and forced their losses on the poor and middle class. All of their public buildings and churches were decorated in marble with busts of their faces that declared solemnly how incredibly noble and holy they were. Almost as if to lobby god himself for a pardon from their sin.

There are many, many good-hearted people with serious hoarding addictions. Some of them don't bury the guilt or seek to greenwash their problem, but try in their own way to truly serve. It's not a solution to their obsession, but it's good mitigation. I honor any attempt on their part. I like Warren Buffet.

But many, many others are on the Medici side of things. And it's gone so far that they've bought themselves a Citizens United oligarchy. And it's rotting to the core.

Every citizen of this country must be FOCUSED ON, that is the duty of government, to nourish, to strengthen each stitch. Until every single citizen has enough food, shelter, education, security, and opportunity to thrive, Hoarding is an obscene and arrogant practice that should be condemned and penalized. Period.

I do like Elon Musk most of all. Rich, but always on the verge of bankruptcy because he's always doing new things to help push the human race higher. What a smart guy. I don't think he cares if he's rich or not, he's just a Shining Soul. Capitalism or no, that dude will always just glow. Someone raised that boy right.

[L. Coyote]

41. It is about pubnishing the people who don't vote for them.