What is wrong with "The Rich"?

They don’t share with me.

@Adirondackwannabe

True. Let’s force them

Nothing as long as their pay their fair share of the tax burden, and didn’t get wealthy by crushing everyone in their path.

A. If they have no other choice, they may float a job your way. But if they can pay you any less, they will. If they can get away without giving you benefits, they will. If they can make you work twice as much but not pay you more, they will. Even if they can do all that, they will outsource your job to India or China in a heartbeat.

B. Considering how many ways they can siphon their money out of the U.S. So they don’t pay US taxes on it…. Considering how they can funnel it around in equity swaps and dummy corporations that only exist on paper… Considering that they have all sorts of tools they use that they end up paying a much lower tax rate than most average U.S. Citizens…

C. Considering that even though they have obscene amounts of money, they want to cut funding to “losers” like the elderly, disabled, and children too young to be employable (lol… Look at that first grader on the free lunch program… Get a job, ya bum!) because even though they already have more money than they know what to do with, they want even more.

In fact they want even more money SO badly that they spend billions on propaganda to make the middle and lower class masses believe that the super rich aren’t the problem.. The elderly, disabled and children are the problem.

Do you think the Koch brothers give a fig about anything other than making sure they keep getting more money than God? Do you know how much money they poor into buying politicians and keep everyone focused on issues that benefit themselves? They are spending a crapload—but for them, it’s slightly more than chump change. They have just THAT much cash to kick around.

@keobooks

Seems like I struck a nerve.
I like the question but I did not mean to ruin your day.

What is increasingly wrong with the rich is that they AREN’T paying those taxes that you talk about. It might well be argued from the look of things that the government (which they own) has arranged things so they no longer need bother with hiring us in order to “fatten up”. Once again, it isn’t necessarily hatred when an antelope notices out loud that “a lion will eat you.”

The Rich don’t employ me, so I have no qualms about threatening their status.

Furthermore, they don’t “go away” if their profits are slightly reduced for the betterment of all. They would still be there, just with ever-so-slightly less profit. The difference is meaningless to The Rich, but can mean everything to the Not-Rich.

Still further-more, why on earth should the government be paying the workers that The Rich hire, since they can’t live on what The Rich pay them?

Even further-more, who is buying the products and services The Rich are offering if the Not-Rich cannot afford them?

We all know that trickle-down economics doesn’t work. Why keep flogging that horse?

True and super great answer @keobooks !!
But you can’t blame the hard done by little rich people, it’s all the poor bastards fault for wanting enough money to live on when they go to work , how dare they.

Nothing, especially if they are self made. If you can make yourself rich good for you. The gap between the rich and poor is the issue. The lack of opportunity is another. With little to no stratification between the “rich” and “poor” there is natural conflict. People in my area making near six figures live roughly the same as those making 35–40k There are not many in the six figure plus area before you get to the money is no object crowd. That’s the issue.

Nothing. Or, I should say there are some rich people who suck, just like there are people in every class who are good and bad. I don’t think the rich have cornered the market in being bad people. I really don’t understand hating “the rich.” I sometimes criticize big business and corporations, but plenty of people are multimillionaires and don’t own a business, and are employees themselves.

How are we defining rich anyway? How rich?

@josie where are you getting the idea that you ruined my whole day or even struck a nerve? What is going on in your imagination about my mood when I posted this? Seriously, I don’t get it.

Just curious. I was just typing true stuff. Perhaps it was you who had a nerve struck, my friend. I was just sitting around typing stuff off the top of my head, occasionally checking a few websites for a few more examples of tax dodging I couldn’t remember off the top of my head.

What’s up with me this week? I think my posts are so boring that I can barely read them. But now and then, people are imagining that I’m filled with rage and anger, seconds away from turning into the Incredible Hulk or something. I’m moody and grouchy many times, but I don’t really get nerves struck easily. I certainly don’t get my whole day ruined by a post. Even a post as bootlickingly lame as this one.

Edited because I fail at iPad.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I see that self made answer a lot and I don’t understand it. Yes, of course I respect and admire someone who worked hard from meager beginnings and made their own way, but people can be self made millionaires from ill gotten gains. Some people are born into riches and still work very hard at their educations and careers, and should they not be given some credit?

Pay your employees enough to have a nice life. You know, a house, not on food stamps, healthcare, some security, and so on. Once you do that I won’t give a shit if you have 40 yachts.

@johnpowell That’s just the point. Things have been “arranged” such as there is no longer a need to pay you a decent wage, or for that matter hire you at all. If I want to hire you, I of course pay you as little as I can get away with and let the government worry about feeding you a meager occasional meal. Since I hide offshore the money I accumulate by underpaying you , I avoid the taxes needed to feed you, and the deficit rises. And of course, why pay you a decent wage? As long as you’re scraping by, there’s an excellent chance that you’ll be forced to borrow from ME the money I have accumulated from underpaying YOU. So I earn even more while you spiral further down the hole. Synergy!

And @josie ^^^^^^That is what is wrong with the rich,nice answer @stanleybmanly

Imagine If all the rich were raptured overnight.

The workers (and increasingly robots) would continue creating wealth as they’ve always done—with the one exception that there’s no rich to parasitise any of it from them.

Depends on what your definition of “rich” is. The so called rich, the ones that pay the bills like you indicate are not the Bill Gates’, Warren Buffets’ or the Donald Trumps’. They are the middle and upper middle classes. The bourgeoisie if you will. And what’s wrong with the bourgeoisie? Well they are “rich”. And as such must be taxed higher and higher so as to spread their wealth around. But there is never enough wealth. There is no salvation with ever growing taxes and national debt (>$18 trillion), only ruin.

jealousy. simple and easy

That’s certainly what they tell us, and many still believe it

I don’t hate the rich. Not at all. What I hate is when some of them are able to manipulate the income tax system so they don’t even pay as much as a middle income family. The other thing I don’t like is when some of them wield their money as power and try to manipulate (lobby) policy makers to favor them and their money making machines. It isn’t jealousy. It is well-earned resentment for a small portion of them.

Turn the question around – what’s good about the rich?

Let’s be clear – there are many wealthy people who are decent, caring, moral, sharing, kind people. People who give to others – either with money or time, or people who have values that make the world a better place.

But far too many of ‘the rich’ are concerned with making money to the exclusion of all else. Those are the people who give wealth a bad name. Is conspicuous consumption really necessary? Does a person really need a 200 room house? How many jets can a person own and use? Is it a mark of honor to make a billion dollars a year when your employees are on food stamps?

Some some rich people do, in fact, improve and enhance society. Many don’t.

By the way – can anyone define rich for me?

I wish, like @gondwanalon and @elbanditoroso that you would define “rich”. There’s a big difference between someone who has investments that provide an income to maintain a decent standard of living, and multi-billionaires. Both can be defined as “rich”, but a comparative few fit, for example, the list given by @keobooks.

This article shows a big reason why people hate the rich. Sure, California is having its biggest drought in history, but let the filthy poor people do all the conservation. We need all four of our jacuzzis running 24/7. You peasants just don’t understand.

This reads like a parody. But all the quotes and all the story points are facts.

Good point by @elbanditoroso and @canidmajor. What one person’s definition of “rich” is may be vastly different than someone else’s. To someone who has no money, I would be rich. To someone living off Daddy’s trust fund and vacationing in the Alps and never having to work except for an occasional phone call to the office to see how things are going, I’d be poor.

@candidmajor That’s the big problem. There is no fixed definition for “rich”, and both villains and saints carry the title. One of the surprises of my adult life was the astonishing discovery that so many of the people I thought very well off considered themselves struggling to get by. I think this is a big factor in our wealth disparity issue. There is no ready answer to the question “how much is enough?”

What is wrong with “The Rich”?

The same thing that is wrong with “The Poor”.

There is nothing inherently wrong with either group of people.

I’m not very familiar with either group. As such, I don’t pre-judge or make assumptions about either group, anymore than I would judge a person by their outward appearance.

However, I do become judgmental when I see individuals of either group abusing the opportunities created by my tax dollars. There are some poor people who legally (and illegally) figure out a way to abuse the system. There are some rich people who legally (and illegally) figure out a way to abuse the system. There will always be some scumbags in each group that selfishly look out for themselves at the expense of others.

One major similarity the rich and poor abusers have in common is that they are enabled by the incompetence of government at all levels. The major difference is that the rich are able to buy legislation to facilitate their abuse, while the poor can only support their abuse with their vote. Money trumps votes. I didn’t think that’s the way a democracy is supposed to work, but that’s where we are at this point in time.

It’s easy to blame Congress for creating and maintaining the mess we’re in, but the real blame falls on the shoulders of apathetic and ignorant voters. Bitching about abuse by the rich or the poor, is a distracting waste of time that prevents us from discussing the root cause of our country’s problems: American voters are not electing politicians who represent their best interests. But that’s a discussion for another time.

@bossob But if the time isn’t now, it had better be damned soon. I agree with you there is nothing inherently evil in being wealthy or broke. But there are great consequences to our way of living as this country evolves toward plutocracy, or rather through plutocracy (since it may well be argued that we are already there.) We only have to glance at the places in the world recognized as such to glimpse what’s in store for us. Better yet, consider the situations within those of our 50 states which would certainly qualify as plutocratic were it not for Federal involvement.

People vilify the poor as being lazy losers, sucking off all of American tax dollars. This is because that’s what the super rich pay lobbyists and spin doctors to make you think the poor are the real problem.

So, people on food stamps are losers to lazy to get a job? Did you know that ¾ths of those lazy losers have jobs? People are trying to crack down on poor people abusing the system, even though it’s been documented that there’s only about once cent out of every dollar being misspent?

Yes, welfare costs the country about 370 billion, but the rich collectively leech off an estimated 2.2 TRILLION in tax avoidance. The ultra rich also gain 5 TRILLION in U.S. Investment gains. For every 1 dollar paid to welfare, the rich are paid 10 dollars just for these investments. I should mention that all 5 trillion of these dollars are earned tax free.

And the thing is, many people think that the super rich people are just a little bit better off than the average middle class. This is nowhere near the truth. The amount of money that the super rich kick around is mindbogglingly huge.

The top 14 earners in America receive more tax dollars from investment gains than the 46 million people on welfare. And they earn a lot more. And that doesn’t include the money they “earn” by avoiding paying taxes.

So we kick out several trillion dollars to less than 20 people in America. We have no problem at all with that. But we cry out in rage over the ⅓ of a trillion that’s divided out between 46 million people. And this seems reasonable?

We have one of the world’s largest economies and we give out less to the extreme poor than all of the industrialized ones. We demonize poor people and call them lazy. Most of the people getting welfare style benefits for life are the elderly, severely disabled and the children of the poor who are unable to work to earn money. We forget about all of those people who work legit jobs at places like Walmart and McDonalds and get paid so little that they still need food stamps. We don’t provide parental, sick leave or vacation in any form on a national level, even though almost all the other “civilized” nations do. We don’t even provide healthcare. Even developing nations are starting to manage to afford that! In Europe, when they raise the retirement age to 63, people are rioting in the streets. People are seriously talking about raising retirement to 70 here and nobody seems to care!

Why do we allow almost 50 million to live in squalor and threaten to take away the miserly pennies we give them? Because we don’t want to be “unfair” to 15 people and take away a tiny fraction of their hard earned income.

Seriously, if we took away the loopholes from these rich people, they may suffer so badly that they wouldn’t be able to afford that second or third private island. But about 50 million people would get a little more food and maybe even some healthcare. Why are we working to hard to protect the interests of these 15 billionaires? Even if they got cut off their form of welfare, they’d still be insanely rich. Why must we hurt tens of millions of people—taking away their ability to eat and live in a home to keep these billionaires so rich that most of us can’t even imagine what it’s like to have that kind of money?

If things don’t change, our country is going to change in a nasty way. It will be a very flow change. It will happen so slowly that people will just accept one lifestyle downgrade after another without too much of a fight. But one day, the U.S. Will look more like modern day India than the good old USA.when that happens, not even India will look like our modern India. In India, they are trying to fix the fact that there are a very small number of extremely wealthy people, an extremely large number of people in deep poverty and not very many people in the middle. In the U.S., we’re trying to embrace these demographics.

The more you demonize the very poor and idolize the very rich, the more you are feeding into the destruction of the middle class. Because it’s not enough for them just to take away all the benefits from the millions of poor people. They want your middle class dollars as well. They don’t want you to have app affordable mortgage or affordable means of getting into college. They don’t want you to be protected against working 7 days a week. They don’t want you to get any financial help when you’re very old and your nest egg got eaten up by soaring inflation. They just want more money.

And if I’m just blowing smoke, then why are so many of the rich forking out cash to make sure that their politicians are the ones who get elected and their financial issues are given top priority?

@stanleybmanly Voters could curtail the destructive path we’re on by electing politicians who are interested in campaign finance reform, addressing voter restriction efforts at the state level, acknowledging legalized bribery permitted at the Federal level, and tax code reform. However, at this point in time, I have little hope that a sufficient number of voters could coalesce in support of a populist platform. Apathy being the main reason.

As I stated here, I believe it will take a world-wide crises to get us off our collective butts to demand a more representative government.

And once more, it is crucial that our discussion of this not bog down to the silliness involved with hating the rich or resentment of the poor. All of us pursue that which we hold to be in our best interests (usually). When we consider the 2 extremes, and those in the middle, we’re forced to recognize that this is a class struggle,plain and simple. If the middle is shrinking, the legions of the poor are expanding, while resources consistently pile up at the top, which class is winning? Of the the three, it is the rich alone who have always understood that the key to control of where the resources go lies with the shrinking middle. Pursuant to this, in a land where everyone has the vote, the great advantage to the class at the top is that they virtually unopposed have been allowed to DEFINE the situation as well as the struggle itself. In this they have collectively been enormously successful because they have and control the resources for dissemination of the “message”. The predictable result is of course is that the non rich rarely recognize their own interests until the axe is brushing their ignorant necks, and even then will die believing unions, and food stamp recipients responsible for their undoing.

We humans don’t handle wealth well. Research has demonstrated that the wealthy are more likely to drive like assholes, exhibit unethical decision-making, take valuable things from others, lie in negotiations, cheat to win a prize, and justify unethical work behavior. In other words, wealth increases one’s sense of self-importance and entitlement.

Is that “wrong”? Well, yes. First because it makes for bad social dynamics, and second because it has a negative impact on the wealthy themselves in terms of life satisfaction.

It’s kind of interesting, things like this—to put it bluntly, I am the son of “rich people” (In a sense. Not 1% rich; compared to billionaires with private jets, my parents are poor; but they’re wealthy enough to own three houses and multiple cars, let’s put it that way). Now, of course I know that my dad is not a horrible blood-sucking parasite hell-bent on crushing other people to advance himself (he’s also retired now, but beside the point), and that being my closest experience with “the rich”, I tend not to have a very negative view of them, since I grew up that way (I also was raised around many other wealthy families). My dad of course did not grow up wealthy and has memories of things like eating expired food as a kid because they couldn’t afford anything new. So I of course admire him for moving up in the world.

That said, I’m not blind to the problems that rich people cause in their obliviousness to the rest of the world and their disregard for all but making money (although it should be pointed out that the “non-rich” can be just as greedy and obsessed with making money—they just might not have met their goals yet).

Anyway, I don’t have much else to contribute. I’m in the minority in that I don’t hate the rich, for personal reasons. But I also won’t pretend that many of them (NOT ALL of them) do not help the world become a better place.

I’m just thinking, some people seem bothered by the rich who don’t do much and just live off of their inheritance. What do you want them to do? Get a job? Doesn’t that take a job away from someone else? Give away all their money? Give me a break.

If you were wealthy would you give none of it to your children?

I really don’t understand hating the rich, just because their rich.

@JLeslie Nobody hates the rich just because they are rich, I dislike the rich who don’t pay their fair share of the tax burden,I dislike the rich who exploit the working class for their financial gains, I dislike the rich who claim it isn’t them that is the problem, it’s over sized Government and those damn welfare scum.
If you became wealthy through hard work good business deals,and paid your share of the tax burden, paid and treated any employees fairly,then good for you.

@SQUEEKY2 unless the rich guy I’m talking to made the tax policy, I’m not going to be angry at him for following the law. Do I want the tax structure to be different? Yes, I do. I want the wealthy to pay more, but if someone I know pays just 15% while I’m paying 25% on my income, and he follows current laws, I’m certainly not going to think he is a bad person, nor expect him to write an extra check to the federal government.

How rich are we talking anyway? If a family makes $200k are they rich?

I know middle class people who make less than $100k who talk about the poor being lazy and a tax burden.

That’s just it if his income is 4 or 5 times more than yours is it really fair you pay more tax?
And as for the middle class people blaming it all on the poor well they have been distracted exactly like the rich wanted.
I stated in an earlier question is the system designed to keep the poor poor,and people jumped all over me saying how untrue that is,well if it isn’t designed to keep the poor poor , it does an outstanding job at keeping the rich,rich.

@SQUEEKY2 I still want to know the numbers we are talking about. Someone who is an employee who makes $50k and another person who makes $200k the $200k person does pay more on his income in percentage. The trick is the person making more money has more opportunity to invest, and that’s where he might get more write-off, extra income, and the extra income might be taxed at much lower rates. A whole lot of people making $200k aren’t very investment savvy, and spend the majority of their income, so they don’t get big tax breaks. However, they certainly have more opportunity to save and to invest. My only point is you can’t make a blanket statement about that income level and the income tax they pay. However, business owners making that income do have a lot of benefits in the tax law. I’m on your side with changing some of the tax laws on investments and business.

A whole different conversation is people making $1million a year+.

@SQUEEKY2: This was the issue Warren Buffett had when he stated that he paid less than his secretary (“less” meaning a lower rate, not actually less money). It’s not the rich person’s fault that he pays a lower rate, it’s the legislation that makes it so that is to blame (the politicians that make the legislation). Like @JLeslie said, is the rich person supposed to just write a check to the government, over and above what they pay in taxes, just for the sake of evening out the score?

Of course not,but again it shows while the system may not be designed to keep the poor poor,it has been designed to keep the rich rich.
And Warren Buffett being in a lesser tax bracket than his secretary show just that.
Maybe it’s time to legislate these high end earners back into their proper tax brackets?

I don’t think there needs to be a dollar amount given. It’s not like you’re “one of us” at 9.99 million and a “greedy bastard” at 10 million. It’s the overall sense of entitlement people generally feel—probably on all levels of income.

The 15 richest people in America feel entitled to more tax money from the government than 46 million people combined. Not only that, but they want the money from all those millions of people taken away so that they can get even more money for themselves.

But go down much lower down the income level.. Down to probably “only” several million instead of a few billion. In the article I posted earlier about California water, this woman defends her right to waste water using this argument. She said that the land she owned was big enough to have more than 20 houses on it. Each of those houses would have probably at least 4 people living in them. All of them combined would use a lot more water than she was using. After all, there were only 2 of them on the land. So she should be allowed to use all the water she wanted. She felt entitled to have the water supply allotted to 80–100 people, and nobody was thanking her or even allowing her to use the water that maybe only 30 or 40 people needed.

Come down a little lower to the barely one million range. It’s parents going to the principal of their kids’ private boarding school and demanding that the tuition be raised. At the current rates “just about anyone” could afford to attend the school. They didn’t send their kids off to boarding school to mingle with kids who belonged to “just anyone”. (Yes, when I worked for a boarding school, several parents earnestly suggested this.)

Step down lower, and you have the guy screaming at the people who work at the airline because his flight was delayed due to weather conditions. Or maybe it was because he couldn’t be the first to board the plane just because he had a first class ticket. All those people in wheelchairs got to go on ahead of him. He’s the guy screaming stuff like, “Do you KNOW who I AM?” Or “I have very important things to do. I shouldn’t have to wait around like everyone else! I’m IMPORTANT”

I am sure that there is something at my level that annoys people with less money. But since I’m at a certain income level, I probably feel entitled to it and don’t know how annoying I sound when I demand it. In hear myself saying that I shouldn’t have to worry about getting sick and then paying the hospital bills for the rest of my life.

Then you get down to the 46 million people at or near the bottom. Mitt Romney sneered when he said that those people felt entitled to…FOOD.

Then it comes full circle. You’ve got a guy who is at or very close to the level of receiving more tax dollars from the government than several million people combined. And he speaks out against those greedy poor bastards demanding FOOD.

I don’t think anyone hates the rich just because they are rich. It’s not the money, it’s the entitlement people feel they deserve at the expense of others. And while yes, not every single rich person acts or feels this way, but as a group? Arrogant, greedy bastards—all of us. especially the ones who want food.

Geeeez @keobooks Excellent answer, while you and I might not agree with the assisted suicide issue, but 1000% agree with everything you have said on this answer and towards this question, and would really like to see anyone argue against anything you have put down.
They simply can’t.

That brings us to your question about what happens when the rich have it all. Clearly that’s another way of asking how long can the present trend continue. And It’s true that the inertia of the twin facts- voter apathy and ignorance, combined with the take on the situation as provided by the rich (well stated by Jaxk) make for a daunting future. The folks with the money paint an entirely different picture as to the way things are wired. And it’s their view on the matter that’s preached at us incessantly. There are guys like Buffet and a few others that will tell you straight up that the game is rigged, but that isn’t the line we are usually fed. The fact that those who profit from the scam are the same folks we turn to to explain what’s going on is a BIG problem.

It looks like a very bleak future @stanleybmanly ,but @Jaxk did say one thing about Capitalism that I quickly argued that capitalism wants a strong middle class, and I do know what he meant by a strong middle class would have the means to buy the goods and services provided by the wealthy Capitalists ,BUT< you did notice the BIG BUT right?
They themselves have proved that is a lie,if it wasn’t they wouldn’t have off shored everything they possibly could, so they wouldn’t have pay labor wages in your country also get around safety standards ,and pollution laws.
What also gets me scratching my head is these same corporations then wonder why people in your country are not being the good little consumers of yesterday(uh gee maybe because you kicked them out of their job, and gave it to some citizen in an off shore country that will work for less than half the wage,and in very unsafe working conditions)then wonder why people in your country can’t afford to buy these items?
So it seems to me that these rich Capitalists do not want a strong middle class as they say,they want a poor working class that they can exploit and manipulate to keep max profits thus keeping the gravy train full speed to the top.
Now some one please tell me I am wrong and explain why I am wrong, but I don’t think that will happen .

Damn, @keobooks. GA

Interesting I thought by now there would have been a few posts telling me how wrong I was in my last post above^ guess I really did hit it dead on.
So who is really to blame, those dead beat low end workers who want a wage they might be able to live on?
Or those hard done by ones at the top who only want max profits above all else.

Blame is wrong squeak. You can’t blame the lions. That’s what all those teeth and claws are for. But we’re certainly to blame if we allow them to get away with the argument that they are house cats with our best interests at heart.

That was excellently said @stanleybmanly and oh how true.

Hmmm, five days and no one has posted saying I am wrong ,guess this argument is over.

Maybe

Well been over a week and no one has come thundering in explaining how wrong I am,so guess they can’t , which is a touch sad.
And the gap between rich and poor grow ever wider as the wealthy line up the middle class and do away with them as fast as they can.