What is the FUNDAMENTAL thing that separates the thinking of the ULTRA-weathy

[Mind_your_head]

from the rest of people?

I'm probably not going to 'explain' my question very well here, but here it goes.....

The ULTRA-wealthy don't have any day-to-day skills (probably). They can't cook, fix things, haul stuff, watch/teach young children, paint, change the oil in a car, know how to send a fax, register a domain name, build a website, etc.

What 'good' are they? Oh....they *fund/allot* money and pay people to do those things for them....when they have ABSOLUTELY "no clue" what's involved/how much work it is/how much skill one must have in order to do any of these things well.

These lazy creeps ask, no DEMAND, that we do these things FOR THEM (just b/c they have the fiat money). And they have absolutely NOTHING to offer ~ many don't even show their faces ~ except (air quotes " ) "they have the money" ( end air quote).

[Swamp Rat]

1. Gated communities and armed guards, and the ability to commit crimes and get away with it.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

2. Are you suggesting we breed them for livestock and emerge at night from our

subterranean burrows to harvest them?

HG Wells made the same point in The Time Machine

[emilyg]

3. Gates is ultra rich - I think he has a brain and skills.

[parasim]

8. Yes, he certainly has that.

He has the brain and skills to rip off other's ideas and make a tidy profit off of them.

[Truthiness Inspector]

4. How do you suppose most of them got wealthy?

By doing nothing and knowing nothing? It just happened magically?

[parasim]

9. They got wealthy by understanding how to manipulate people to make money.

Changing a flat tire? Fixing the shutters? Changing the oil?

Since most of them were brought up in ultra-wealthy homes to begin with, they learned that all you have to do is pay people to do those kinds of chores for you.

[Truthiness Inspector]

19. So...

A guy who makes a business of chaging flat tires, fixing the shutters, or changing the oil gets repeat business. Because he did it himself and did a good job. Then his business takes off, and he opens other stores, employing others. And so on. Next thing you know, he is rich...and pillaried by some for hard and smart work.

[Radical Activist]

25. lol

No one becomes a billionaire that way. The ultra wealthy are the people who finance the hard worker you're talking about to expand his business. If he's very lucky he might become a small time millionaire at best. People don't become billionaires by being good at physical labor. That's extremely naive.

[Truthiness Inspector]

26. Ok

I'm not going to argue with you since you have it all figured out. People get wealthy by doing nothing, by being useless, etc. If that floats your boat, knock yourself out. Bitching pays much higher dividends...

[zagging]

27. But that's not what he said...

I think it was more along the lines of these guys:

http://www.online2college.com/online-college/billionaires-success-without-college.html

It can and does happen.

[Truthiness Inspector]

29. Did you not read the OP?

Take the OP for what it's worth, which is not much.

[zagging]

32. I read it, but I misunderstood

Eat the rich.

[Mind_your_head]

34. Interesting list

Some people consider those people (well, men.....there are no women listed there hmmmmm) as thieves.....opportunists.


Which makes me think of a question.

What's the difference between a thief and an opportunitst?

What if you "take" an idea from someone who doesn't have the capital to advance that idea properly? And you don't pay him for it? Or ask his permission?

It's "all good", right?

[zagging]

38. That's what patents and copyrights are for

I didn't pass judgement on any one of those non-women, hmmmmmm. I googled it and posted it as a reply to the conjecture that the ultra-wealthy exclude entrepreneurs and hard working people.

[Mind_your_head]

39. What is your opinion of companies who buy patents and copyrights

and ideas and technologies that would advance "humanity" at large, but would hurt *special interests* in the short term. And those entitties have the power to "buy and shelve" FOREVER that knowledge/technology.

What's your *take* on that?

[zagging]

40. Do you mean...

...that one should be forced to surrender the contents of ones mind for the good of humanity? No.

Instead of playing cat and mouse, you could just tell me which "non-woman, hmmmmmm" on the list you have a problem with and we could discuss it.

[Mind_your_head]

10. Inheritance and Legacy

I'm talking, as mentioned in the OP, the ULTRA-wealthy. The top 1%'ers.....which in a short while, through the *miracle* of "compounding interest" will soon be the top 0.5%.

You *do* appreciate the 'miracle of compounding' and how you who only have 'minor wealth' will NEVER be able to compete with the ULTRA-wealthy of which I speak, right?

[Canuckistanian]

14. There are millions who "know things" and "do things"

But the OP asked - why these particular people?

I'll tell you why - because of knowing how to con people in legal ways and legacies of wealth that allowed them to do it.

It's so bloody obvious now.

Name me ONE billionaire who WASN'T a master of wheeling and dealing - or knowing what to kiss - and when.

[zagging]

18. Right

Name me a plumber, dentist, or construction contractor who doesn't try to master same.

[gravity]

21. Warren Buffett

and the founders of Google.

You can make a lot of money being honest, if you can come up with a cool idea for a business and are lucky.

[izquierdista]

37. Balzac said it best

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”

[coalition_unwilling]

47. I prefer "All private property is theft," as attributed to

the 19th-century French anarchist Proudhon.

[bertman]

5. I don't know any "ultra-wealthy" so I don't know what they can or cannot do.

I do have some wealthy, yes rich, friends who can do some of the things you describe. And they are very liberal people who are compassionate and generous.

Just sayin'.

[emilyg]

15. Your sayin' right.

[napi21]

6. Actually that's not true in many cases. I suppose it depends on

what you mean by ultra wealthy. I've worked for several multi-millionairs who did many things for themselves. They were all very logical, common sense people. No...they didn't change their own oil in their cars, but they mowed their own lawns, hooked up their own electronic equipment, did their own cleaning, and did their own wash.

I think a lot depends on how someone gets their wealth. If they were born into a very wealthy family, and had maids & nanny's their whole lives, you're right. Most likely they can't relate to the ave. person, but if they were born middle class, worked hard, and in most cases got lucky too, most don't forget what average life is like.

[anigbrowl]

13. I'll second that

I know a number of uber-wealthy people. Some are dysfunctional nitwits, some are very good people who look for ways to improve the world and are grateful for their good fortune. Sometimes you find both in the same family. Just like you do in every other economic stratum.

[zagging]

22. I'll third that

I know some.

[gravity]

7. They know how to make money

Assuming that they are new money. You have to have real skills to run a successful business, and most people don't know how to do it. Most wealthy people create it honestly too, so they believe they deserve everything they got.

If there is a problem, it is probably the tax code favoring the ultra rich and the increasing barriers to upward mobility, which separates the wealthy from the rest of the world and creates a false sense of entitlement.

[leftstreet]

11. They dehumanize the working classes n/t

[bertman]

50. The quote-working classes-unquote already do enough to dehumanize themselves.

We don't need any help from the ultra-wealthy.

I've been working for someone either part-time or full-time since 1959. During that time I have come to realize that many of the average working class Joe's and Jill's out here are ignorant and malicious assholes who do not give a damn about anything but themselves and their own desires.

I have seen people sabotage equipment so they did not have to work. Never mind that the bus they sabotaged was supposed to pick up 63 people during rush hour who were waiting at a bus stop to go to work. Joe Asshole wanted an extra hour of coffee break while the mechanics came out to "fix" his bus.

Or how about the workers who stole thousands of dollars of merchandise from the local, family-run business because they considered it a "fringe benefit" of working at a company where the owner trusted them and did not hover over them every moment.

Or how about the woman who has been on full disability for years because she has a back injury she allegedly sustained at work. Meanwhile, she can garden, mow the grass, lift heavy boxes, do anything that the average person can do, but she's now sucking on the public tit because she thinks she's entitled to rip ALL OF US off, and she doesn't want the HASSLE of a full-time job.

Let's not forget the supervisor who gives the women on his shift the "option" of having sex with him or being fired.

There are millions more examples of dehumanizing actions that are being performed by working class people, leftstreet. Do you think they were caused by the ultra-wealthy?

[GoddessOfGuinness]

12. They have a sense of privilege...

And the "privileged" have the money to convey to the masses via advertising, (which can be in the form of religion, movies/TV shows, literature), that this is as it should be.

It's not unlike the French aristocracy prior to their revolution.

We would all do well to consider what happened then; but we don't like to learn from history.

[crim son]

16. I'm not sure they have "nothing" to offer.

What separates them from the rest of us, I think, is that their money enables them to negotiate with relative ease the troublesome aspects of life, whether it's cooking an excellent meal or finding a trophy spouse. Ultra rich people literally have control over virtually everything they encounter. Hard to imagine.

[ColbertWatcher]

17. I think the dissonance is not between people who work and people who are rich.

Some people who are rich (or even ULTRA rich) might have worked at some point in their lives. It's when people do nothing to accumulate their riches. The problem is between people who work for their money and people who don't work for their money--the investor class.

[anonymous171]

20. Unless they generated all of their wealth by themselves (not by ineheritance): Money.

[Double T]

23. The ULTRA-wealthy have learned how to screw the rest of US..........

out of our money and pittance of wealth, one way and the other. The ULTRA-wealthy do it without a second thought and believe ALL THE WEALTH should be their's and their's alone.

[Warpy]

24. I've met a few and found them affable but clueless

and woe be to anyone who tries to educate them.

Their interest lies in the continued pleasantness of their surroundings and does not extend beyond them. They will employ platoons of people to make sure those surroundings are paid for and maintained.

They will be very generous to you if they like you, but don't try to tell them what you actually need. They enjoy surprising people with gifts but detest being told what to give.

Funny, I found the older the money, the more threadbare the antiques. Doing without a piece of furniture for the short time it would take for a restorer to do some work on it would make their surroundings less pleasant, I guess.

I enjoyed doing things with some of them like yachting and fine dining, but the conversational wit was supplied by myself. It's why I was there, as entertainment.

Eventually I moved on. I'm sure they did, too, although they're living exactly the same way with someone else to supply conversation.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

31. One thing I noticed about the super-rich at Yale was that

they dressed in odd combinations of clothes (a patchwork skirt, a football jersey, and expensive boots, or two old-style house dresses of different lengths worn on top of each other, topped with a genuine Fair Isle sweater). The preppy look, which was well-known at the time, actually seemed to be favored by the next rung down on the social ladder.

[grasswire]

33. I knew someone who worked with Eunice Kennedy Shriver...

...in D.C. She said that Shriver would be mistaken for a bag lady who had gotten lucky in a Dumpster dive in a good neighborhood; she wore very unusual things to the office.

[Warpy]

35. The preppies were the upper middle class kids

who were destined to be employed making sure the money kept rolling in.

Wealthy kids dressed, er, creatively. The clothing was always top quality but the combination was often bizarre. This carried through to adult life.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

36. And one item was always exceptionally expensive

just so observers could tell that they weren't REALLY homeless.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

28. That's what I've heard from people who have first-hand experience

with the super-rich, that they are utterly helpless with practical matters.

It's like what Michael Parenti said about the plantation owners in the pre-Civil War South. They did no work. The men gambled, hunted, drank, visited brothels, and occasionally rode around the plantation to see how things were going. They hired overseers rather than dealing with the field hands themselves. The women embroidered, played the piano, read novels, and visited one another. They didn't even raise their own children, who were tended from birth by slave women.

The slaves did all the field work, all the repair work, all the construction work, and all the cooking, child care, and housecleaning while their owners sat around amusing themselves.

Yet visitors from the North or overseas reported that one of the plantation owners' favorite topics of conversation was how "lazy" their slaves were.

[Journeyman]

30. I work for one of the wealthiest people in California, inherited wealth, generations old. . .

I don't know what skills this person may or may not have, however, they fund numerous life altering institutes, medical organizations, and scholastic endeavors, have consistently supported Democratic ideals and candidates, and have, on numerous occasions, expressed their distaste for BushCo and all the class-conscious choices the Republicans favor.

As with most of the opinions we form in life, I guess the particulars are hewn by our experiences.

[earth mom]

41. The problem with most people in this country is they think that "someday" they will be rich

so they idolize and worship the rich and excuse them of their crimes and their dirty rotten behavior.

Once the masses realize and accept that they will never be rich themselves, then it becomes easier to clearly see the rich for what they are: Greedy, rotten, dishonest bastards who have become wealthy by exploiting the masses.

Once the masses realize the extent to which they have been used and manipulated by the rich, then the class war will truly be ON.

And the rich had better watch their backs.

[Sanctified]

42. You obviously don't know any wealthy people.

Every person I have ever met that had money was self made, hard working and extremely brilliant. I actually try to model my work ethics after a guy who makes more money in one hour than I will make all year, the guy is up every morning at 5:00 AM and answers every phone call he receives, if I had half his brilliance and work ethics I would be a millionaire for sure.

[Kip Humphrey]

43. A huge sense of self-entitlement with no sense of the human condition.

[Thothmes]

44. How many Ultra-wealth do you know that

fit this premise, or are you taking a wild ass guess? Even if they do not know how to change a tire, so what. I know a lot of working stiffs, that cannot change a tire, or the oil in their cars. I know working women that cannot cook to save their lives. I have known a whole hell of a lot of working people who's kids are FUBAR. So what.

[Freddie Stubbs]

45. A lot of poor poeple lack basic life skills as well

[mwb970]

46. "Entitlement" popped into my mind.

A sense that they are owed a life of luxury. Also, deep contempt for the "little people" (see Leona Helmsley), meaning the bottom 99% of Americans.

[Lyric]

48. Maybe we should all stop doing business with them

and do business only with each other.

But that would never happen. Prisoner's gambit.

[leftofthedial]

49. they're parasites

we're hosts

[LanternWaste]

51. No relevant differences...

No relevant differences IMHO. The rich, like the poor are simply people-- people for which I posses neither the wit nor the wisdom to judge their worth.

Although I suppose were I to actually judge an ultra-wealthy individual, I can only hope I'd judge them on their merit, as it seems that the more we judge a demographic most have little actual knowledge of, the more we unwittingly illustrate our own jealousies and covetousness natures.

[Bill McBlueState]

52. I'd give you a load of anecdotal horseshit to support my opinion

but that tactic is getting pretty stale on this particular thread.