Posted on 12/28/2013 9:14:07 AM PST by Baynative
This pretty much speaks for itself. At 1:05, I get a rude awakening. At 1:41, he starts talking about you. At 2:24, he says a "bad" word. At 3:50, he kind of breaks my brain. At 4:50, he lets you know how broke you really are. At 5:20, he rubs it in. And at 5:50, he points out that reality isn't close to what we think it is.
(Excerpt) Read more at upworthy.com ...
We've all heard "it takes money to make money" and "work smarter, not harder". But is there anything that will ever change this condition?
Government's solution is to tax it away from the rich. But, I oppose that.
I'd like to hear what others think about this.
His position was that those who acquire wealth have different tools, educations and desires than most other folks.
Looking at the trillions we have spent in the war on poverty with no apparent return or improvement for the very poor, I'd say that's correct.
People who spend every cent they can get their hands on will never have "wealth," no matter how much "redistributing" you do.
And "wealth" is not the same thing as disposable income for entertainment and toys. "Wealth" is investment.
The perfect example is NBA players who have all kinds of disposable income for hoes and bling while they are playing, and nothing five years after they retire.
You can't fix stupid, no matter how much of the non-stupids' money you steal and redistribute.
The unasked question is, “How much wealth is distributed by the top 2% through dividends, salaries, purchases and so forth?”
A corrolary question is, “How many of the wealthy have become rich in the last 20 years?”
Wealth is not static. It does not rest. It is a commodity and as such is constantly changing hands. The graph is a snapshot, nothing more.
There’s lots of poor who’ve changed their lives for the better by hard work. The government can’t do it for them.
Just an ad for socialism lite.
The choice is still either to whine about what others have, be content with what we have, or do something to acquire more.
More not widely known info:
“General Facts About The New Elite
For every 100 new elite members in the United States:
The average age is 47 years old
90 to 95 made the money themselves; only 5 to 10 inherited it
90 are college graduates; 10 are not
For those who are college graduates, 3 out of 4 did not attend an Ivy League school
8 are Asian (defined including those from Indian subcontinent); nearly 3x the rate found in the population
96 do not own a yacht; 4 do
50 haven’t furnished their homes in any way that would reflect their economic status
Stealth Wealth
The most shocking statistic about the new elite in the United States? For every 100:
80 practice “stealth wealth” so friends, family, and neighbors don’t know they are members of the new elite.
20 are known to be rich by family and friends”
By ‘the new elite’, he means the sample of well-off guys with an average financial net worth of $5 million that he studied. The results might be different if you studied guys with an average of $100 million.
People who spend every cent they can get their hands on will never have "wealth," no matter how much "redistributing" you do.
And "wealth" is not the same thing as disposable income for entertainment and toys. "Wealth" is investment.
This was the point I was going to make.
If you take the so-called logic of some on the left that advocate and profess that "Profit" is somehow wrong or evil, and ask them if "Individuals" should be "allowed to SAVE" money, their position changes.
Corporate profits are the same as individual savings.
Interesting. Before I go further I would like the political/philosophical breakdown of that top 1%, about 3,150,000 people, and maybe there are ultra rich among the ultra rich, a top 0.1% maybe, 315,000 people who would be even more interesting to look at.
How is poverty really defined? How many "poor" people have cars, dishwashers, cell phones, cable, etc.? We spend over $1 trillion a year redistributing wealth in this country.
And how does it help the wealth gap to bring in 1.2 million legal immigrants a year, most of whom are poor and uneducated? They help depress wages and increase the wealth gap.
I have no problem with “reality” as depicted in the video. Yea, I know - I’m supposed to be outraged at the “inequity” but inequity IS reality. Radical Egalitarianism is the quest of the left and IT is what stands in stark contrast to reality.
Any (and every) proposal I’ve ever seen that tries to address income inequity involves redistribution of wealth - the state taking from one in order to enrich others. It doesn’t matter to me that I represent one of the little blips in that video narrative - in principle I am opposed to stealing from another regardless of the so-called nobility of motive.
If you’ve ever argued with a leftist you’ve no doubt noticed that they always point out the exception in order to disprove the rule. If I say that the best way to address income disparity is to create a climate conducive to poor folks making more money they will reply that there are some who can’t mare more money no matter what. If I say “the world needs ditch-diggers” they respond with, “What if they’re in a wheelchair?” The only viable choice for them is to use the power of the state to seize wealth from some in order to give to others. Anything else is “too hard” (said in my best Bart Simpson voice).
The attorney for the athlete then let on that his client had spent every last cent he had made for the two or three years he had been playing. The atty. also explained that's the case for many pro athletes who come into big money at an early age. They spend every last cent in a very short time and save little or nothing. No thought for the future at all.
I agree. I watched some of the report and thought I’d be sick so I shut it down.
Why is ANYONE concerned over what someone else has? If the money was earned or even inherited and no laws were broken, I say good for the rich.
Whiners who covet the wealth of others and believe it is the cause of their own lack of money are sad, pathetic and imo contemptable people.
Wealth can be a hoard of cash in the basement. How does that hurt anyone? Even if it's an enormous amount of money withdrawn from circulation it will just be replaced by the FED.
Maybe it is in real estate where the rich guy gave his cash to someone else.
Maybe he owns Microsoft, providing millions of jobs worldwide.
Maybe he trades his cash for shares in businesses providing the necessary financing for research, factories, or advertising to allow companies to grow and hire people.
Generally, the only way you will ever know a person is wealthy is if he trades his cash with others in ways that are visible. And it would appear that to anti capitalists, this display of wealth is anathema
Was far as politicians are concerned, IMHO, there is a huge opportunity for the Tea Party to use this to gain more ground.
First, Democrats have absolutely no interest in “Helping the Poor or expanding the Middle Class”.
They get their money from the guilty rich and their votes from struggling poor and lower middle class by exploiting this divergence of wealth.
They tell the poor that they are going to fix it and help them, but if they did in fact “fix it” they would lose voters.
I read years ago that there are more mutual funds on the stock exchanges than actual companies on the exchanges. So too many investors are chasing too few investments.
It’s always bothered me that corporations use surplus cash to keep buying more companies, making themselves bigger & bigger, rather than simply returning the earnings to stock holders. The only reason I’ve heard for that is the tax laws incentivize that behavior.
If gov’t wanted to ‘equalize’ incomes, they might consider tax laws that discourage mega-corporations & even mega-hedge funds. No more ‘too big to fail’ companies. But human beings being human, they’d probably screw that up, too.
Nope. Profits are just the amount of income left after expenses. Thus it equates more closely to an individual's income after fixed expenses than to his savings.
As with an individual, a corporation can choose to spend its profit in a way that equates to saving or investment, or it can choose to spend it in ways that equate to consumption, sometimes conspicuous consumption.
This is drastically distorted by tax laws, which encourages spending on non-essentials such as lavish expense accounts and entertainment, because the expense is classified as such and therefore not taxed.
As a friend puts it: it’s not what you make, it’s what you spend.
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