Why are rich people so villified in this country (U.S.)?

I wonder whether TS actually lives in a bubble. The US has significant 3rd world poverty in a 1st world nation. Almost criminal minimal wage and absolute garbage healthcare. Capitalism in America created such a significant gap between the rich and poor its no surprise many of the poor make derogatory comments towards the rich. More specifically the majority of wealthy white America is a product of corruption and 'old money' accumulated through illegalities. Alot of the people trying to escape poverty through the illegalities of today are criminalised [And rightly so] however it doesn't change the fact that alot of the rich today are in that position through illegalities of the past, and now untouchable through white collar illegalities of today.

A person from below the poverty line commiting a petty illegality such as theft will be handcuffed and abruptly taken down to the police station. A white collar criminal guilty as mass scale corruption will be treated like a guest at a luxurious penthouse hotel suite.

there is hardly a single true statement in this. Really. Maybe two. "The majority of wealthy white America is a product of corruption"??????

Unless you are are true communist and believe all private property is a crime, this sort of statement is absurd. I don't even know why I am responding to it.

It is true. It depends on your defition of wealth. I refer to wealth as those approaching/are billionaires. The top heavy society has a centralised minority of wealth at the expense of the poor majority. Longer work hours combined with minimum wage create this factual notion of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Legally this isn't considered illegality but please it's immoral greed and is infact a form of corruption.

facepalmugh wrote:

The top heavy society has a centralised minority of wealth at the expense of the poor majority.

this sort of old fashioned marxist view of the world is where you spin off the rails.

How is Bill Gates' wealth at the expense of poor people? How is Buffet's wealth at the expense of poor people?

Problem is, you don't really believe that trade/business/ is how food gets put on the table. Without Caterpillar, IBM, Boeing, etc, no one eats.

The companies I have mentioned have all made a few dozen people billions of $. I say so what, because they have also made millions (!)of people middle class or better.

point is, the US economy is not a zero sum game. A dollar earned by a rich person is not a dollar taken away from a poor person.

When a company does well, it enriches everyone. The cost of that, in your terms, is a few plutocrats. I don't worry about them, because I am far more pleased by the 440,000 people working for IBM than the 10 who make a bucketload of millions.

Show me a rich guy, other than one who has inherited wealth, who didn't shaft, f*ck or screw someon or a group of someones on the way up.

Are YOU weathly, by the way?

OP, are you kidding? Americans love rich people. I see far more privileging of the rich, and the idea of being rich, across American popular culture, corporate culture, political culture, etc. than I do its opposite, i.e. "hating on" the rich. You are letting the mass cultural attack on Romney's wealth and the recent "occupations" of Wall Street skew your notions of wealth in America. Get some perspective here kid.

I am a Liberal Democrat, and I have no hate for rich people.

We Liberal Democrats simply want the tax rates and exemptions to be fair for all. For a guy (Mitt Romney) to pay only 14% after making 13 MILLION dollars, this is crazy. It should be more like 40% at least.

In countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Switzerland, etc., his tax rate would be more like 60%.

Jason

Carrying on about other people's wealth is an loud confession of one's own insecurity and lack of self-esteem. A man who hates the rich really hates himself for not being rich.

[quote]agip wrote:

How is Bill Gates' wealth at the expense of poor people? How is Buffet's wealth at the expense of poor people?

You're joking, right? You cannot be that stupid. Honestly. What could be done with tens of billions of dollars to help people with next to nothing?

How people as ignorant as you manage to still be part of the human race after all of these generations is one of God's great mysteries.

$300k is almost 15 times the "poverty threshold" for a family of four in the US. You will graduate with NO debt. That is by no means a "slight advantage". In high school, you were free to assume that you could choose colleges without any regard for cost, knowing that acceptance into the school was the only barrier for attending. I'm going to guess you drive a car that was given to you or subsidized by your parents in some way. At no point were you at risk of losing your educational opportunity for financial reasons. If you were to have trouble passing certain classes, you would be able to retake them without any concern for costs. You have healthcare. You are insured.

No one is accusing you of not working hard, kid; good for you. You should recognize however, that you got a HUGE head start. By all means run with it. You are free to work your ass off and make your way without having to hope for a big break because you've already caught one. The fact that you think you have it tough because you stay in and study on some Friday and Saturday nights shows you were never needing for anything your entire life. Thank your parents and treat them well.

The rich are not vilified. The taxes for the richest people in this country are lower then the taxes for the richest people in any other 1st world nation. Rich people sometimes feel victimized and like to play the victim, similar to how conservatives think the "'mainstream media" is out to get them.

The poor in this country are mocked and vilified much more then the rich.

Todd T wrote:

[quote]agip wrote:

How is Bill Gates' wealth at the expense of poor people? How is Buffet's wealth at the expense of poor people?

You're joking, right? You cannot be that stupid. Honestly. What could be done with tens of billions of dollars to help people with next to nothing?

How people as ignorant as you manage to still be part of the human race after all of these generations is one of God's great mysteries.

I am wondering if you can be serious. Well, at the risk of responding to a troll...

agip's point was that building successful companies may well make a few individuals extremely wealthy (and usually does). What is more important is that those same successful companies provide the means by which our society works (go ahead, vaporize Caterpillar and see how much food gets to your table, get rid of evil Exxon and see about filling up the tank, eliminate Microsoft and Apple and have fun with your typewriter...).

In addition to providing for the means by which society works these companies employ hundreds of thousands (and collectively tens of millions) of individuals to allow them to make a decent living. Go ahead and eliminate all of those jobs and see how great our society works now.

The fact that a few people got very rich in creating these enterprises is not something that you should hold against them as individuals or the system as a whole. It is something that should be acknowledged as one of the great motivators for people to improve the world without necessarily being saints (but also, by and large, not satans).

Now for you to suggest that these very rich should donate their tens of billions to help the poor is simply a common manifestation of the 'It is really easy to spend other people's money' syndrome. It doesn't get much more lame than that.

I find it hilarious that those that champion the cause of the wealthy accuse the poor of being poor for not working hard, while those that champion the cause of the poor claim the rich are wealthy only because they got lucky. Do none of you see that your arguments are both built in massive sweeping generalizations? The world is far more complicated than that. There are extremely hard working individuals among both the wealthy and the impoverished, just as there are worthless asshats among both groups. The fact is you cannot generalize about people whose situations you have no clue about, regardless of whether they are rich or poor.

Also speaking of being lucky, do any of you have even the slightest clue of how lucky you were to be born in the United States in the first place? You cannot honestly sit there and tell people to acknowledge that they were lucky, and complain about how terrible your situation is/was when both of you hit the jackpot being born in by far the wealthiest country on Earth. You want to talk about inequalities in wealth? Why don't we talk about why 3% of the world's population has 25% of the world's wealth? Want to see true income inequality? Take a look at the rest of the world vs. the US.

Thanks for the recitation of the absurd propaganda narrative you have internalized

I love this country but this feeling of victimization has to be one of the things that pisses me off most about the US. Everyone is a victim nowadays, whether your rich, poor, white, black, conservative, liberal, or christian; everyone thinks that the "establishment" is out to get them.

But back to the original point of the thread, no the rich are not vilified and I say this for a few reasons. (1) The taxes for the richest people in this country are the taxed lower then most any other of their counterparts from other countries. (2) Most everyone wants to be rich, you can't vilify something that everyone wants to become. (3) The vast majority of the people who are in power in this country are considered rich and are often voted into power by people like you and me. If the rich in this country were truly vilified in this country the "average" person probably wouldn't vote them into power in such huge numbers.

Yeah being wealthy sucks. I'm willing to help any and all rich people out by taking enough of their money so they could no longer consider themselves rich. Being rich would be my cross to bear.

Thanks for the vacuous statement. Unless, of course, calling things 'propaganda' and making ad hominem attacks count as substantive in your book.

Now, if you'd like to bring something with more substance than "neener, neener, I'm going to call your arguments 'propaganda' and use the classic 'you are brainwashed' oh-so-clever rhetorical trick" let me know.

LOL @ this shi7 wrote:

I find it hilarious that those that champion the cause of the wealthy accuse the poor of being poor for not working hard, while those that champion the cause of the poor claim the rich are wealthy only because they got lucky. Do none of you see that your arguments are both built in massive sweeping generalizations?

Do you not see that your opening two sentences are largely comprised of massive sweeping generalizations of the various posters on this thread?