Posted on 12/17/2002 12:02:32 AM PST by JohnHuang2
There's a dark little corner of the Internet where a gruesome assortment of leftists and socialists gather to post what passes for their "thoughts" on political issues. The site is called DemocraticUnderground.com, and it's certainly worth a quick stop the next time you go cruising. Several of my listeners keep a constant watch on this site and alert me to particularly interesting discussion threads.
I catch a lot of flak for my constant references to the Democratic Party as the Democratic Socialist Party. Maybe I can quell some of the dissension by telling you some of the postings I have read on Democratic Underground recently.
Last Thursday, a comment appeared with the title, "It's official, I'm a socialist at heart." This writer had visited a neighborhood of "multi-million dollars homes" that for the most part have only "two people (rich, old white couples) living in them." She wrote, "I really cannot stand rich, selfish people. I do believe in redistribution of wealth. Rich people do not get that way by themselves, they do it on the backs of others." Other Democratic Underground members chimed in with their responses. Among them:
That, my friends, is scary stuff, but it's nothing I haven't heard in 33 years of hosting talk-radio shows. There is burning envy – an envy that borders on outright hatred of the rich in this country. This envy is intense enough to consume the hearts and minds of many who call themselves "Democrats."
Where does this hatred come from? Why is it so important to so many people to believe that the evil rich got their money through anything but hard work?
To understand this, you need to imagine yourself struggling to make ends meet. You're renting an apartment and driving every day to a dead-end job that 's going nowhere. You work your 40-hour week, and have nothing to show for it but rent receipts and credit card bills. You hear about all of these people getting sick on cruise ships, and grouse that you don't have enough money to even get on the ship, let alone throw up on the poop deck.
So, just why aren't you rich? Why don't you have a fancy car? Why aren't you tossing your lunch on Caribbean cruises? Why do you make rent payments instead of mortgage payments?
The last thing you want to do is to admit that this all may be your fault. Your poverty couldn't possibly have anything to do with your decision to forego college for that great job at the mall. You're also convinced that your decision to hang out with your friends at night instead of getting some more education at the local community college was the right one. Hey! You work hard and deserve your fun, right?
And just why should you have to work more than 40 hours a week? That's what you're supposed to work, right? Forty hours, no more. After all, you're not a slave, are you? What about your huge car payments? Sure, you could be putting that money into an investment account, but you need that fancy car, right? And the rims? Hey! A guy's gotta be cool, you know what I'm saying?
So ? those rich people? Did they get that way doing the things you won't do? Working the 60-hour week, continuing with their education, buying cheap cars with ordinary wheels and investing the rest? Do they have the nice homes and the fancy cars because they make good choices and aren't afraid of taking a risk now and then?
No way! If a person could really get rich that way you would have done it already, right? No, that's now how they got their money. These people are rich because they exploited people. They got their money by climbing on the backs of working people like you! They were lucky! They inherited it! They didn't earn it. If it could be earned, you would have done it, right?
You have to protect yourself here, don't you? If you accept that the vast majority of those you call "rich" got there through hard work, then don't you have to ask yourself why you're not one of them? It's just so much easier to cast them as callous, selfish monsters and evil exploiters of the working class while preserving the mantle of goodness and righteousness for yourself. Hey, you may be poor, but at least you're a nice person, right?
Bingo. As Ayn Rand once said "there are two groups of people in this country who want socialism: the very poor and the very rich. The first group wants socialism because they want someone to tell them how to live their lives...the second group wants socialism because they want to tell everyone else how to live their lives"
The middle class is where the true believers in freedom can be found.
Tsk, tsk, tsk ... get over yourself , babycakes. :-)
Thank you for your intelligent response ... NOT!
So, let's see: either my statement was the result of being disinherited, OR I should be disinherited for speaking the truth. Heads you win, tails I lose. In its intellectual incompetence and dishonesty, your brand of flipflopping, ad hominem argument is identical to that employed by multiculturalists, who say that anyone who disagrees with them, must be a "racist."
If someone wants to make a lot of money and is willing to work long hours, then they had best figure out what kinds of jobs pay big checks.
Alright, so let everyone get a business or finance degree, and you'll have millions of people ... working 60-80 degrees and not making spit, becuase there are only a very limited number of high-paying jobs. And you'll have toll collectors with business degrees, and English teachers with business degrees, and cops with finance degrees ...
Close enough -- college instructor.
Ludwig von Mises makes the argument that estate taxes that steal the fruits of each generation as it passes are unnecessary to provide a "level playing field" that the socialists/egalitarians promote as a virtue. Each generation is responsible for itself. A good entrepreneur will succeed without concern for the starting point. A well capitalized starting point is an initial advantage, but it is one that will be squandered by an incapable individual.
von Mises "The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality" is an interesting and fairly quick read. It exposes a wide range of anticapitalists in academia, entertainment and government organizations. Rand's "Philosopy, Who Need It" is a good general introduction to the range of philosophical positions. Grinding through "Atlas Shrugged" is a worthwhile endeavor, but you need to be prepared to enagage a large cast of characters and build a good understanding of what motivates each one to derive the value that Rand intended.
I loved teaching at the local college. I taught an embedded microprocessor class. Over 3 1/2 years, 91% of my students were hired by DEC and IBM. The class was funded by the Regional Occupational Program. ROP students took the class as Electronics 91. Students matriculating for an AS in electronics took the class as Electronics 51. The job only paid $21/hr and it was a part time position. Monday and Wednesday night from 6:30 PM to 10:30 PM. I had no idea that ROP was keeping stats on the class until I tendered my resignation. I had purchased a home 30 miles north and the commute 45 miles one-way through heavy traffic made on time arrival for the start of class a tenuous situation.
I can't work for the level of pay right now with two sons in college and one finishing high school. Once they are off the nest, I may well return to teaching. My current job pulls me out of town for 2 to 3 week periods at customer sites. That kind of interruption is incompatible with making a commitment to be in the classroom.
Indeed. I was taking 16 units of course work and working 43 hours a week at Radio Shack to cover my bills. Flu season hit and I was "blessed" with a severe case. It progressed into bacterial pneumonia with a fever of 103 degrees for 3 1/2 weeks. It was the first of 7 cases of pneumonia that finally stopped when pneumonia vaccines were offered.
So? It's her money to give and is no one else's. And when she gave it to your cousin, it became rightfully his and no one elses'. He can waste it if he pleases, or waste it out of stupidity- whatever he chooses to do with it, so long as he doesn't stuff it in a mason jar and bury it in the back yard, is going to benefit others. If he wastes it on fancy cars, fancy car makers benefit... from the lowest guy on the payroll to the stockholders of the auto company. And every time he buys gas or gets repairs, people make money of of him, much more than would happen with artificially distributed wealth.
My most intimate knowledge of do-nothing millionaires comes from my father, who is a multimillionaire who has rarely worked, having been handed all his millions.
Ohboy, personal anecdotes... my uncle got obscenely rich in the midst of the Great depression ... he began with a few dollars and he invested it in a few goats down in the Ozarks. The goats did what goats do and grew and produced more goats. My Uncle was soon nicknamed Billy- which he prefered to his other name given him by some cruel parents, which was embarassingly feminine. By selling goats in Missouri, grazing them in waste places and so forth, he was able to scrounge up enough money to buy a bit of land, raise more animals, and buy more land. He then would sell some land at a profit, keep other acreage for raising animals, and used the money to buy better land and to use as investments in other people's businesses. He ended up owning land and businesses in every single state but Alaska, a multimillionaire who had never taken a single government subsidy. But he always drove an old red pickup truck and lived like his Ozark neighbors in a simple house, and mostly ate cornbread, beans and bluegill caught nearby rather than foi gras and imported cheeses. No one could tell he was rich. In fact, sometimes it was hard to tell if he was even breathing, since he seldom moved. We were convinced by Aunt had had him stuffed, but we were happy he let us play in his barn, swinging from ropes into the hay. The only thing he ever said was 'watch out fer those copperheads.' It never occured to us to worry about how he spent his money. He gave some things away to others- once he even gave a way a house, and often he'd buy cars for people so they could get to work. But all we ever got from him was the time in the barn and ice tea & bean soup when we visited; it was more than we wanted, and more than anyone deserved.
I had another uncle who turned down Sam Walton's offer to go into joint business; my uncle chose instead to keep with his small mom & pop store in the country. He did OK, but not as OK as Sam Walton! But he doesn't concern himself with where Sam Walton spent his money or how hard Sam Walton worked for it.
And I had another uncle who raised watermelons, but that ol Arkansas bum always had 'crop damage' which he turned to the US Government to remedy. He didn't do so well, in spite of the big step up from Uncle Sam. And he wasn't much use to others either- if left to his own devices instead of being supported by government, he probably would have been forced to sell his land and get into something more suitable for him, and someone else with more smarts could have used that land to do something really good.
The only people we should scorn are those who have used the government as their Robin Hood. Unless your dad's put all of his money in mason jars, he does more for others every time he buys something than you ever will by whining, or anyone ever will by using the government to steal and redistribute wealth to the lazy and dependent. That he doesn't have to lift a finger to benefit others may be irritating, but it remains a fact that spending one's money at will is the best form of wealth redistribution there is, and is certainly the fairest. And even if he stores money in mason jars, it doesn't hurt anyone if he does.
If he is a lazy idiot, he will spend himself into poverty, but others who aren't lazy or stupid will profit from his wastefulness and stupidity, while all of his whiny relatives do nothing but complain in jealousy- proving that stupidity is genetic.
And if he isn't stupid and lazy, he will remain wealthy, perhaps even become wealthier through wise investments, and so enjoy his rightful property. If the government doestn't steal it, he will pass it on to others when he dies. No matter what he does with his millions, it is his right to do it.
He talks like you and this Boortz idiot, too.
Nothing is more idiotic than people calling millionaires idiotic out of jealousy while they waste their valuable time posting on internet forums, time which even if spent working at McDonalds down the block here will earn them 9 bucks an hour. If we decide to spend it on the net because we think we've worked hard enough all day and want to relax this way, it may be worth it to us. But it's silly to complain because we chose to post on the net while others chose to work an extra job. The only person we have to blame for not earning that extra income in the evenings is ourselves. It sure isn't your millionaire dad or Boortz, and neither one of them are preventing us from working extra hours, preventing us from risking our savings in investments or business, taking food from our kids' mouths or stealing from us, so why do we care about what they do with their money?
BTW, your crystal ball is craked, your intuative assumptions about others ( me ) are incorrect, and methinks that you're a pot , calling ...
There are many jobs / careers / professions , which don't pay much, entail long hours, call for advanced degrees, and some people do them, because they LOVE what they do. Not everyone has the intelligence, work ethic, or even luck, to be able to be in the upper brackets. There are some, making or inheritting vast sums, who can't or refuse to handle that money well. That's their problem. There are others, who can only whine and whinge about other peoples's wealth.
Frankly, you and your class warfare stance, means that you are NO Conservative at all and therefore, you're on the wrong forum. You've condemned your father, your cousin, and blindly assumed that EVERY wealthy person is so sort of lazy scum, who doesn't " deserve " what he or she has. Guess what ? IT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS AND EVERY WEALTHY PERSON ISN'T A CARBON COPY OF YOUR RELATIVES !
And this is not a perfect world never will be. Capitalism is the only system that gives true incentive. The rewards of socialism is power over others and few can have power so the rest share the misery.
I remember bygone days when loose talk trashed foreigners, the opposite sex, the other race and some other religions. Thats all unspeakable now so there is a vacuum that is being filled with hate for the rich. Once the rich become disenfranchized keeping out of the Gulags will become the new incentive.
Now, stop whinging about your own decissions.
Socialism combines an altruistic morality enforced by a centralized authority and enforces collectivism on the "have nots" who are not in power. There is no right to control one's person or property...the centralized authority owns and controls all of it. The bloody socialists (Stalin and Mao for example) permitted no exception from their iron-fisted control. Failure to comply resulted in execution. They each killed over 20 million people as they sought to force their brand of socialism over their respective countries. By definition an incentive rewards an individual for an accompishment. There can be no rewards when property ownership is restricted to the central authority. In the absence of rewards, there is no compelling reason to work more than is necessary to simply exist another day.
The Soviet Union figured out that a "pure" socialist approach could not work. They rewarded elite athletes and scientists with better homes, better food and other amenities. The Stalinist regime of North Korea keeps the military loyal by feeding them well while the balance of the country starves.
Zimbabwe is a current example of the rapid decay of a society under authoritarian socialist rule. The private property of the white farmers has been confiscated and handed to the cronies of the dictator Robert Mugabe. The whites comprised less than 1% of the population, yet their very specialized and productive farming techniques fed the nearly 13 million people of Zimbabwe and left enough to export. Mugabe has turned that specialized farming system on its ear. Small plots of land are doled out to his "war veterans". They do not own it and are on notice that failure to be productive will result in confiscation of the property. Further, they are told that they will be "rotated" to another property at some point in the near future whether they are successful or not. There is no incentive to improve the land and farm productively. The consequence is productivity that is so poor that it is below the level of subsistence farming. A nation will starve because the efficient farms that once provided food stand fallow.
You're mistaken. It wasn't his rightful property; it was the property of him and his wife and toddlers.
If the government doestn't steal it, he will pass it on to others when he dies. No matter what he does with his millions, it is his right to do it.
No; see above.
Nothing is more idiotic than people calling millionaires idiotic out of jealousy.
You mean "envy." "Envy" only applies to one's feelings towards people who have no obligations to him. If I see a stranger with a big car, I don't feel envy, or anything else, unless the car happens to be a Daimler, in which case I'll usually respect his sense of quality (unless it's a 190), or a BMW, in which case I'll merely find him pretentious. (I used to build Daimlers.) Whether I have any feelings towards the owner beyond the above depends on whether we interact, and how his manners are. In any event, that car owner's only obligation to me is to follow the traffic laws (i.e., not hit me). If he hits me, I will be very angry at him. But I guess that's just my "envy" talking again, eh?
If you understood envy, you'd know that applying it to my relations with my father is inappropriate, and simply a projection of your political ideology onto someone else's family relations. For me to presume that a man has obligations to his family does not involve projecting a political ideology onto family relations. It's a matter of the most basic ethics.
Ideologues are are always tone-deaf, when it comes to ethics, and always dishonest in their representations of reality. Their respective party lines have no room for either.
One nice thing about Jack Kennedy, was that although he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he didn't lie about opportunity. He had the decency to observe that, "Life is unfair." Unlike you and your ideologue buddies, conservatives also used to be honest about such realities.
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