Why the rich do matter

[Project Grudge]

Source: NPR

...we take for granted our easy access to cheap products, and forget the role of the rich in making it happen. He says we wouldn't enjoy such low airfares today if it weren't for the initial wealthy travelers.

O'Connell: Commercial air travel in its early genesis was extraordinarily expensive, enjoyed only by the wealthy.

Because the rich bought expensive plane tickets, airline companies and manufacturers could continue to invest in the new industry. Over time, that resulted in relatively inexpensive plane travel for all of us.

The rich benefit us in other ways too.

Read more: http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2009/03/16/pm_why_rich_matter/

---

The comments make a lot of sense of the story and the income gap is too disparate, but the rich do serve a purpose. The ones who give the most are also the ones who are most likely self-made. Obviously, I don't think this applies to companies who took TARP or TALF funds. They aren't helpful in the slightest. But it's good to remember that all rich people aren't EVIL. I mean there are things like The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that wouldn't be possible without wealth.

I'd like to see DU stop bashing the rich in general and have a more targeted reproach

[caseymoz]

1. Never did I think they were . . .

I just don't like when they'll change or play the system to get richer, nor do I believe claims that they are overtaxed.

[christx30]

130. How would you feel

If you lost about 40% of everything you made? Just look at your gross pay and picture almost half of it gone every 2 weeks.
If you would be giddy and happy with that prospect, well, you are a better person than I am.

[Stellabella]

133. Actually, I would feel just fine.

Because 60% of $100,000,000.00 is $60,000,000.00. I could live on that with no problem at all.

Grow up.

[Two Americas]

2. ROFL

Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable.

[bread_and_roses]

55. Yeah, my sentiments exactly (n/t)

[aviationpm]

3. This is outrageous!!!

If EVERYBODY made fair wages, more people could afford the "luxuries" and costs would come down with volume. That's why having so many FILTHY rich people is so bad... it is largely at the expense of the middle and lower classes.

[AdHocSolver]

4. Why workers do matter.

Let's hear it for the poor immigrants who came to this country with just the clothes on their backs and manned the factories at near starvation wages and lived in tenements located in slums to produce those airplanes and cars and fancy clothes for the wealthy to buy.

Let's hear it for the laborers brought from China who built the railroad systems of the west that transported the raw materials and finished products for those rich people to buy.

Let's hear it for the Africans brought here against their will (those who survived the trip) who built and maintained the plantation wealth of the sunny south.

Charity giving by wealthy donors would be far less notable if the wealthy hadn't put in place a government for eight years that slashed government funding for scientific and medical research, and slashed humanistic aid for poor countries in Asia and Africa.

[SharonAnn]

136. All profit comes from labor. ALL OF IT! All value is create by labor. ALL OF IT!

Capital, in an of itself, is valueless. Unless somebody DOES something with it or to it, it has no value.

Labor can create capital.

Capital cannot create labor. It can only create a demand for labor.

"Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. "

Abraham Lincoln
Source: first annual message to Congress, December 3, 1861

[Hannah Bell]

5. oh for god's sake. puerile.

There is *no* "self-made" rich person at the level of Bill Gates. Not *one*.


If you like defunded public education, genetically modified food, & rentier economies with you in the role of serf, the Gates Foundation is for you!


Your post is like some 2nd-grade textbook: "Rich people HELP us. We NEED them."

[tonysam]

140. "Self Made" is Total Hogwash. Such People Don't Exist.

The rich get rich, other through marriage or inheritance, because somebody WANTS what they have created, and somebody has to MAKE whatever these geniuses have created. And WHO are the ones who purchase and make those products? The despised masses. In other words, the rich need the masses to obtain their fortunes (in part through theft of those who make their products) far more than the masses need the rich.

[billyoc]

6. Rich people aren't bad.

You just have remember to marinate them long enough.

[bottomtheweaver]

7. NPR money shows, play ground of uber-rich heiresses like Mrs Ray Kroc,

wife of the guy who ripped off the Macdonald brothers of San Bernardino and got richer than fuck exploiting their concept. The guy was so evil he wouldn't even let them use their own NAME on the restaurant they opened after Kroc gyped them out of everything they owned. This from Fast Food Nation. Oh and Mrs Krotch is the genius who got Bob Edwards fired from the morning show. Mrs Hamburglar-in-chief. Evil, evil.

:mad:

[rfranklin]

57. Ray Kroc paid the brothers a huge sum for their name and method...

I believe it was about $1 million which was real money back then. They just didn't have the vision to see that their share could have been worth billions.

[Puppyjive]

8. Andrew Carnegie was a rich man

If the Gates foundation really wants to help society, maybe they could lower the price they charge for Windows. Many rich people get rich because they exploit workers. Exploited workers often rely on charity. I would like to see a little less rich and a lot more living wage jobs.

[QC]

44. Carnegie was an evil bastard, despite the warm, glowing stuff we heard about him

in grade school.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestead_Steel_Strike

[Hannah Bell]

69. he wasn't "self-made" either.

[Sherman A1]

9. And as to the example of the genesis of commercial air travel....

I believe it was also subsidized by the US Post Office's mail routes and by the predecessor of the FAA (which I believe was the CAA) investing in control towers and radio beacons, this was done with the tax dollars of not only the rich, but the average worker who could not afford a ticket to get on those aircraft to fly anywhere. So the even the wealthy didn't build this particular industry in a vacuum. :freak:

[ellisD]

14. lets not forget advancement through military R&D

the jet engine was not a product of the wealthy socialites traveling, it was developed by the military, ie taxpayer funding.

[Mithreal]

99. I am pretty sure rich folks invented the wheel though. nt

[jehovas_waitress]

135. military R&D

however it was not Americans that produced the jet. It was Germany and Great Britain (working separately) pre WW2.

[tomm2thumbs]

10. LOL - this is after the poor Pilgrims came over and started everything FIRST

those dumb Pilgrims - why couldn't they have been rich so this would all make sense.

[Hannah Bell]

29. a lot of them were.

[izquierdista]

11. Behind every great fortune

lies a great crime. -- Honore de Balzac

And I could have had one of those great fortunes too, but somehow, I never felt right taking more, much more than my fair share. Take Gates for example. His talent is not good software, of which Linus Torvalds has far outclassed him, but his talent lies in forcing people to buy his software because they have no other alternative, not once, but several times over. In other words he is an extortionist.

Once these great criminals amass their wealth, they sheepishly look around for some good to do, to regain some respect for the crime that was committed in the first place. No, I'll continue to point out that the rich, in general, are anti-social assholes.

[greenbird]

19. Plus he stole the idea for Windows in the first place.

from Apple.

[QC]

46. Xerox invented the modern GUI. Apple stole it from them.

Contrary to popular belief, Steve Jobs did not invent everything of any worth in the past century.

[greenbird]

58. Notes to self:

Never post before the second cup of coffee.

Never post about things that you don't know anything about.

Thanks, QC

[Vilis Veritas]

65. Apple did not steal the GUI. The modern GUI interface

invented at Xerox's Palo Alto Reasearch Center was not stolen by Apple. Jobs saw the interface on a tour and promptly PAID Xerox for the use of the design and several engineers.

Bill Gates invented the story about Apple's theft when he was on trial for STEALING Apple's core code.

Peace.

I forgot the link: http://www.mackido.com/Interface/ui_history.html

[scubadude]

72. Yeah, and Xerox got their idea from Bush and Engelbart.

I borrowed the following from http://www.sitepoint.com/print/real-history-gui/

Let’s back up to 1945 (!) and a visionary named Vannevar Bush. Bush, a scientist and futurist, went public with his ideas of the “memex,” a computing device that would use what we’d call hyperlink technology to bring information to every user’s fingertips.

Bush’s ideas sparked some visionary thinking in a scientist named Douglas Engelbart. As early as 1962, while Jobs and Wozniak were still drinking Ovaltine and watching Saturday morning cartoons in their jammies, Engelbart was creating several items of interest to the personal computing crowd that would follow. He invented the first “mouse,” which he called an “X-Y Position Indicator,” a little gizmo housed in a wooden box on wheels that moved around the desktop and took the cursor with it on the display. Engelbart saw the mouse as being an integral part of a “graphical windowed interface,” and invented what he called "a windowed GUI" that fascinated co-workers but wasn’t considered useful outside the lab. In 1968 Engelbart created NLS (oNLine System), a hypermedia groupware system that used the mouse, the windowed GUI, hypermedia with object addressing and linking, and even an early version of video teleconferencing to wow its audience, a group of technicians, engineers, and scientific types at Stanford University.

However, Engelbart was not the only visionary in the history of GUI. In 1963 a grad student at MIT, Ivan Sutherland, submitted as his thesis a program called “Sketchpad,” which directly manipulated objects on a CRT screen using a light pen.
""Sketchpad pioneered the concepts of graphical computing, including memory structures to store objects, rubber-banding of lines, the ability to zoom in and out on the display, and the ability to make perfect lines, corners, and joints. This was the first GUI (Graphical User Interface) long before the term was coined." " "–- from a Sun Microsystems biography of Ivan Sutherland"

The idea of direct manipulation of objects on a screen is integral to the concept of a graphic interface. In fact, the idea of a GUI derives from cognitive psychology, the study of how the brain deals with communication. The idea is that the brain works much more efficiently with graphical icons and displays rather than with words – words add an extra layer of interpretation to the communication process. Imagine if all the road signs you saw were uniform white rectangles, with only the words themselves to differentiate the different commands, warnings, and informational displays. When the “Stop” signs hardly look different from the “Resume Highway Speed” signs, the processing of the signs’ messages becomes a slower and more difficult process, and you’d have even more wrecks than you have now.

Combine this with Alan Kay’s concept of “biological computing,” where computer components function like organic “cells,” either independently or in concert whenever appropriate, and you have an idea of the thinking behind both modern computing, and the GUI.

The 70s - SmallTalk and Xerox
""The best way to predict the future is to invent it." " "-- informal PARC slogan"

The underground buzz stayed underground, but Engelbart’s and Sutherland’s creations were not lost on the creative fellows at Xerox’s PARC facility. PARC was (and is), at least in some respects, a computing “think tank,” where brilliant and brilliantly erratic minds cranked out ideas and tried, with varying success, to implement them on the workbench.

In the early 70s, as part of a (sadly abortive) project called “Dynabook” that envisioned notebook-sized, hyperlinked computers, Alan Kay and others developed an interactive object-oriented <3> programming language called Smalltalk. Kay had previously worked with a team at the University of Utah that developed a programming system called Flex. This was a design for a flexible simulation and graphics-oriented personal computer, with many ideas derived from the Norwegian-developed Simula programming language, another programming language called LISP, and Sutherland’s Sketchpad. Kay also borrowed ideas from a highly graphical language called Logo, which was designed to teach programming to children. Smalltalk featured a graphical user interface (GUI) that looked suspiciously similar to later iterations from both Apple and Microsoft.

Smalltalk didn’t stop with an innovation in user interface: it featured a multi-platform virtual machine years before the folks at Sun came up with Oak/Java <4>, object orientation, overlapping “windows,” and the first instance of bit-blt or "bit-blitting," the last two contributed by Dan Ingalls (the object-oriented language featured in ST actually showed up in the Simula-67 program in the late 1960s; “bit-blitting,” or bit block transfer, is, in simplistic terms, the protocol by which objects on a screen can be manipulated). A lot of observers feel that ST’s clean, easy-to-use interface has yet to be surpassed even today. The first program to be written under Smalltalk was Pygmalion, which is most notable for its demonstration that computer programming could be graphically based and not restricted to text. The idea of using icons to stand for data was reflected in Pygmalion.

The first real-life, usable GUI appeared in Xerox’s Alto computer, which debuted in 1974 and was envisioned as a smaller, much more portable replacement for the mainframes of the time. The Alto, which didn’t have a GUI as you and I are used to using, but instead featured graphically driven applications, was about the size of a Volkswagen (well, not quite, but the thing was big) and certainly not useful for the average user, even though it started its life showing an image of Sesame Street’s “Cookie <5> Monster.” The Alto featured a bit-mapping display, which was essential for displaying graphics and WYSIWYG printing. Kay, David Canfield Smith, Bill Verplank, and others also developed iconic representations for various programs for the Alto, most noticeably the drawing program “Markup,” the text editor “Bravo,” and the painting program “Superpaint.”

In 1981, the design and concepts which gave birth to the Alto led to the development and production of the much more streamlined, and more usable Xerox Star – the first true GUI-driven PC. According to Bruce Horn, an ex-Xerox employee who wound up working for Apple, the software architecture for Smalltalk and the Star were much more sophisticated than the Mac or Windows equivalents. While the Apple machines incorporated much of Xerox’s brainstorms, many of the most innovative and sophisticated ideas never made it into the Apples, mostly due to Apple’s insistence on keeping costs down. The Star featured the first “computer desktop,” as well as overlapping, resizable windows, and the sophisticated PARC mouse, a gee-whiz gizmo that ran with no moving parts and used laser beams and a metal grid to track the cursor’s movement (though employees found that the mouse worked just as well on Levis as it did on the metal grid). The interface was known as WIMP – Windows, Icons, Menus, and Pointers. PARC’s consensus was that once these ideas were implemented on a wide scale, computing efficiency would increase dramatically.

All that with no coffee!

Gee, I can search, cut and paste!

Scuba

[Vilis Veritas]

79. VB was a true visionary...

I wrote a paper on Vannevar Bush in College...

however, using ideas (and paying for them) to EXPAND them to practical implementations is not stealing. That was my point.

V V

Here is the link to the Article by VB where he introduced the memex.

'As We May Think' http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush

[scubadude]

83. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

If you ever look at a patent, you will see a list of prior art. Almost every new invention relies on many others. That is just the way it is. There are really very few totally new concepts.

Do all inventions "steal" from those they rely upon? The answer is complex and that is what lawyers and patent law is for.

Scuba

[Vilis Veritas]

67. You are correct. He even went to trial for that one.

Microsoft got access to Apple's API when they did work on the Word for Mac project.

Apple sued and Gates fabricated many lies and distortions of history to try and wriggle out of that crime.

V V

[foxer]

90. That was after he stole DOS from IBM

They hired him to write it, he retained the rights. Now Microsoft spends a great deal of time making sure your Windows is Authentic, won't let you "Steal" from them.

[FiveGoodMen]

94. ...who stole it from Xerox

[Hannah Bell]

21. Gates g-grandpa, JW Maxwell I founded Seattle National City Bank

National City = the Stillman/Rockefeller chain.

JW = 3rd cousin to this guy:

http://www.lafavre.us/brush/brushbio.htm

CF Brush, founder Brush Electric 1880, merged with
Thompson-Houston Electric Company 1889 & with Edison in
1891 to form General Electric.  Then Brush partnered in Linde
Air, forerunner Union Carbide. 


Jonathan Brush (1714) + Elizabeth Smith have sons
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
           |                     |
Joshua Brush + Ireland  Daniel Brush + Phillips------------
           |                      |                       |
Philip Brush + Brush    G. Phillips Brush + Keeler   Brush 
           |                      |                       |
Jarvis Brush + Keeler   Emeline Brush + Woodworth    Brush 
       |                            |                     |
JB Brush + Atwater      L M Woodworth + Maxwell      Brush 
       |                             |                    |
M A Brush + Dean        J W Maxwell + Oakley        CF BrushI
       |                       |                         |
H B Dean + Cook         J W Maxwell + Thompson     CF Brush2
       |                       |                         |
H B Dean + Maitland     Mary Maxwell + Gates       CF Brush3
       |                       |
Howard Dean              Bill Gates



Samuel Keeler (1655) + Sarah St. John have sons:
-----------------------------------------------
Joseph Keeler + Whitney    Jonah Keeler + Smith
         |                       |
Elijah Keeler + Sarah       Samuel Keeler + Kendrick
         |                        |
Rebecca Keeler + Bangs      Samuel Keeler + Benedict
          |                        |
E. K. Bangs + Stackhouse    Timothy Keeler + de Forest
        |                        |
     Bangs + Beaky           Sarah Keeler + Brush
        |                        |
     Beakey + Walker         Brush + atwater
        |                         |
George Herbert Walker*         Brush + HH Dean*
(*Bush I grandpa 1875-1953)    (*Howard Brush Dean g-g'pa, 
                               1868-1940)

[Hannah Bell]

33. David Davis Walker

1650s, Connectict

sam keeler (1655) + st. john
------------------------------
|                           |
joseph keeler              jonah keeler
|            |              |
elijah       silas          jonah
|            |               |
rebecca      lydia---- + ---jeremiah (1754)
|                       |
elijah k. bangs       polly keeler +
+ stackhouse          george phillips brush(g-uncle of the
|                     CF Brush, Brush Electric/GE,etc)
|                     |
2 to david davis      3 to banker James willard maxwell I,
walker*                 national city bank 



David Davis Walker

David Davis "D.D." Walker (19 January 1840 - 4
October 1918), a St. Louis dry goods wholesaler, founded Ely
& Walker, which remains a clothing brand to this day.
Walker was a first cousin of Senator and Supreme Court Justice
David Davis. Through his son George Herbert Walker, he was the
great-grandfather of President George H. W. Bush and
great-great-grandfather of George W. Bush.

[Hannah Bell]

37. Emeline Keeler Brush & Woodworth = g-parents of banker JW Maxwell.

Timothy Mills b: 1667 & Sarah Longbotham have children:
-------------------------------------------------------
Isaac Mills + Miller    Elizabeth Mills + Phillips
           |               |                     |
Sarah Mills + Samuel Phillips     Moses Phillips + Wisner
              |                                  |
Hannah Phillips + Daniel Brush       Wm. Phillips + Evertson
              |                                   |
George Phillips Brush + Polly Keeler   E. Phillips + Sanborn
              |                                   |
E. Keeler Brush  + Harvey Woodworth     J. Sanborn Phillips,
                                        co-founder, McClure's
                                         

[Hannah Bell]

40. Phoebus cartel

The Phoebus cartel was a cartel of, among others, Osram,
Philips and General Electric from December 23, 1924 until 1939
that existed to control the manufacture and sale of light
bulbs.

The cartel reduced competition in the light bulb industry for
almost twenty years, and has been accused of preventing
technological advances that would have produced longer-lasting
light bulbs. However, the Phoebus cartel is also featured in
fictionalized form as a plot element in Thomas Pynchon's novel
Gravity's Rainbow, which has led to some blurring of fact and
fiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel


Stephen Gates & ann Veare had children:
-------------------------------------------------
|                       |
S(1634)Gates    T Gates(1641)--------------
|                       |                 |
Gates (1667          Gates         Gates/andrus
|                       |                 |
Gates (1699)     Gates (1724)     andrus/brewster
|                       |                 |             
Gates (1745)    I Gates (1764)    brewster/cogswell
|                                         |  
Eunice Gates +(Israel 1764 above  cogswell/payne
             |                            |      
Joseph Gates + Saterlee            cogswell/pynchon
             |                            |
William Henry Gates I (1860)       pynchon/moyses
                                          |
                                   pynchon/bennett
                                          |
                                   Thomas Pynchon


It's my suspicion that the Philips in WHG's ancestry might be
r/t the Philips of Philips Electric as well....

who are relations of:

Gerard Leonard Frederik Philips (1858 – 1942) was a Dutch
industrialist, cofounder (with his brother Anton) and first
CEO of NV Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken.

His father, Benjamin Frederik David Philips (1830 – 1900) was
a banker at Zaltbommel in the Netherlands. 

He was a first cousin once removed of Karl Marx, as well as
the uncle of Frits Philips.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Philips


Lion Philips 

Lion Philips  (1794 - 1866) was a Nederlands/English trader in
tobacco, grandfather of Gerard & Anton Philips.  

Lion Philips was the son of Benjamin Philips and Lea Hartog.
Benjamin came from Dublin and later moved with his family to
Zaltbommel. Lion Philips was married to Sophie Burg Pres, the
sister the mother of Karl Marx. 

http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=nl&u=http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Philips&ei=boO_SajmMomQtQParbQv&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=4&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dlion%2Bphilips%26hl%3Den

[Hannah Bell]

42. Illinois Life Insurance Co.

Stephen Gates & ann Veare had children:
-------------------------------------------------
|                       |
S(1634)Gates    T Gates(1641)--------------
|                       |                 |
Gates                Gates             Gates/holmes
|                       |                 |
Gates             Gates (1724)         holmes/harris
|                       |                 |
Gates            Israel Gates (1764)    holmes/fellows
|                                         |
Eunice Gates +(Israel 1764)             holmes/westover
             |                            |
Joseph Gates + Saterlee                 westover
             |                            |
William Henry Gates I (1860)            westover/smith
                                          |
                                       smith/cuyler
                                          |
                                       smith/stevens*
                                          |
                                       stevens/street
                                           |
                                  justice john paul stevens




*1933 TIME

Ernest James Stevens, genial hotel man of Chicago's
hotel-&-insurance family, was arrested last week on a
charge of cospiracy to defraud stricken Illinois Life
Insurance Co. of ''more than $1,000,000." Last month
auditors learned that the sluicing of funds from
Stevens-controlled Illinois Life into Stevens-owned hotels had
cost Illinois Life $12,456,409 (TIME, Jan. 23). Ernest James
Stevens was director of the insurance company, his brother
Raymond president, his father James William chairman.

[Hannah Bell]

45. Phillips Petroleum

Stephen Gates & ann Veare had children:
--------------------------------------------------
|                       |
S(1634)Gates    T Gates(1641)--------------------------
|                       |               |             |
Gates (1667           Gates      Josiah Gates  Deborah Gates
|                       |             |               |
Gates (1699)      Gates (1724)      Gates         Standish
|                       |             |                |
Gates (1745)     I Gates (1764)     Gates          Standish
|                       ||            |                |
Eunice Gates + (Israel 1764 above)  Gates          Standish
             |                        |                |
Joseph Gates + Saterlee              Gates  Standish/Phillips
             |                        |                |
William Henry Gates I (1860)         Gates         Phillips
                                      |                |
                                    Gates     Phillips Bros.
                                      |       Founders,
                                    Gates     Phillips Petrol
                               Robert Gates,
                               Sec. Defense

[Hannah Bell]

48. Oldsmobile

Stephen Gates & ann Veare had children:
--------------------------------------------------
|                       |
S(1634)Gates   T Gates(1641)----------------------------
|                       |             |                |
Gates (1667         Gates       abigail Gates    Joseph Gates
|                       |             |                |
Gates (1699)    Gates (1724)       Fobes            Gates
|                       |             |                |
Gates (1745)   I Gates (1764)      Fobes            Morgan
|                                     |                |
Eunice Gates + (Israel 1764 above)  Mixer           averill
             |                        |                |
Joseph Gates + Saterlee             Whipple       averill +
             |                        |           Frank E.
             |                        |         Olds, musical
William Henry Gates I (1860)     Woodward +    instrument mfg
                                 Ransom OLDS
                                 Founder, Oldsmobile

[Hannah Bell]

53. "scientific american"

Stephen Gates & Ann Veare had children:
----------------------------------------
|                       |
S(1634)Gates    T Gates(1641)---------------------------
|                     |               |                |
Gates (1667)        Gates       Abigail Gates  Joseph Gates
|                     |               |                |
Gates (1699)    Gates (1724)        Fobes            Gates
|                     |               |                |
Gates (1745)   I Gates (1764)       Fobes           Brewster
|                                     |                |
Eunice Gates + (Israel 1764 above)  Mixer             Ely
             |                        |                |
Joseph Gates + Saterlee          Whipple    Day + M.Y. Beach
             |                        |     Founder, Assoc
William Henry Gates I (1860)     Woodward   Press, NY Sun
                                 & Olds              |
                                            Alfred Beach
                                   Scientific American
                                   NY subway system

[Hannah Bell]

56. behind every great fortune, a nexus of money & power.

[Hannah Bell]

54. Brush Electric survives as its own entity in the UK:

http://www.brush.eu/aboutus/operationalsites/historybem.html

Brush also owned the Cleveland OH utility Brush Electric Light & Power,
which merged with Cleveland Electric Illuminating (Cleveland General
Electric):

http://ech.cwru.edu/ech-cgi/article.pl?id=CEIC

He co-founded another company, Linde Air Products, which in 1917
became Union Carbide.

Charles & his son founded Brush Laboratories, now Brush Engineered
Materials, which was involved in crystal work for the sound/motion
picture industry & beryllium extraction for the nuclear & space
industries.

http://www.beminc.com/

Charles Francis Brush III died in 2006. NYT obit: archeologist, president of Explorers Club, Yale, army signal corps, giver of legendary NY parties with naked allen ginsberg, etc.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/nyregion/11brush.html

http://209.85.173.132/search?
q=cache:90I8NoUo8EgJ:www.nndb.com/people/158/000117804/+%
22charles+francis+brush+III%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

[truthisfreedom]

12. I'm self-made. I started with absolutely nothing and I have a pretty good business now.

And I didn't cheat anyone or screw my customers... my products have lifetime warranties and I answer every email inquiry myself, personally. I get hundreds of emails per day.

It makes me sick that so many DUers simply vent their rage at those who have made something of themselves.

I have as many as 20 employees during different times of the year. My full-timers all get free health care and I contribute matching funds to their medical savings accounts. I don't employ ANYONE under $12/hour and most of my employees are above $17/hr. All full-timers get a generous vacation, personal days, and are never denied time-off for emergencies. I constantly strive to eliminate all poisonous materials from our manufacturing process and we have giant recycling dumpsters outside our shop for cardboard and glass/plastic/aluminum. I provide a kitchen so everyone can cook healthy food at the shop and I replenish the basics (bread, butter, sandwich meats, cheese, fruit) out of my own pocket, and there's a giant fridge and separate freezer for everyone's stuff.

I've contributed tens of thousands of dollars to our most important Democratic candidates over the last two cycles. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

Yet I have to read these "eat the rich" posts and "fuck the rich" posts all the time in this forum. It makes me physically ill.

America is the land of opportunity. Seize the day, people. We're in a time of economic upheaval! Take advantage of opportunities! There are so many new needs! Keep your eyes open and take action! America NEEDS YOU!

Or in other words, let go of your hate and start plotting your success.

Or, possibly shut the fuck up.

[TreasonousBastard]

15. I hear ya. I also hear...

a lot of sour grapes, whining and jealousy from those who can't discriminate between the crooks and people who do very well because they are good at something and work hard at it.

In the grand scheme of things, is having a good fastball really worth more than being a good math teacher? Is being able to pick good stocks worth more than being able to set bricks in a straight line? Is running a company worth more than being one of the workers there? These are not unreasonable questions, but spending too much time on them leads to madness.

[christx30]

43. Well,

If you are bad at running the company, then the worker has no job to go to. Or if the guy that is running the company gets sick of the "eat the rich" or the "fuck the rich" stuff, what's to stop him from just firing everyone and going off to do something that is more fun than spending 12 hours a day nursing a business and trying like hell not to fail at it. To him, the small business owner (Who is going to be hard hit in 2011, when taxes on people making over $250,000 skyrocket) failure means loss of a job, home, and probably his family, credit, and reputation. I mean, if you were constantly told that you were evil and people wanted to take what you had, wouldn't you just love tell them all to fuck off and go away? Or would you be happy to pay the 50 to 90% that some here on DU would like for you to pay? They may be the "evil rich", but they are still human beings and there is a limit to what they will put up with from politicians before they just say "fuck it. Me and my 10,000 jobs are going to a country that has a more forgiving tax code. Good luck."
I was a worker at Dell for 12 years before I was laid off. Now, I'm making $6 an hour less than I was making at Dell. I have 2 kids and a wife and I wish like hell that I still had my old job. I don't really care about politics, or making the rich pay "their fair share", which always seems like a hell of a lot more than they are currently paying. Besides, when they do pay "their fair share", how much is it going to be? 100% of what they make? How will they have money to hire me? If Michael Dell or someone like him is paying a great deal of their earnings in taxes, how is he going to have money to expand his business and hire more people to help him do it? Further, how will it help me? Will the government hire me? I keep looking for government jobs, or rather any second job to go along with my $8 per hour tech support job, but I'm not having any luck.
Tomorrow I am going to take what is left of my tax refund and buy a 1999 Ford Taurus station wagon because I can't afford the payments on the minivan I bought when I was working at Dell.
I don't need high taxes on people that would hire me. I need a job.

[Hannah Bell]

59. atlas shrugged.

[christx30]

64. Who knows?

I've already heard about some people that have started trying to earn less so they will be under the $250,000 line. They can live just fine. But when it's people like doctors that take less patients because they don't want to pay more in taxes, it's society that suffers.
I mean... why should you work harder if what you make is just going to be snatched up by politicians. And don't give me the crap about roads and bridges either. We could easily pay for that stuff with what the government is pulling in now. It's people like the New York Borough presidents that cause the problems. They don't actually do anything, but they have budgets that allow one of them to keep a $132,000 full time architect on staff. Is that a good use of that money? If we eliminate waste and greed like that (people living high off the hog at taxpayer expense) we could help so many people and everyone would be better off.

[Hannah Bell]

66. atlas shrugged again.

the poor rich people!!!!

they're going to go to a secret hideaway & leave us all here to die!!!

stop taxing them!!!!!


silly, real rich people DON'T PAY.

[christx30]

78. You're right

they don't pay. We do. In the forms of lower wages, higher prices. Do you think they will just absorb the added costs that the government gives them? Hell no. They will just move the money into overseas accounts, removing it from the economy. Probably close the US branch of their business.

[bread_and_roses]

80. What utter nonsense

Your posts are so full of unexamined assumptions that I don't even know where to start. Chief among them is that the system we have now is immutable, always was, always will be. All that potential outsourcing, wage-suppression, price-goudging you cite is the result of policy that favors the rich at the expense of labor and the Commons, and has created the obscene and unsustainable inequality we see today.

Try reading some history, or just read Hannah Bell's posts with a crack open in your mind. Look at the tax rates under Eisenhower, even under Reagan for goddess sake. Look at other Countries. Look where your "we need the rich" has gotten us. Get this: WE don't need the rich. They don't exist without us - our Labor, our clean air, water, earth that they rape and poison and leave for us to clean up with our tax $$ while they sock away the profits they've made from poisoning the earth and exploiting the workers in "investments" that create nothing but more paper "wealth." Find out what the TOTAL tax burden on working people in your State is compared to the total tax burden on the wealthy as a % of income (in NYS it is something like 12% for the peons vs. 6% for the wealthy. Ask yourself why "wealth" should be taxed at a lower rate than "labor?"

You may think that serfdom is our only fate, subsisting on moldy crumbs falling from the tables we built and the food we grew, but inevitably even most of the serfs rise up and demand more than the scraps and bones tossed out by our "betters."

[christx30]

81. I just know

it wasn't a poor person that kept a roof over my head for the past 12 years. And I sure as hell know it wasn't some government bureaucrat either. It was a guy that wanted to make money and saw me as a way to help him. Lord knows I hated working 12 hour nights 6 days a week most of the time. I didn't have a choice in the matter either. It was either work, or find another job. And I hated being laid off even more. I'm still pissed about it. I gave 12 years of my life to that company and I'm out the door without a second's thought.
But the fact is that no one is going to make this happen for me now. No one in government is going to step in and take care of my family. Heck... we've been turned down for food stamps 5 times. I've given up crawling up to Round Rock begging for a hand from the state. I'm out there busting my ass every day to make a living so I can feed my family.
What kind of solution do you have to the problem? How would you handle it if you were in charge?

[Hannah Bell]

104. you deserve your slavery. thanks massa, for keeping a roof over my head.

you did it all for me, i worship you.

[christx30]

124. What's the difference between

slavery to a company for a living and slavery to the government because they take a huge chunk out of your paycheck?
Well, if you don't do what your boss says, he can fire you.
If you don't do what the government says, you can be imprisoned or shot.

[Hannah Bell]

126. the government works for the bosses.

[christx30]

129. Except for the bosses

who's businesses are being attacked by the government and being hit with environmental, labor, and other regulations that increase the cost of doing business, which results in people losing their jobs. I know that doesn't really matter to you. But when one of those people is me, I care.

[Hannah Bell]

131. you don't get it. the people who own the biggest businesses LIKE regulation,

most of them.

They LOBBY for them. BECAUSE THEY can afford to comply, & the smaller fry can't. IT gets rid of the competition.

The public huffing & puffing is SIDESHOW for the rubes. Which apparently include you.

Jobs are being shipped overseas because they want CHEAP LABOR. They'll use slaves if they can get away with it.

[christx30]

138. And I agree.

The big companies would use the cheapest labor they can find. Which is why a lot of our jobs are going to countries like China, which pretty much uses slave labor. Political prisoners do a lot of the work making that cheap walmart crap. Which is why we need to start hitting them hard on the diplomatic front to relax their laws and start respecting human rights. And not like Hillary "Human rights are important, but not as important as the weakened economy" Clinton.
And if the big companies like the regulation because it chokes off the little guy, then why have them? You are just helping out the big companies to the detriment of small business.
And if you hate business so much, then how do you suggest we make a living? Why go after companies like that if you depend on them? When I was working at Dell, I would never support a bill that would make building computers illegal in Texas. Why bite the hand that feeds you?

[Hannah Bell]

84. and we'll all have to sit & die, staring at their closed-down businesses. boo hoo.

[Hannah Bell]

127. they already are. they own the government. government is their employee.

it's a good-cop, bad-cop routine to fool the rubes. regulation is good for big business. eliminates the competition.

they've been moving money into "overseas accounts" for hundreds of years, & playing one territory's people off against another's to lower wages just as long & longer. 1940-1970 was the exception, not the rule.

american capital *funded* the "chinese miracle," & it worked hand in glove with government to do so.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

139. Umm, perhaps you are unaware that wages are paid with PRE-TAX income

Paying wages actually LOWERS a company's taxes. That is the great secret that the right-wing hopes you never learn.

[Dr.Phool]

85. Do you people understand "marginal tax rates"?

Anybody who tries to make less than $250k because of taxes is an asshole. Period.

If I make a million dollars. The first 20k is taxed at the same rate as someone who only makes 20k. Say the next bracket is 50k. The next 30k is taxed at that rate. And so on, up through the brackets.

The only thing taxed at the highest rate, which would only increase 4% under the plan, is anything in excess of 250k.

Now before you start whining, remember that you stopped paying SS taxes somewhere around 100k.

So, if you have the potential to make a million, but stop working at 250k because of a 4% tax increase, you're too stupid to be trusted with that kind of money and responsibility to start with.

And I don't want a doctor that dumb treating me.

[shrike]

86. Thanks

I was wondering when someone smarter than me was going to bring that up.

[Doctor_J]

87. Yes, the dim bulbs here who get their "news" from CNBC and hate radio

are really quite amusing. They talk as if someone who makes $250,001 will bring home less than someone who makes $250,000.

Furthermore, even the most brainwashed Limbeciles should be able to see at this point that 8 years of no taxes for the rich have destroyed the economy, and with it the country.

The lying elitists and propagandists in Big Media have so corrupted this country that we will literally never get back to when we were The Best. I hope I am around for the rise of the proletariat.

[WriteDown]

88. You forgot one thing though...

Bracket creep.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-bracket-creep.htm

And is someone who moves to a different state due to property taxes also to be derided?

[Dr.Phool]

91. Different issue.

The issue here is defective thinking.

[christx30]

107. So if they

Just up and doubled your taxes overnight, you would just smile and thank the government and continue working like normal? If you were personally paying 50% of what you made? You would just be happy to pay whatever they asked of you and be thankful to them for whatever they allowed you to keep?
You would not try to avoid paying taxes that you didn't have to?
I mean, what is the point in working my tail off when the government is just going to take it? Especially since they waste it in incredibly stupid ways (the Iraq war, pork barrel projects that only benefit a small number of people, vanity projects like having a highway named after a senator, ect) they don't NEED every dime that they are shaking me down for every paycheck. You want to help people? You want to force someone to work from January to July just to pay his taxes and help people, why don't you put your money where your mouth is. Let me see receipts that show in addition to charity you give more than half of your income away. You probably won't do it because you have a lifestyle that you want to maintain. And that's fine. It's your money. But just understand that there are people that feel the same way but have more money to work with. They don't like to work hard just so it will be taken from them, and wasted in stupid ways. Just picture being mugged, then the mugger just burns the money and doesn't do anything useful with your money.
And it's not "wrong thinking". You may think of employment as slavery, but it's better than slavery to the government, which is what I would call being forced to work, with little or no benefit to myself.

[bemildred]

108. If I was in a 50% tax bracket, I would be very pleased to be so well off.

I don't think there actually is a 50% (federal) tax bracket these days, but it there was, it would mean that you were making a lot of money.

[christx30]

109. There might not be a 50%

income tax, but with any of the 150 various taxes that we pay every day, it's easily 50% or more for some people.
I'm not saying that I want all taxes eliminated. I just get mad when the money that I pay in is wasted. It makes me not so keen to pay into it at all if they don't know how to use it right. And after Katrina, it was Senators in both parties that refused to give up their little pet projects to do the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast that really chapped by hide. It would be like, when I lost my job, the car breaks down, and my wife had decided to keep her gym membership and buying expensive clothes for the kids. "Honey, this stuff may be important to you, but we have some survival related stuff that is going on, so we can't afford that right now."
And you have to remember that people are going to disagree with you. You might think Castro was a heck of a guy, but there are people that didn't want to live under him, and left. You may call them traitors, but you weren't there, and you you don't know what they were going through. They didn't see that the rise of Castro would be good for them, so they left. I know that's a tangent, but it's been bugging me for months since I saw someone here talk about the expats in Miami as traitorous assholes. Some people just don't like socialism.
Taxes are the same way. If you move from, say, New York or California because of the high taxes, you aren't an asshole. You just want to enjoy the fruit of your own labor. You just don't want to work hard and see your money taken from you and wasted.

[bemildred]

110. A false hypothetical is a false hypothetical.

I don't really see what Castro has to do with it, but I can tell that you are deeply emotionally involved in this, and I certainly have no desire to defend Congress. But the issue was high marginal tax rates for people that earn boatloads of money, and I have no problem with that since we are asshole deep in debt and our economy has been fucked.

[christx30]

111. Yes we are in debt

And just like the country, my household is in massive debt. So the first thing that we did was to sit down and decide what we didn't need and eliminate it from the budget. Cell phone? Gone. Internet? Went from the higher provisioned speed to the lower one, so it's not as expensive for us, and I can still look for a job. Weekly play trip to the indoor play gym that my son has friends? Gone. Instead we go buy videos at Half-Price books (VHS of Blues Clues is $2.99). There are lots of others that I don't want to get into, but when faced with massive debt, we cut back and spend only what we need to in order to survive.
But the government is pending a hell of a lot more. First, Bush jacked up spending more than any Democratic president ever. Now Obama is doing his stimulus package which is the largest spending bill ever. We need to cut back on spending while increasing the amount of money that we bring in. We don't need to be spending even more money.
And we need to tell Congress that they need to do without their projects for a couple of years until we can get back on our feet. $800,000 for the Grammy awards? Why do we spend money on crap like that when there are people in our own country that are starving?

[bemildred]

112. Well, I sympathize, and good for you too.

I'm not doing that great either. And I don't want to defend wasteful government spending. But I think the government should be helping you and taxing very rich people, who are not in difficulties, to do it. So sue me.

[christx30]

114. Believe me

I've tried that route. About a month after I lost my job I went up to the local office with my 2 1/2 year old and my 6 month old. That was fun. Just picture a highly energized nearly three-year-old boy in a boring place like a state office and you understand my pain.
Anyway, we went up there a total of 5 times between November 13th and January 4th, because we kept getting told that we would qualify for some kind of assistance. The only thing we got was Medicaid for Nate and Lily (my kids). My wife and I got nothing, which sucks because I have an eye infection right now but I can't afford to get it taken care of, so I'm just trying over the counter drops.
Anyway, we went up there 5 times in that time and we got turned down for a lot of assistance, so I am just not going to bother any more. I'm tired of being told 'no' so I'm just going to stop asking. It's a waste of my time and gas.
But if we eliminate a lot of the waste and the corruption, then we could help people and take care of all of the other government things without raising taxes on anyone. I mean... the US takes in trillions every year. Are you telling me that that's not enough? I mean, they pass idiotic laws like the one that has closed down a lot of the second hand children's stores. A lot of them can't afford to do the testing for the lead paint, and the fines are worse. But those stores are responsible for nearly everything that my kids are wearing right now. Shirts are like $1 each and pants are $2.
It's the law of unintended consequences.

[Hannah Bell]

128. yes, let's just all sit down & decide what we "don't need" & quit spending money.

because of course the economy of a country is just like that of a household.

cut back on gov't spending in a deep recession & see what happens.

[christx30]

137. OK...

Would you support the government contributing $800,000 to the grammy awards?

[Mithreal]

98. Thanks for shooting down that foolishness. nt

[dcindian]

18. Your point is well taken.

Quote:

Or in other words, let go of your hate and start plotting your success.

But just as wrong as those you rail against.

Hard work does not automatically lead to wealth and laziness does not automatically lead to poverty.

So please stop the hate.

[truthisfreedom]

20. I'm not very hard-working. In fact, I'm rather lazy.

And I think that's contributed to my success.

Nothing in the quote you took from my post says anything about hard work or laziness. It simply says let go of your hate and start plotting your success. You need only open your eyes to need. Need surrounds us.

[Hannah Bell]

28. If we all become lazy millionaires, who will do the work?

[Mithreal]

26. NO offense but, no one in America is self-made. nt

[Hannah Bell]

27. You hobnob with Bill Gates & the Waltons? Then no one's talking about you.

[Mithreal]

32. It's so cute when the upper middle class think they are rich.

Hahaaha : ) Good one, Right on.

[acmavm]

36. You're part of that top 1%? You're suing to hide the fact that you have

secret accounts in a Swiss band to evade taxes? You're collecting a multi-billion dollar bonus from a failing institution that the government (i.e. the taxpayers) is bailing out?

If not, then why are you bitching? Why do you feel the need to whine? I don't think anyone here has ever commented on people like you (if what you say is true about what a wealthy good guy you are).

[cali]

50. Here's to you.

and thanks for having the guts to speak up in this stupid, poisonous thread. Yes, the income disparity is big time bad news. My dad who was also self-made, employed a couple of hundred people. He was a manufacturer and keenly aware of the environment and workers' rights. He never paid himself more than 10x the lowest paid worker. He instituted profit sharing. Employees had great benefits- he did stuff like buy box seats at Shea every year for employee use- and ALL employees had equal access, not just execs. He refused to manufacture for the military. And yeah, he was successful. He often said, during the seventies and eighties, that the biggest problem in this country was the growing gap between poor and rich. He supported the inheritance tax and didn't ship his money offshore.

In case I'm making him sound like some sort of saint, let me add that he was a pretty lousy parent and could be a right bastard.

Yes, a lot of the rich and Wall Street deserve every bit of excoriation they're getting. And many of them deserve to be in prison, but all people with money are not inherently evil- and gasp, all people who are poor or barely middle class, are not saints.

[Hannah Bell]

68. Only threads that rag on rich people are "poisonous".

Threads ragging on teachers, poor people, homeless, crazy people, octomoms, fat people, auto workers...all ok.


poor, poor rich people. always picked on, so few defenses.

[cali]

71. uh, I said no such thing, genius.

And it's not remotely what I believe. But don't let that get in the way of your poisonous dishonesty.

[Hannah Bell]

74. no, i said it. genius.

"poisonous"!

"dishonesty"!

don't talk bad about the rich folk. we neeeeeeed themmmmm.

[bread_and_roses]

70. It's not about sinners/saints. It's not about individuals at all. It's about systems/power

Of course not every person "with money" is "inherently evil," nor is every low-income person a "saint." So? This is not to bash your Dad, who may well have acted as ethically and responsibly as he could within the system - but it is about the system itself being rotten to the core. Just as when I buy grapes in January (here in the NE) I am participating in the exploitation of farm laborers somewhere and putting a deep carbon boot-print on the earth. Despite my act not being "evil" in itself.

In the end, paens to the rich, the philanthropist, the "self-made (no such critter, as noted by someone above) man" are nothing but an anecdotal form of promoting the "trickle-down" theory. And we're all seeing how well that's worked out.

[Mithreal]

100. Why are folks on a progressive forum promoting the self made myth? nt

[scubadude]

73. Congratulations! Where are you located, I need a job! nt

[tonysam]

141. Nope. You Aren't "Self Made."

Somebody wants what you have, and somebody has to make those goods and services which you provide. OTHER people help you make your "fortune," no matter how modest it is.

[DUlover2909]

13. Yeah man! That one singular anecdote seals the deal!

I think you need to take that kind of nonsense to another forum.:rofl:

[Mithreal]

16. Tell that to St. Peter.

Yep, the rich need more advocates especially here on DU!

No kidding, really, there are some decent rich folks? Of course there are, silly. They just don't want to sit next to you on an airplane, live in your neighborhood or attend your schools.

I kid. Please do not crush us peons.

Edited for no good reason.

[corpseratemedia]

76. actually what you said is true for a lot of the wealthy

I spent several years living in one of the wealthiest communities in the country. I could name off people who lived there and you'd know them.

Some of the attitudes toward "second class citizens" were disgusting. Words directed at middle/working class people.

They held on dearly to a lot of stereotypes regarding the "middle class" , that they were poor, stupid, they stole, etc.

And they were embarrassingly patronizing and racist to african-americans and held a special brutal contempt for Jews.

They had a whole lexicon of class distinctions that they lived for.

Some of the wealthy that I knew here couldn't function independently, and they rail on about having to pay for welfare or student loans when they couldn't lift a finger without mummy or daddy helping them. Often they had to cheat in on way or another or use people to get what they want.

Those with inherited wealth seem to come in two forms, disgusting and parasitic or normal and contribute to society.

Sorry to the initial poster of this thread but the middle and working class could afford to do a lot more 30 and more years ago but the wealthy and their deluded followers stripped us of our savings and wages to further line their pockets so now we can't do anything that the author of the piece included mentioned.

Middle/working people did not invent outsourcing.

I'd like to see wealth being created by people who do NOT lower wages, outsource jobs, offshore their income to hide paying their fair share, use slaves or slave wages through their "free trade" "un"rules...

[Mithreal]

96. I hear ya. And only the rich can afford class warfare. nt

[LiberalPersona]

17. I hate the term "self-made"

there's no such thing as a self-made wealthy person, everyone makes use of public/private property or aid (roads, electricity, loans, government tax breaks, etc) at some point. Or receives the help of labor of employees, and makes their money off the paying customer without which there would be no wealth. Or even in the stock market, playing money off predictions of the combined effort of our entire society.

[truthisfreedom]

23. To me, self-made means looking around, figuring out something that's missing, and making an effort

to add it to the equation. Simply taking the time to see what's happening around you and shifting what your activities are will get the job done.

I was flat broke before I started my business. It's truly a shoestring operation that simply got itself going, literally "bootstrapped" itself up. The reason I had time enough to get it going was that I was totally unemployed!

It took me 14 years, but I enjoyed every moment.

Take a chance. That idea you've been holding onto for years... try it!

[Mithreal]

31. That's more like observant, innovative, or entrepreneurial

Self-made is a loaded term, often used by the Rightwingers to argue for eliminating funding to the Commons.

[No Elephants]

30. Fair enough. Can you suggest a substitute term to differentiate people who

did not inherit their money from people who are wealthy solely because of trusts and other intheritance?

I totally agree with you, and I'll gladly drop "self-Made, if you give me a more accurate adjective that I can substitute.

I have worked for a lot of people with inherited wealth and a few wealthy folks who did not inherit their money. I hate stereotypes, but, in general, the two groups are very different from each other (as well as being very differnt from F. Scott Fitzgerald).

[Mithreal]

35. Good question. I will take a stab but the rightwing marketers

have sold the self-made term pretty well.

Let's see. If you own a business, then "business owner"?

I like "Successful Entrepeneur"? How about that?

"comfortable"?

You all rich folks must have magazines where they discuss these sorts of problems, no?

The rest of us are living paycheck-to-paycheck or have lost jobs and worse. Some were savers and others wasters. I wish I had rich folks' problems.

How about lucky to "live in America", "blessed", why even label yourselves with your dollar value?

[No Elephants]

60. You all rich folk? LOL. I'm not rich. I don't think any of your terms work, though.

Business owner--not necessarily either "self-made (as the term had been commonly used)" or wealthy. I "owned" 100% of a corporation once, but it consisted of me, myself and I offering consulting services. I made a living, but I never got wealthy, as most people use that word.

Successful entrepreneur-See above. Also, people can make wealth being actors, writers. painters, etc., not only in what most people understand entrepreneurship.

Comfortable--does not necessarily indicate wealth and people can be just as comfortable on inherited money as they can on money obtained any other way.

Live in America is not synonymous with monetary ealth by any stretch, nor does it connote money that is not inherited.

Blessed-see above,.

As far as rich people labeling themselves with dollar value, that is not the point. I am not rich and I find self-made wealth and inherited wealth useful terms to use when speaking or writing about certain people I imagine a lot of people do.

[Mithreal]

97. If you want to use rightwing language with or without understanding

that it promotes framed arguments for aanihilating universal support of the commons, then have at it, hoss. I just wanted to say have at it, hoss. (Thanks, see The Young Turks for the inside joke.)

You asked for terms, I gave some. Why not just stop using rightwing language? And if you do not understand what I mean, you need to do your homework as a good progressive, if you are, and learn that using the language that rightwingers use is destructive of America and progressive ideals. Do you understand the difference between saying estate tax versus death tax? This is a similar argument. If you want to know how language affects people's thinking look into what George Lakoff has written about language. He's a real scientist and a good writer too. Cheers, but only if you stop using that loaded language : )

[Mithreal]

101. No one in America is self-made, it is Republican foolishness

Cheers to you for trying to poke a hole in the myth. Of course one could list a 1000 ways and MORE why what all Americans have paid has created the conditions for success of every other American.

[DUlover2909]

118. If someone never received any public or private education,

and grew up after being raised by wolves in the forest, and then somehow invented a product that made them a millionaire, even that person would be beholden to the wolves and the consumers.

[98Beatsies]

22. Being rich in a FAIR system is great

[No Elephants]

24. First of all, baloney. In 1950, my family of 4 took a trip on a double decker Pan Am plane (later

outlawed because unsafe, now back differently engineered.) Both my parents were factory workers, earning a pittance. The trip was to visit family overseas whom they had not seen in over twenty years. Prior to commercial air travel, they could not possibly have taken off work long enough for a sea journey.

My guess is lots of immigrants saved up and did the same. Maybe the very rich used the planes purely for a thrill or for business, but they were by far not the only users of air travel.

Seond, whatever benefits the rich have "bestowed" inadvertently on the poor, the wealth going in the other direction--from the poor to those who are wealthier--is vast. Before poor people had cars, their taxes went to build roads.

In Boston a few years ago, millions were spent, nominally to re-do a park. When they finished, the park looked exactly the same, only smaller. So, why was the entire park dug up and re-done? Well, I don't know about the entire park, but the whole purpose of the project turned out to be to increase the number of docking spaces for pleasure and tour boats in Boston harbor.

And on it goes.


That said, indiscriminate bashing is always dumb. If people acquired their money honestly and are good stewards of it, etc. that is great. Sir Senator Ted Kennedy comes to mind. The man did not need to work a day in his life, but he's worked into his late seventies, literally shortening his life to speak at the DNC convention for Obama, to go to funerals of fallen Massachusetts troops and to vote on criticsl matters when the Rethugs dig in their heels. Not to mention being a father figure for his fallen brothers kids all these years. That man has more than earned his place on the planet.

Yes, the money came in part from illegal rum running during Prohibition, but Ted was not the one who broke the law.

But, please, give me a Please, give me a break about the damn benefits allegedly bestowed indirectly upon the peons by the wealthy as a class while they are busy doing nothing more productive or generous than indulging themselves and/or increasing their personal wealth k?

Gotta go throw up now.

[Mithreal]

25. BM Gates Foundation has its problems and critics too.

I'd like to see DU stop bashing all Republicans in general and focus on the evil ones. Just kidding, sorta.

I'd like to see CERTAIN DU'ers stop bashing teacher's unions and teachers in general but that's not gonna happen. Same goes for police officers whenever we hear a story of one that destroys a fellow human being.

I'd like to see DU not use obesity slurs to make fun of people. There are so many ways to make fun of Limbaugh, for example, that making fun of his weight and how he looks near death because of his weight offends me. Aren't there enough other really good reasons to dislike the man?

Not all rich folks are the same. This is a discussion board. I don't even know any really rich people. I hear they have many of the same problems people like me do. I am sorry for those rich folks whose lives have been made more difficult by the bad apples among ya. Get tough with those other rich folks, make sure they support the commons, stop calling themselves self-made, stop oppressing workers, stop regressive taxation and stop making it look like you all own the politicians or have their ear because you all are more important. Ugh, I tried. But just thinking about things like regressive taxes and estate taxes is making me mad at the ultra wealthy. I am sorry. Honest. And unless you are making over a million a year I don't think you are rich.

[Hannah Bell]

38. Re Gates:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3786267&mesg_id=3786330

[brentspeak]

34. Of course, not ALL rich people are bad. But this stupid article

selectively singles out greedy bankers and Madoff, and then lumps all other rich people together as they were all the Great Innovators and Humanitarians. The suck-up article conveniently fails to point out that Bill Gates has lobbied Congress to replace American workers with cheap-labor.

[Dr.Phool]

39. If I can find the right recipe, I'll have a home made millionaire.

I'm getting a little tired of corned beef and cabbage on St. Paddy's Day, anyway.

[No Elephants]

61. Google "recipes" and get into the kitchen and get cracking then. I'll take only 5% for

that suggestion.

The Corned beef and cabbage dish is associated with Ireland, I guess, and so is Saint Patrick. Following that reasoning, any dish associated with Ireland should be appropriate for St. Patrick's Day.

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLA_enUS290US291&q=Irish+Recipes

Bon appetit!

[Judi Lynn]

41. This is not a late breaking "news story." Give some thought to posting it

in General Discussion, or Editorials, etc.

Thank you.

[JTFrog]

47. FFS. Blow this shit out your ass. n/t

[KnaveRupe]

49. In the 50's, the top marginal tax rate was over 90%.

Clearly, even under the communistic Eisenhower administration, there were enough rich people to get commercial air travel off the ground, so to speak.

I guess that even if we were to roll back the Reagan-era tax cuts, there would still be plenty of rich people.

But there would be a helluva a lot fewer poor people.

[No Elephants]

62. Your logic is, well, not logical.

[mbperrin]

92. How about this? My accountant told me when Reagan began talking

about cutting top tax rates, that domestic oil production would take a huge dive. (We live in the middle of the Permian Basin, the birthplace of West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark crude.)

Here's his analysis:
Drilling is relatively risky, costs about $2 million per well (in early 80s). Well comes in, all is good, sell oil. Well does not come in.

Under the 70% top tax rate, you may deduct $1.4 million of that dry well. Uncle Sam is your partner in risk.

Under the 35% top rate, you may deduct only $700 thousand of that dry well. Your risk just doubled. As risk increases, investment decreases.

It all happened just as he said. Within 6 months of the Reagan cuts, the number of rigs running in the US dropped from 4000+ to under 1000, eventually to 400. Never been higher than 1200 or so ever since.

Same happened with other industries with risk as well.

High marginal rates encourage investment. Low rates discourage it.

Made sense to me then. Still does.

[bemildred]

93. Indeed, high marginal tax rates force investment.

Because investment is deductible, and profit is taxed. These weasels would not be taking their bonuses and golden parachutes if they were taxed at 90% marginal rates, they would have to find something useful to do with the money instead, like pay employees better, invest in R&D, and pay for first rate employee benefits.

[FiveGoodMen]

113. How do you figure that?

[corpseratemedia]

77. great point needs to be repeated with the "dont tax the wealthy they do everything for us" memmers

responding to post #49 knaverupe

[Mithreal]

102. Need to bring that back. Founders of this country predicted this mess. nt

[liberal N proud]

51. ::

:puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke::puke:

[sendero]

52. Another reason..

... I stopped contributing to NPR in 2002.

I have no problem with the rich per se, I just have a problem with the class warfare they have waged against the middle class for decades, and the inevitable result we are living through now.

[No Elephants]

63. To be fair, they've been more egalitarian than your post would indicate. To increase their wealth,

they've waged war against every economic class, not only the middle class.

[B Whale]

106. I have a problem with the rich per se. I think that 'the rich'

screw over more poor people than they help. That's how they got rich.

The point in the article makes my point exactly. It says cheap products for us are only possible because of the rich. That's not true, they are only possible because of virtual slave labour in China.

We get some cheap uselss crap to buy, they see their life expectancy plumment and every waking day in a sweat shop nightmare.

I don't think one counteracts the other. Behind every rich person there are thousands of poor people making him rich.

Fuck em...

[bemildred]

75. Tapeworms can help you lose weight too. nt

[madmom]

82. NO one gets rich in a vacuum!

[Javaman]

89. The rich matter...

they eat the surplus poor.

[anonymous171]

95. LOL NOT A CHANCE. nt

[ShortnFiery]

121. Most rich people FORGOT where they came from.

I have no use for the vast majority of bloated rich people. :puke:

[anonymous171]

122. I agree completely.

Many forget that their fortunes were built on the backs of the lower classes and using infrastructure that is maintained by the big bad government.

[JohnWxy]

103. LOL. NOw really,,, NOBODY IS SAYING "RICH PEOPLE ARE EVIL" BUT RICH PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE -

AND ALL PEOPLE ARE SELFISH. and if we let self-interest reign without some sensible controls we would still be living in the middle ages.

If you don't have an adequate number of people with some income to speak of (more than just enough to just survive) you will never sell enough product to build an industrial capability to produce things like cars and planes in any meaningful quantity.

The explosive growth in the economy after WWII was due to the passage of legislation which allowed workers to unionize and negotiate for better wages. The managements of all companies fought this every penny of the way. But, when millions more people started making more than just enough to survive (and more people NOT in unions got wage increases than the numbers who were union members - because of competition for workers) - this produced a growing demand for products: washing machines, vacuum cleaners, cars etc. With greater amounts of money in the hands of many more people the companies found they had much more demand for their products and they grew and the economy grew. And the wealthy (stockholders) became far more wealthy than they ever would have been if there hadn't have been increasess in wages for millions of people. And that is fine because we are in favor of those who show the hustle and smarts to produce somthing of value, getting ahead. But con-men and cheats should not get ahead.. Why?.. because they will push out the guys who want to get ahead using smarts and hustle but not by cheating.

No, let's not be rediculous. Nobody thinks the Rich are evil.

They are however, people and people have a strong tendency to let self interest get in the way of what is best for society, in the long run. But 'society' includes the rich too and they will be richer if working people can make a decent living because then there is a much stronger market and demand for the products companies want to sell. THen the rich become even richer (if they are invested in the right businesses - it still takes some smarts and more than a little hustle just to stay even.)

[B Whale]

105. Most rich people, as far as i can tell are greedy and

screw over more people than they help. And what is that bullshit about rich people and air travel.

Its an impossible argument to make. Without rich people we would have had a completely different society, politics and economy for there to be no rich people and therefore this person couldn't possibly no what this 'never-existed' system would have produced. What a pile...

[emilyg]

115. Without rich people - many of

you wouldn't have a job.

[bemildred]

116. Many of us don't, thanks to rich people.

They moved our jobs overseas, and they bankrupted the companies we worked for.

[Hannah Bell]

117. we would, actually: because if they didn't own everything, we would!

However did people get along before there were "rich people" to give them "jobs"?

your thought process is...funny.

[emilyg]

120. No one is stopping you from getting rich or

inventing something or starting a company.

[Hannah Bell]

125. you misunderstand my interest in the question. i don't care about being "rich".

i care about rich people's power to ruin other people's lives.

To ruin them economically, to send them to fight their resource wars, to brainwash them, to set them against their neighbors, their elders, their children, their best interests.

[StarfarerBill]

119. The "self-made" cease to be so...

...when they begin exploiting the labor of others.

In fact, I'd make the case that is no such thing as a "self-made" person. No one creates an idea or product from whole cloth; there were many before them who contributed, knowingly or not, to the resulting synthesis...and then there is the all-too-common thief, like Bill Gates, who simply steals ideas and patents them ASAP. Such is the reality of capitalism...

[Genoveseboy]

123. I would tax the rich heavily

It's worked in the past and we need the revenue for health care and other investments.

[KansDem]

132. Oh, I get it now! I can enjoy $20 whores...

...because the rich can afford $2,000 an hour prostitutes!

Now, it makes sense! THANKS, RICH!!! :silly:

[yurbud]

134. foundations do lovely work, but they are largely PR efforts to deflect criticism from things like

building monopolies.