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The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats
Politico Magazine ^ | The July/August 2014 Issue | Nick Hanauer

Posted on 06/26/2014 10:44:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

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1 posted on 06/26/2014 10:44:53 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Give smart guys like me power instead of money and watch how we make the inequalities in life disappear. Variations on this theme have been heard since time immemorial. And when you do what the power-seekers want, things never work the way you want them to.
2 posted on 06/26/2014 10:53:54 PM PDT by vbmoneyspender
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Well, let’s see. The mess in Mississippi is due to powerful 1%ers who want to keep their bought politicians, and the rest of us who voted differently. Who does he support? Does he support a representative republic? Does he, like Suckerberg, want to flood these 99% of the workers with competitors who will accept cheaper wages?


3 posted on 06/26/2014 10:57:12 PM PDT by Vince Ferrer
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I doubt that opportunity that comes from a private sector that grows faster than the government is part of his plan.


4 posted on 06/26/2014 10:57:48 PM PDT by Moonman62 (The US has become a government with a country, rather than a country with a government.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Git' her done!..b/c, they'll hammer us first!

5 posted on 06/26/2014 11:03:30 PM PDT by skinkinthegrass (The end move in politics is always to pick up a weapon...0'Jihadist/"Rustler" Reid? d8-)
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To: Vince Ferrer

Democrats are the Neo-Fuedalists

Republicans RINOs are the Classical Feudalists

The Tea Party is the Anti-Fuedalist Faction


6 posted on 06/26/2014 11:10:21 PM PDT by GraceG (No, My Initials are not A.B.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
But the problem isn’t that we have inequality. Some inequality is intrinsic to any high-functioning capitalist economy. The problem is that inequality is at historically high levels and getting worse every day.

Wait, who's been president the last five years?

To the extent that "inequality" is a problem, high corporate tax rates and crony capitalism are to blame.

7 posted on 06/26/2014 11:12:02 PM PDT by denydenydeny (Admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt one has for others.-Tocqueville)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Mr. Hanauer is a venture capitalist, very successful, and he is rich by most measures (he’s the one that hillary complained about as being ‘truly well off’).

No gripes about his wealth or his stature.

While his essay is interesting, his conclusion is that the middle class will go away if current policies persist.

His solution? Government. The government must legislate solutions.

My question is why doesn’t the government get out of the way and let us go?

Mr. H has succumbed to his ego - he made it to his status, but no one else is smart enough to do the same. He thinks FedZilla has the answer. Of course, he can buy big enough chunks of FedZilla to satisfy his ego.

Hmmmm.


8 posted on 06/26/2014 11:16:56 PM PDT by KitJ (Shall not be infringed)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
For more insight into where Nick Hanauer is coming from see this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBx2Y5HhplI

9 posted on 06/26/2014 11:17:03 PM PDT by PoloSec ( Believe the Gospel: how that Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I would say the top 1% and virtually ALL global interests are funding our decline and supporting the Marxist regimes in power, here and wherever until collapse, and then reshaping the world as a petrie dish begins.

They should fund freedom and conservatives who work, produce and innovate.


10 posted on 06/26/2014 11:19:37 PM PDT by RitaOK ( VIVA CHRISTO REY / Public education is the farm team for more Marxists coming.)
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To: Vince Ferrer; All

I read a recent listing of the 10 most corrupt states, and Mississippi was number 1. So eliminating corruption is high on the list.


11 posted on 06/26/2014 11:21:53 PM PDT by gleeaikin
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Corporate welfare, fascism, govt corruption. None of the aforementioned trespasses reflect true capitalism of any magnitude.


12 posted on 06/26/2014 11:40:53 PM PDT by Gene Eric (Don't be a statist!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

He’s fairly intelligent and fairly articulate but his logic and inference are lacking. One can see in his mannerisms and speech patterns as reflecting his positions that he is steeped in laid back liberalism.

He’s had time to ponder things and learn a few choice terms and concepts.

But he can’t penetrate the veil to the truth. The truth is not in him.

He does identify basic relations and some correlations, but he doesn’t have the sophistication and experience to test his suppositions. He’s basically an amateur philosopher.

Many people with time to ponder can typically like him foresee where things are going, where they are trending. But still they are also often wrong or ineffective.


13 posted on 06/26/2014 11:42:27 PM PDT by Hostage (ARTICLE V)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The vast majority of people, and all progressives, fail to understand that an economy is first and foremost the product of a culture.

The creation of the great American middle class was the product of a great American culture — we were a people who held traditional values in high esteem and exhibited a high degree of individual initiative, hard work, sacrificing for the future, commitment to family and children, etc.

The reason our economy is trending in the direction of a Latin American-style economy of a small class of uber-wealthy and a great mass of poor people longing for socialism along with a relatively small middle class is because our culture is trending in the direction of a Latin American-style culture.

The progressives have caused an explosion in the percent of poor people in the country by massive importation of the Latin American peasantry and by the destruction of the traditional family, especially among African-Americans.

The constituency of the progressives is government employees and government dependents (broadly defined, including for example university faculty living off of bloated tuition subsidized directly or indirectly by government).

What the progressives do is to attack and loot the rest of society in order to reward its constituency of government employees and government dependents, which is why the middle class is weakened and shriveling.


14 posted on 06/26/2014 11:44:13 PM PDT by Meet the New Boss
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The other thing I meant to say is, socialist, government based solutions to “the inequality problem” will only make it far far worse.

The most unequal regimes of all are the socialist ones. Castro, Hugo Chavez, Mugabe, etc. , all ended up with billions in personal bank accounts.


15 posted on 06/27/2014 12:01:19 AM PDT by denydenydeny (Admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt one has for others.-Tocqueville)
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To: Meet the New Boss

Gee that’s well said.


16 posted on 06/27/2014 12:10:51 AM PDT by ArmstedFragg (Hoaxey Dopey Changey)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Free markets are the best way to raise the fortunes of all economic classes - poor, middle or rich. See Milton Freeman for a clear explanation.

Communists always seek to crush the middle class (bourgeoisie). They can better agitate the poor to revolt, and better control the weak and dependent while in charge. The last thing they want a is bunch of uppity people thinking that they make their own decisions.

Communism is really about gaining dictatorial power. The whole “narrative” that Marx created was a consciously designed BS story to get more people to go along with it. As Saul Alinsky put it, destroy the middle class while pretending to be for them. Their whole economic agenda is designed to bring the middle class to heel. Lenin said that taxation and inflation were the millstones between which he would grind the bourgeoisie. The modern left has added regulation to that toolbox.

The ways that they are implementing policies to bring down the middle class are too numerous to count - choking businesses, increasing energy costs, flooding poor immigrants into the labor market, driving up essential (or mandated) costs like health care and building pitfalls into the law to drain nest eggs and make the jump from dependence to becoming self-sufficient harder and higher.


17 posted on 06/27/2014 12:21:14 AM PDT by BeauBo
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

At the age of retirement, I have modest but “comfortable” financial resources, and I feel my die is cast with the super-rich, because my money, however paltry a sum it may represent, still sticks up far enough to be mown by the same scythe.


18 posted on 06/27/2014 12:27:02 AM PDT by dr_lew
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To: Meet the New Boss

Well said. The progressives’ jihad to create their “new man,” inevitably destroys foundational institutions. That which makes us Americans must be ripped out, root and branch. They are well on their way to achieving their goal.


19 posted on 06/27/2014 1:57:19 AM PDT by Jacquerie (The two branches of government, Republican and Democrat, will soon be one.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

To have a successful free market capitalist economy, it must be governed by morality.

If the sin of gluttony is not recognized, if there is no shame in excess, the results are as described in this article.

I know several incredibly well off people that live relatively modestly. They are happy people more concerned with their fellow man than with “more”.


20 posted on 06/27/2014 2:40:56 AM PDT by NY.SS-Bar9 (Those that vote for a living outnumber those that work for one.)
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