Posted on 12/13/2023 8:42:50 AM PST by SeekAndFind
There’s apparently no end to how far the mainstream operatives will go in their quest to destroy the virtues of the West, and a USA Today article published last week is a prime example.
The man behind the piece, Daniel de Visé, essentially implies that anyone not born into tremendous wealth doesn’t have a chance at success, and those who are rich only got that way by mere circumstance and birthright, overtly implying that capitalism has caused this problem and that, we must work harder for equality.
There are huge problems with de Visé’s article, but I will do my best to tackle a few of them to explain how the premise is entirely wrong. (The italicized blurbs are excerpted from the item.)
Over the years, the rich have grown steadily richer. The top 1% caught and passed the middle class in collective wealth in late 2020, Fed data shows.
This article covers the years 1979 through 2021; the problem with this statement is that the top 1% of people in 2021 are not the same as the people in the top 1% in 1979. Capitalism has always allowed people to move up the economic ladder. The richest 1% of people are always getting richer in a growing economy.
And who are the top 1%? The category includes flashy billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, of course. But many 1%-ers are low-profile multimillionaires, living quietly among us.
This is a true statement but since Bezos and Musk weren’t very rich twenty years ago it shows how capitalism, invention, and creativity allows people to create wealth regardless of circumstances.
This is a true statement but since Bezos and Musk weren’t very rich over twenty years ago
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
sure, because all countries should want to be like Africa
Well, okay, let’s start with Pelosi with her impeccable stock trades and her now net worth of well over $100 million.
Owning a private business: The upper 1% owns nearly half of all private-company wealth today, up from about 30% in 1990, the Fed reports.
Again, these are not the same people as the ones in 1990, these are new “one-percenters” whose ideas, work ethic, or savvy entrepreneurialism facilitated their move up the ladder. People move up and down the spectrum—thank goodness.
Stocks and home prices soared in the low-interest years that followed the onset of the Great Recession in 2008.
‘People who owned homes, who owned stocks, who owned retirement accounts, they did very well,’ Princeton’s Zidar said. ‘And a lot of people don’t own homes, and a lot of people don’t own stocks, so they missed out on that opportunity.’
Would de Visé prefer the prices of real estate and stocks never climbed, or declined in value? Would that achieve more equality?
Between 1979 and 2021, the wages of Americans in the top 1% grew by 206%, after adjusting for inflation, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute. In the same years, wages for the bottom 90% grew by only 29%.
Again, this is a different group of people. Most of us people in the middle or upper middle class started in the bottom quintile.
The author made $4 an hour coming out of college in 1974, had $10 in the bank, no car, no home, and no stocks along with a $2,000 student loan, which he paid off (not the government). He had a negative net worth. He was poor. We can assume most people in his boat moved up the economic ladder pretty well if they worked over 45 years straight as he did. Thank goodness for capitalism and opportunities, unlike socialism and communism which allow little or no economic mobility.
The stagnation of wages and wealth among middle-class Americans, experts say, feeds a growing sense of economic ennui. Middle-class Americans have reason to fear for their economic future.
They sure do if the government keeps seeking to control everything we do and buy!
‘When people feel like they don’t have a chance, or perhaps even more dangerously, when they feel like their kids don’t have a chance . . . that inequality of opportunity is what really gets people upset,’ said John Friedman, chair of the economics department at Brown University.
I’ll continue not buying any Snoop Dogg.
Socialism basically sees economics as a Zero Sum game. If Elon Musk is rich, it’s only because he stole the money. He couldn’t have produced wealth. No one does that. Rich people just steal from poor people and make themselves richer. Since all rich people are thieves, this justifies government intervention and the redistribution of wealth so that stupid, lazy people can have exactly as much money as hard-working wealth producers.
I think we are at a point in society where friction between regular people and the ultra rich is fostering a genuine hate. And it’s not unjustified. The Covid response was a massive transfer of wealth upwards in society. There is a reason to worry about the gap between rich and poor when social mobility is restricted.
Isn't that what Americans do when they grow up?
The entire concept of Economic Equity is bad. If everyone is economically equal regardless of ability and contribution to society, there is no incentive to improve oneself. You are bound the average and there is no reason to make an effort to become more productive. This is why history is strewn with failed attempts at Socialism.
A classic Marxist tactic.
collectivists want the state to be primary
which ism they use is moot
We must be terrible and greedy.
To those who complain about the wealthy, like Bezos, forget that he started from an average beginning. It is the wealthy who create jobs so these Snowflakes don’t have to continue to live in their parents basement. How many of you were hired by a poor person?
So, until these complainers feed, house, and clothe 256,000 people who work for Amazon, sit down and STFU.
I’ll go out on a limb and say that most people don’t hate or have animosity toward the rich.
But they for damned sure have hate and animosity, a lot of it and it’s justified, over the games being rigged and the blatantly unlevel playing field.
I’m not much of a fan but Stossell did a decent piece on it..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPBNl7WGFmI
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gamestop-robinhood-trading-freeze-congress-hearings/ She for damned sure is one of the dumber ones in the House, but she isn’t wrong here.....”Fully agree,” tweeted Senator Ted Cruz, one of the most conservative Senators, in response to a tweet from Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist who scolded Robinhood for deciding to “block retail investors from purchasing stock while hedge funds are freely able to trade the stock as they see fit.”
Hell, when VISA went public I had some money to play with. I was told that all of that stock ONLY goes to the big funds and that an investor like myself can’t buy it. Wonder how Pelosi and her husband were able to buy it? /sarc...ha ha ha
If any watch the Shawn Ryan show, he does a good interview with Robby Starbuck. Starbuck outlines how Amazon should be under investigation, as well.
Yeah kinda. But for the billionaire class, covid lockdowns were a boon. Their collective wealth utterly exploded as something like 30% of small businesses went under.
Want to buy a tool, or something? You couldn’t go to the local store. But you could order from Amazon or go to Walmart or Lowes.
And every single modern billionaire has been created, nurtured and fed on massive amounts of Federal money and preferential legal treatment compared to small businesses.
Call it what you will, fascism, corporatism, mixed economy, welfare capitalism, crony capitalism etc.
The bottom line is that there is a vicious war on against the middle class.
The apologetics do not change that.
She was born into the mob. Had connections to the White House when she was in high school.
Hook a generator up to that spin machine and it would power 28,000 homes.
The environment that allowed Bezos to succeed no longer exists.
When they start going after sports and movie stars (especially that clown Robert DiNiro,) let me know.
This.
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