Why socialists hate rich people: Neal Boortz reveals underlying envy, laziness infecting America

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?

The fundamental confusion of liberals, rich or poor, is the confusion of big authority organizations, such as the Federal Government or Large Corporations, with parents.

They may resent, envy, hate and distrust "them", as a rebellious teenager might - which is what this article captures. Tney may want just want "them" to "take care of everything", which is the so called compassionate side of liberalism. They may cheer on anyone who seems to be standing up to "them", such as tyrants and terrorists.

Some liberals grow up and become responsible adults. Some die first. Meanwhile, they are fertile ground for greedy, manipulative power seekers, which are a disease of society that feeds on its immature members. The danger of rat poop is not so much the poop, but the disease that feeds on it. The danger of liberals is not so much the liberal, who is child-like, but the tyrants who feed on them, such as Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Saddam, Klintoon & Hitlary, bin Laden, many currently atop the DemoRat party, ...

Oh, so every college degree is the same ? Every job, and everyone who works 60 + hours a week should be paid the same ? You're sounding more and more like the DU crowd of Marxists.

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. Today, a mere Bachelor degree is about as useful as a high school diploma was in the 1950s. With Masters degrees becoming so common, soon, those too won't buy one into a high paying job. Of course this is ridicculous; however, you have to play by the rules of the times. Then again, there are still some jobs, that don't require advanced degrees, in order to make the big bucks. One just has to be very good at something that is highly renumerated for.

Why are you so sour ? You sound as though you can't stand your own father, nor much of the rest of the populace. Heck, you still sound Marxist; truth be told.You are annoyed by anyone, who disagrees with you ; even if they are correct and you are blindsided by bias and disgruntlement.

I've listened to Boortz fairly often while doing some contract work in Ohio this Summer and Fall. I'm generally in agreement with his comments. I only spent 2 1/2 years getting a BA in Molecular Biology from UCSD. Graduated at age 19 with the intent of pursuing medical school. The sudden skyrocketing cost of medical malpractice insurance made me reconsider. I spent a week reading through the FCC License manuals and trotted down to the office to sit for exams for 3rd class, 2nd class and 1st class radiotelephone licenses plus the RADAR endorsement.

I spent a year pursuing an MS in pathogenic bacteriology, but dropped it when a severe case of pneumonia almost killed me. I picked up a job at $4.75 an hour in 1977. College grad w/all course work completed for MS. Now, a member of Local 569 IBEW and tending to the full range of electronics on 180 tuna boats, 14 base stations and assorted tugs, freighters and pleasure boats for fill. A far cry from genetics engineering. This little "wallow" in a blue collar job made me a very good hardware engineer (analog and digital) with lots of field experience. I left that job at $9.10 and moved to a "white collar" toll equipment engineering job at $19,000 per year...4 years following graduation.

The engineering job bored me to tears. I took a second job teaching electronics at the local college. That paid for a private pilot's license and a room full of computer equipment that I built one board at a time. Year 2 at the phone company yielded a first good raise to $36K (1981). I convinced the company to move me to a software support job. Finally, I was in my element. I worked 13 hours per day, 7 days a week for 2 years. That netted a promotion to $42K per year. July to December 1985 was "slowed" to 10 hour days during treatment for cancer. The company continued to heap very high risk projects in my lap. I continued to outperform my co-workers (who worked no more than 8 hour days with at least two 20 minute coffee breaks and a full hour for lunch). After two high profile successes on projects with $20 million on the bottom line, I had another promotion to $60K/year. 10 years after graduation.

In 1992, I moved to a new company as my old company downsized 6,000 employees. The continued to throw high profile, high risk stuff my way. I performed. They increased my pay to $78K.

In 1996, an internet startup needed my expertise to engineer a very large e-commerce platform. It was an industry first. It included direct connections to the banking networks. Again, more high risk. Once again, high performance. A raise to $83K. BTW, I'm working 14 hour days, 7 days a week. They continued to plaster me with work and increased my pay to $103K in 1998. I ran into a problem at that point. Carpal tunnel syndrome. I couldn't open doors, lift glasses or shift my car. The money was damn good, but at that pace I was on the way to being a cripple for life. This is now 22 years after graduation.

I resumed work at the office that I had joined in 1992. My new task was to build a million user ISP for a company in Denver, CO AND be technical lead of a maintenance software program for the 747 fleet of a certain German airline. Successes on both accounts and months spent in Germany and Denver away from my family. Stock options were offered as compensation for the horrific hours and extended time out of the country.

In 2000, I decided to relocate my family from California to Idaho. Entirely at my expense. That sucked up $60K of my home equity from the San Diego house. I spent all but 69 days working in San Diego while my family was at home in Idaho. 250 hours per month (for 160 hours pay). That contract continued until June 2002 when I was laid off. At that point I cashed out 80% of my stock and paid off the home mortgage. During the 6 weeks I was "laid off", I used accrued vacation to keep the bills paid. By mid-August, I had succeeded in rounding up $6 million in new business for the company. My layoff was over.

Twenty six years after graduating from college, I'm making $116K per year and my house is paid off. I'm 46. I'm one of those guys that Boortz is talking about. The nice people that were working as toll equipment engineers when I moved to that job in 1980...retired as toll equipment engineers. They all had degrees too. The difference is that they only worked the minimum 8 hours that was asked of them.

I'm not "rich". What I have is the result of damn hard work. Nothing was ever handed to me. People who don't know me think I just another lucky white male who was born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

Getting back to Boortz. He's not an illiterate drunk on a bar stool. He's a disillusioned conservative lawyer who makes an honest living as talk show host. Roger Hedgecock is another conservative lawyer talk show host in San Diego. I find both of these guys to be entertaining and informative. The nice thing is that I can listen to them on the radio while still knocking out productive work.

My apologies to others on the thread for sucking up this extra bandwidth.

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