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What is your view on the Occupy Wall Street Protests
This is EGO talking. You being separate of everyone else. I believe that to be the main philosophical difference between those believing that they 'deserve' everything and others who believe they have 'earned' everything and the flavors in-between.
Read the book Outliers and tell me that you don't somewhat agree with the premise that due to our society enabling us in a certain way allows us to create or build upon the shoulders of giants.
I am guessing you are white, American and proud of it! That is great, but I pity you if you were born black, Haitian and who knows how proud you would be.
Your daddy's sperm was lucky enough to land an Egg. Your dad happened to be white and in the USA when that happened. That alone has set you up to be in the top 1% of the world just as a platform to springboard.
I put this challenge to all you 'anti-taxes', GO-REPUBLICAN BILLIONAIRE mindset.
Add up your balance sheet. And don't over-evaluate your old furniture, and clothes and your business if you have one. Be realistic. Now, this is strictly MY OPINION, but if that does not total an amount greater than $5M then you have failed. You are a welfare recipient of all the billionaires and truly wealthy people.
If you do not meet that guideline that you are a recipient of the benefit of these wealthy people and I am sad to say you are a welfare candidate. You have failed to be in the top % of American's and have absolutely no excuses or reasons why that is the case. Your choices have taken you to this place and I am sorry to say that you are POOR.
Now, take a Haitian person who moves to the United States (legal/illegal whatever) and earns 24K per year. That person is now RICH among the socialogical similarities and would not be considered a poor person. But they get welfare from the US and use our schools and other things like roads etc..
My point is that when people make the argument of "GO RICH PEOPLE GO!" you are right, those who choose to be rich will be rich but it is all in context.
For example, Why is Carlos now the Richest man in the world. Is it truly because he is the smartest, most capable, best character person in the world. Does he deserve those riches, "Yes, he worked for them". Did he?
Or did all the people who needed a job build that up? Did the bribing of government officials allow him to create the massive wealth he has created and continues to create?
Did Bill Gates create all his wealth? Did he still the GUI from Steve Jobs and co.? Did Steve Jobs still the GUI from Xerox? Did Xerox steal technology or stand on the giants of others?
Is it ok to USE and throw away people and value money higher than organic things?
To me, people who make the argument that Money is more important will finally realize something when they finally pass on. We are all the same, some with mental inabilities or limits, others with corrupt absolutinism etc..
Spend some time on the other side of the world, take away all your 'physical' objects and go to a place where white people are not 'kings' and see how they treat you. How they want to force you to feel, how they do not want you to succeed and why you don't think that is fare.
"Why would I do something like that!"... None of us are right, none of us are wrong, just a different perspective and only education will show both sides of a coin. Objective education that is.
I disagree with you. Yes, there are people who are getting more and more socialist. No doubt, but there were these people since before the Constitution was written.
If you remember, that is where we all started! Villages/tribes.... We had a chief, a medicine man, and a bunch of girls with no tops on! wooohoooo
Anyways those were the days where getting an infection in the foot could mean death and our life expectency was 26 years old! haha
So we have evolved which is great. But, I do personally do not believe that unbridled capitalism is good for anything long term, only good for those with an embedded gene derived through your ancestry that says, "I need to succeed and having wealth is important to me!".
I have worked with so many poor groups/people in the past. They all have different views (much like billionaires). To stereotype all of them is pretty crazy in my opinion.
Should everything be left up to capitalists. I can tell you that if that was the case, we would all be living in Rockefeller/Carnegies subdivisions/schools/universities and the states would probably be renamed after all the children!
Go find a homeless person, and just start talking to them. Find out how they think, why they think the way they do. What you will find is the invisible barriers scarring their brain from being like you or me. Is it that we should just throw these people away in our society, maybe put them to sleep?
Or is it the lazy bags who take up all the welfare benefits. Yes, those will always be the evil culprits. Much like there are with the rich (insider trading, white collar crimes to be never caught, bribery etc..).
I do not believe all those people camping out to be extremists in distributing the wealth. They are nothing more than people who don't want the bankers to create an unsafe and immoral atmosphere.
LOL, just for the record I am not white or anything close to it. Nor am I one of those minorities that can 'pass' for being white so that others might assume they are so. I did not grow up privileged or in a nice neighborhood. My schools sucked, and when I got to college I had to compete against a lot of other people who spent their entire lives in better schools than me. I am still not even remotely close to being wealthy btw.
But about your post, I am not following how it relates to what I said? I said that it is not 'the system' that is responsible for one's prosperity. It seems the proof for that is the fact that throughout civilizations, there have ALWAYS been wealthy people. Before there were ever schools, police or anything. Even as society becomes more civil, STILL, the majority of people are not wealthy.
I reckon its like anything, there are certain percentages of the way things just work out. I.e. there are about equal men to women in the world. A certain percentage of people will score better on tests than others. A certain percentage of people are faster than others. The percent of wealthy people is probably another one of those things.
My second point is that people who do achieve wealth don't owe 'the system' anything more than anyone else who may have benefited from it does. They owe their fair share to it.
It's like that quote from Elizabeth Warren (running for senate) who said:
She seems to go so far as making us into two classes of citizens, and that for some reason wealthy people don't pay into the roads, schools or any other public resource. Which is a ridiculous assertion.
My point..... Let's say Bob goes to a public school, uses public roads, JUST LIKE EVERYBODY else. Let's say he then gets a job, and pays taxes just like everybody else. Then maybe one day he gets wealthy by starting a business. At that point, he is STILL paying personal taxes, his business pays taxes..... so my point is that he is paying to 'the system' just like everybody else. 'The system' didn't give him anything special or above and beyond what anyone else got.
I agree with you COMPLETELY. I think we are on the same side of the coin, but maybe on opposite ends of the same side.
To me what makes the most sense is 'paying it forward'. I have met billionaires (2 of them) and several 100M+ people. What I see is that they want to 'horde' their wealth and keep in the family. To me I do believe after one's lifetime, why not redistribute most of it?
Why does one family get to keep it? That is what bothers me as I have dealt with trust fund babies galore and it annoys me to know end. Talk about a bunch of entitled dipshits who have never worked for anything in their f-in lives except maybe 15 years at University so they can get all the extended degrees to add to their pedigree! Yuck!
I have had some good money before, not near my goal, but at the end of the day, it will go to those that don't have the same roads, schools and color that I was luckily born with.
There are 'evil' people who think distribution and equality is necessary and those people are crazy. But, I believe when you read the papers and watch the news, they KNOW that this is what gets people upset/tuned-in, so that is why they show those idiots! If they showed regular people just saying, "Hey, I don't like having to bail them out and I want them to complete many of the Dodd-Frank reforms as promised" then they would get little attention.
I am happy you are a person of color and have chosen to dig deep and not let that burden sit on you. Living in Hawaii has enlightened me to racism and I can tell you I never understood it until I was the minority. Now I respect it immensely and appreciate the differences in all of us whether it be race, religion, creed, whatever...
We'll I think i may have identified where we differ. And that is I don't think someone else should be 'forced' at gunpoint to give up something they have earned. And that's exactly what it is when you do it by government mandate. Every person should have the same expectation to their private property. It is unfair to simply look at another person and say, "make them foot the bills so I don't have to."
As for leaving money to your heirs, imo no matter how much of a brat they may be, if that is where the dying person wants their money to go, that's where it should go.
I am all for paying it forward. It is a wonderful thing when done willingly. We call that 'goodwill' or 'charity.'
Imagine this scenario with Bob and Larry........
Larry is in need, Bob needs help. Bob genuinely wants to help this person. He does so. At that point there is an exchange of gratitude and well being. Bob feels good for having helped somebody. Larry feels humbled and grateful that someone did something nice for him. Both parties walk away feeling good about that transaction.
Imagine this scenario where a politician steps into Bob and Larry's situation......
Larry is in need. A politician tells Larry that if he votes for him, he will use the government to take Bob's property and give it to Larry. The transaction is complete.
Now instead of Larry and Bob walking away satisfied..... Bob is pissed because someone took his property from him in a different way than someone else. Larry is pissed because he now feels ENTITLETED to that money, and no matter the amount he will still likely feel like he should get more. Now though, Larry is now grateful to the politician. The politician is the only person who gets to walk away gaining something, as he got to distribute someone else's hard work and take credit for it.
That exchange of gratitude and goodwill is nowhere to be found.
Well, that is the main difference. You and I are brothers. You may not be white, I may be of German descent, but I am sure our lines have crossed somewhere. WE are all brothers and sisters.
My family is about the most gawd-awful bunch of drug addicts and trailer park trash you will ever meet. Gangsta's and I am the only one in my family that hasn't been to prison!
So... Maybe this helps me understand even more clearly that no matter how f-ed up we all are, at the end of the day, we are all family. So 'taking' is just distributing it to brothers/sisters and future family members.
If you think in distinction, then yes, I agree with you.
I speak to homeless people every week. I have a non profit where we feed around 120 homeless guys each week and we partner with another group to get them off the street get job training etc.
As a society we should help others but the government mandating it is wrong imo. Plus the government is very inefficient at what they do and do not distribute to the real needs very well. The system is so gamed it is ridiculous. It is quite easy for these guys who are able bodied and able minded to get declared mentally disabled and get a monthly government check. It does not help these people become productive in life and leads to a perpetual welfare mentality. There are those on the streets who are truly crazy and need some serious help still others whose circumstances placed them there but they don't want to be on the streets. But it is surprising how many on the streets choose to be there. That being said I try not judge and just do what I can to help. I don't say this to toot my own horn I say to let you know where I am coming from.
I am sure some of the liberals on this board will fall out of their seats when they read this. Just hard to fathom a conservative tea party leaning futures trader could actually have a heart.
But that is not what these protest are really about. These protesters are not trying to be advocates for the homeless. They are advocating for themselves. They feel like it is just not right for someone to and have more than them. They by and large want the government to take from those who have and give it to them.
"The day I became a winning trader was the day it became boring. Daily losses no longer bother me and daily wins no longer excited me. Took years of pain and busting a few accounts before finally got my mind right. I survived the darkness within and now just chillax and let my black box do the work."
That is great!!!! I agree the system is abused, but I would say it is even on both sides... Less government is good, no doubt, but how do you create less government and still control the other side of the fence from abuse?
I know I have so many 'friends' who if there were no laws would basically do anything except maybe rape, murder etc.. To me, that requires government. We will not fix the solution on this thread. Good to know where you are coming from, but disagree that people just want a handout. Poor people worker harder in my mind than do the uber-rich.
And how exactly do YOU know what these protests are about? From what the protestors are wearing and how old they are? Because they look scruffy compared to the people you play golf with? Because you can tell by looking at them on TV that they are self serving parasites, unlike the Banksters and JOB CREATORS who are Doing God's Work®?
You know what? Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winning economist, has endorsed the protests. I am sure you are a lot smarter than he is, so I will just accept your judgments without question.
You have failed to be in the top % of American's and have absolutely no excuses or reasons why that is the case. Your choices have taken you to this place and I am sorry to say that you are POOR.
