Confirmed! Rich People Live Off The Work Of Others!

[OohPooPahDoo]

Now I understand your point.
Yer whining because you didn't win the sperm lottery of being born rich.
There are steps you can take so that your children win that lottery.
Those children will have to put up with jealous people like you though.

Who said I was jealous?

Unfortunately, the reality is that not everyone can be rich, because then no work would get done, and there'd be no one for the rich to live off of.

You say you're jealous...In every one of your green-with-envy posts.

Some people are rich and you're not...Get over it.

Some people pay taxes and some people don't. Get over it.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

What is stopping anyone from starting a business and being a capitalist?

The reason not everyone can live off unearned income is that in order to have profit- takers, you have to have profit-makers.

Boo ******* hoo.

Accumulate some funds for yourself and you can get in on it.

Until then, quityerbitchin and get back to work.

LOL! You don't get to be in the top 400 by simply "accumulating funds".

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

Quick! Get the torches and pitchforks! To Mr. Burns' house!

​

Maybe they should burn Mr. Burns' house.

Better yet, they should make him pay his fair share of taxes.

Yeah. "Fair share" is a bullshit term that class-envious losers came up with to justify theft.

Anyway, people like you won't go do the stealing yourself. You just elect others to hire people with guns to do it for you. I might actually respect you if you had the balls to do the dirty work yourself.

There's lots of things we don't have to do ourselves. Like build roads. Do you build all the roads you use? Its dirty work, but apparently you're fine with electing others to hire people with tools and big trucks to do the work for you.


Look at the 16th amendment. It grants Congress the power to levy a tax on income. Period. Its not theft when its Constitutional - unless of course you believe the Constitution itself to be a fascist document.


BTW, I don't know anyone who has had a gun pointed at them to force them to pay taxes. Most people just pay them. If they don't, the IRS can make them pay their taxes by taking their assets in lieu of payment. If that asset is their home, they might have to be forcibly removed, but a law enforcement officer would not point a loaded gun at them unless he had reason to believe they posed a serious threat to either himself or others.

So you're just wrong on all counts.

 

[Douger]

I got "rich" from murkins "need" to eat exotic fruit and overall stupidity and insecurity(wanting to look important ( Self Chosen).
$10.000 pet fish anyone ? It'll guarantee you a plastic trophy and a photo in an obscure ragazine.

 

[Douger]

Shout it loud enough and even the good guys believe it — MercoPress

 

[Two Thumbs]

The IRS report for the richest 400 Americans shows that only 6.5% of their income came from wages and salaries. The rest - 93.5% - came from unearned income. "Unearned income" is the profits that accrue to the rich by virtue of their ownership of things. When corporate profits, for example, go up, the wealth of the rich increases.

The rich themselves do not create those profits, though. The profits are mostly created by the people who work at the corporations - the profit "creators", so to speak. The rich benefit from the hard work of others, but they mostly don't participate - not unless they feel like, anyway.

Link: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf

Did you know that if these 400 people didn't own these businesses, the people working there may be UE instead?

Ever hear of wal mart?
Ford?

Ringing any bells?

 

[Sallow]

The IRS report for the richest 400 Americans shows that only 6.5% of their income came from wages and salaries. The rest - 93.5% - came from unearned income. "Unearned income" is the profits that accrue to the rich by virtue of their ownership of things. When corporate profits, for example, go up, the wealth of the rich increases.

The rich themselves do not create those profits, though. The profits are mostly created by the people who work at the corporations - the profit "creators", so to speak. The rich benefit from the hard work of others, but they mostly don't participate - not unless they feel like, anyway.

Link: http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/07intop400.pdf

Did you know that if these 400 people didn't own these businesses, the people working there may be UE instead?

Ever hear of wal mart?
Ford?

Ringing any bells?

Alot of them DON'T own businesses. You think Dick Fuld started Lehman? Jeff Wagoneer started GM? And no one is hauling the fellows in front of Congress like they are hauling another big loser, Corzine, for what happened to their companies.

By the way..Corzine didn't start Goldman or MF Global.

 

[Sallow]

And seriously..what has the 5 people that currently control more wealth then 90 million people, done, to "earn" it. Walmart, on the whole, has extracted wealth from America.

 

[hipeter924]

And seriously..what has the 5 people that currently control more wealth then 90 million people, done, to "earn" it. Walmart, on the whole, has extracted wealth from America.

It's just luck mainly, just as playing wall street is luck, and breaking deals with companies is luck, you can say people 'earn' stuff at the top, but they don't, they just get lucky.

It's like winning the lottery, just on a grander scale, they aren't better than other people, smarter than other people, they don't even work harder than other people, they just got luckier than other people (or otherwise manipulated/cheated the right people).

Of course I don't have anything against that as becoming rich doesn't make you a worse person, you don't lose your ethics when you earn a few billion, but unfortunately many billionaires/millionaires never had ethics or a heart to begin with aka why the lives (and salaries/wages) of so many private employees are so shit.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Who could that possibly help?

Those who speculate often do nothing else. They don't work, and then invest. They just speculate.

How about encouraging work in this country, by showing that we value work as much as we value speculation?

How did they get the money to invest to begin with?

All money comes from one place, originally: government.

And all wealth comes originally from the labor, thought and risk taking of the private sector.

The money you refer to is simply a form of currency the government provides, controls and manipulates to its own advantage.

 

[editec]

We ALL live off the work of others, of course. There isn't one person reading this who is not benefitting from the work other have done.

But those with capital also benefit from the work their capital does for them.

This is one of the DUH! posts, isn't it?

Seriously...who does not already understand this?

 

[dblack]

I'm not concerned with determining whether somebody "deserves" their income, so much as with exposing a particularly obnoxious lie - that working people live off the largesse of the rich.

By replacing it with an equally insidious lie - that profits are leached from the hard work of others? Yeah, lets avoid honest understanding of the free market, whatever we do.

 

[daveman]

The reason not everyone can live off unearned income is that in order to have profit- takers, you have to have profit-makers.

Boo ******* hoo.

Accumulate some funds for yourself and you can get in on it.

Until then, quityerbitchin and get back to work.

LOL! You don't get to be in the top 400 by simply "accumulating funds".

So you acknowledge the rich get rich by working at it.

 

[Sunshine]

The OP hinges on the conflation between the terms "unearned" and "undeserved". "Unearned" is a technical term classifying a certain kind of income and it's misleadingly named. it doesn't mean "money for nothing". It doesn't mean that those collecting said income exerted no effort or that they provided no service in exchange for their profits.

All "unearned income" means in the context of the report cited is money that comes from sources other than wages or salary.

True. I'm hoping that even with this expensive illness, I can hang onto my assets enough that my children can inherit. Now some would consider that 'unearned.' But given what my children and I ALL went through after their father's death, and given the help they have given me since I got sick, I think they have 'earned'a fair amount of what I have. And I want them to have it..

 

[Dragon]

I'm not concerned with determining whether somebody "deserves" their income, so much as with exposing a particularly obnoxious lie - that working people live off the largesse of the rich.

By replacing it with an equally insidious lie - that profits are leached from the hard work of others? Yeah, lets avoid honest understanding of the free market, whatever we do.

That's not a dishonest understanding of the market -- which is of course not free. ("Free market" is an oxymoron.)

In the production of real wealth (goods and services), the following things are required:

1) Natural resources;
2) Infrastructure;
3) Creativity and organization; and
4) Labor.

We have a system that grants ownership of the goods and services produced to those who own the infrastructure. Those who own the natural resources, provide the creativity and organization, and do the work have no ownership of the products. Profits are equal to the market value of all goods or services sold, lest the cost of the natural resources, creativity, organization, and labor needed to produce them, and less any overhead costs of the infrastructure.

It follows from the above that capitalists make their wealth by skimming off the labor (and creativity) of others, except in the rare circumstance when the owner of the infrastructure also supplies all of the labor himself. And even in that case, where the owner of the goods and services produced also did all the work to produce them, he doesn't own them because he produced them. He owns them because he owns the infrastructure used to produce them.

Why do we have a system that is organized this way, that values ownership of infrastructure and consigns labor to being a market commodity? Because the owners of infrastructure are inherently wealthy and powerful people who are able to influence the rules of the game. There is no reason it has to be that way -- and it may in fact be changing. We may not have a capitalist economy for much longer.

 

[Wiseacre]

I'm not concerned with determining whether somebody "deserves" their income, so much as with exposing a particularly obnoxious lie - that working people live off the largesse of the rich.

By replacing it with an equally insidious lie - that profits are leached from the hard work of others? Yeah, lets avoid honest understanding of the free market, whatever we do.

That's not a dishonest understanding of the market -- which is of course not free. ("Free market" is an oxymoron.)

In the production of real wealth (goods and services), the following things are required:

1) Natural resources;
2) Infrastructure;
3) Creativity and organization; and
4) Labor.

We have a system that grants ownership of the goods and services produced to those who own the infrastructure. Those who own the natural resources, provide the creativity and organization, and do the work have no ownership of the products. Profits are equal to the market value of all goods or services sold, lest the cost of the natural resources, creativity, organization, and labor needed to produce them, and less any overhead costs of the infrastructure.

It follows from the above that capitalists make their wealth by skimming off the labor (and creativity) of others, except in the rare circumstance when the owner of the infrastructure also supplies all of the labor himself. And even in that case, where the owner of the goods and services produced also did all the work to produce them, he doesn't own them because he produced them. He owns them because he owns the infrastructure used to produce them.

Why do we have a system that is organized this way, that values ownership of infrastructure and consigns labor to being a market commodity? Because the owners of infrastructure are inherently wealthy and powerful people who are able to influence the rules of the game. There is no reason it has to be that way -- and it may in fact be changing. We may not have a capitalist economy for much longer.

So no capital required at all? Do you realize how utterly ridiculous it is to propose that?

Do you realize that there are many countries with virtually no natural resources at all, yet they have become economic powerhouses?

It is unfortunately true that the wealthy and powerful do influencethe rules of the game. That's human nature, is it not? Such would be the case in ANY economic system that has any freedom and liberty at all. The problem isn't in the economic system, it's in the governing and regulating of it, which sad to say in this country has been unsatisfactory to say the least. For at last the past 150 years or so, and by both political parties.

 

[kiwiman127]

Yeah. "Fair share" is a bullshit term that class-envious losers came up with to justify theft.

Anyway, people like you won't go do the stealing yourself. You just elect others to hire people with guns to do it for you. I might actually respect you if you had the balls to do the dirty work yourself.

Find me an economists that states that income inequality is good in a capitalistic society.
You'll have a very hard time, unless you can find some biased tool.
Over 70% of the US economy is driven by consumer spending. Our economy is having a very tough time recovering from the last recession because consumers aren't spending!

Graph 1, represents the working classes share of the National Income.
Graph 2, represents the very sharp divide of income and increase of the income gap in the US.
Will someone explain how the US consumer driven economy is going to fully recover when a huge majority of the consumer class is losing expendable income to participate in the US economy because of flat wage growth that is falling behind inflation?

People calling this "class envy" have drank too much Kool-Aid based on that tired old claim. of "class envy". It's a fact that the working class has dramatically lost it's share of the National Income. It's also a fact that the National Income has grown. One would think that the working class would at least stay even regarding their share of the National Income but it hasn't. And because the working class isn't happy about it,,it's "class envy". Some people are really naive.
The working class is supposed to be good little workers and just be happy that they have been factually losing out in the US economy. Yeah, that's the ticket!

So what's your solution? Using the tax regime to "balance out" class disparities?

The best method is expanding education/training many more working class people so the US can compete on world stage, particularly the Pacific Rim countries. Not focusing on training our workers is a big reason other countries are within replacing the US as the world's biggest economy. Our competition has better trained and more educated workforces.

Also, the record income gap has been caused by an element of greed. If one looks at the longterm income gap, it had been at a fairly consistent trend for decades but in the mid-90's expanded sharply. Why?

 

[kiwiman127]

Chart of the Day

 

[Dragon]

So no capital required at all?

If by "capital" you mean "money," that is merely a token of exchange. Money is used to acquire all of the above requirements of production: natural resources, infrastructure, creativity and organization, and labor. It is still the owner or owners of the infrastructure who owns the goods or services produced.

Do you realize that there are many countries with virtually no natural resources at all, yet they have become economic powerhouses?

Yes, but that has no bearing on what I was saying. In most cases, the company producing the goods and services does not own the source of the natural resources it needs to do so. It purchases them instead from others who do own those sources. (The company or corporation is what I mean by "infrastructure" here.)

It is unfortunately true that the wealthy and powerful do influence the rules of the game. That's human nature, is it not?

Of course. It's also human nature to physically attack someone who offends you, and to steal something that's easily accessible. And many other undesirable actions. We have laws and customs to discourage that sort of thing, though.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

We ALL live off the work of others, of course. There isn't one person reading this who is not benefitting from the work other have done.

Uhh, no. I live off my own work. I have a tiny unearned income from investments, but that's all for retirement.

But those with capital also benefit from the work their capital does for them.

LOL! Capital can't do work - only people can. DUH. When's the last time you set a pile of money down on the floor and it cleaned your house for you?