I'll stop complaining about class warfare, when you go silent on FR about what angers you. Get over it, yourself!
Tsk, tsk, tsk ... get over yourself , babycakes. :-)
This is the fault of capitalism and is cured by socialism [which you are determined to defend]?? The weight of the chip on your shoulder must be overbearing.
I would be happy to share my collection of Thomas Sowell books with you. I won't "give" them to you 'cuz I worked hard to pay for them but you can borrow them since I'm compassionate.
As a kid, I cleaned out their stables for pocket change and played with their golden retrievers and admired their sailboats. Horses, dogs, boats. Horses, dogs, boats. To a one, these were the passions of Old Money. They drove shaky old cars around their beautiful Middleburg estates, and seemed curiously without energy except for I horses/dogs/boats. Being strictly bourgeous, couldn't quite understand why such rich folks had such dark musty houses with such ratty faded oriental carpets. Had to be an adult for a while to appreciate such a cultural statement...(g)
Maybe you should write a sequel to David Brook's "Bobos in Paradise"!
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?