There are millions of people working multiple part-time jobs and living in rented trailers who will hear some billionaire's sob story about how the evil Demoncrats are coming for his money, and those impoverished souls will side with the billionaire. After all, asking him to pay 2% of his net worth above $500 million is exactly like the government confiscating your trailer AND your tattoos. And you wouldn't want that, now, would you?
The number of lottery tickets sold nationwide, when it would be about equally productive for people to take that money and set it on fire, is just one indication that too many of our fellow citizens identify upwards.
I had two guys who worked for me who lived in trailers and were adamant that the Death Tax be repealed. They were convinced that the government was going to force their families to sell everything to pay the Estate Tax.
Many think they're temporarily inconvenienced millionaires; still others suffer Ralph Cramden syndrome and believe they're just one lucky break away from being Bill Gates. But far more prevalent and damaging is the profound ignorance created by conservative mal-information campaigns. Did you know that 57% of the entire population pays no taxes? Joe Average reads that and he's outraged because Joe pays taxes--lots of taxes! How do these people get away with paying no taxes?!?! The taxes these people aren't paying are federal income taxes because they don't make enough money--just like Joe. But Joe doesn't know that, so Joe will happily vote for anyone who says he's going to make those shirkers pay up! Flat tax!
I think it's worse than that: they don't really believe that they'll ever be rich, but they believe that the only way their small bit of job and property can be secure were if the entire wealth of the billionaire were absolutely untouchable, and that even if this isn't exactly so it would still be _wrong_ to touch the billionaire's stash.
Won’t Someone Please Think Of The Billionaires doesn’t have much of a ring to it, but I expect to see something like it on a bumper sticker or T-shirt in 2020.
In Which Yet Another Crack-Brain'd Billionaire Wants To Turn The USA Into A Private "Hunting The Poors" Preserve, Sentiments Be Damn'd, Part The Way Too Numerous To Mention
Like that scene in Catch-22 (the movie, at least). Buck Henry as Col. Cathcart. Some schmuck (Yossarian?) asks him, with all their power, what do they want from the poor fools whom they send on the dangerous missions? We're risking our lives! What else do you want from us? "We want you to like us."
Cooperman likes to think of himself as a measured, even-handed guy who just happens to have gotten rich by making lots of money producing not a damn thing. (Fun with math: Cooperman is worth $3.4 billion. You, too, could be worth that if you started making a million dollars a month in 1736.) To show how bipartisan and unbiased he is he peppers his "letters" with phrases like "class warfare," "soak-the-rich," and "bloated entitlement programs."
Or, "Your villification of the rich is misguided, ignoring, among other things, the sources of their wealth" -- yeah, innovations like credit default swaps, insider trading, rigged Abacus deals, or, say, Daddy's real estate fortune.
Regarding Warren, he told Politico that all he wants to do is "elevate the dialogue" because "this is the fucking American dream she is shitting on." At least he didn't bring up Steve Jobs, the perennial poster-boy for billionaires, who could at least be said to have actually produced something.
That's a hefty upgrade Cooperman has given the American Dream. It used to be "home ownership," which itself is pretty far out of my reach here in Los Angeles. But now I'm supposed to Dream about "being absolute monarch of an aristocratic society in which millions of my fellow Americans live to bask admiringly in my benevolence"? Eesh, I should have stayed in school! (I did stay in school.)
Only Champagne Socialists Indulging in the Politics of Envy criticise Billionaires who Care, I know. But after a glass or three of Prosecco, I just can't seem to help myself.
I wish someone (I'll volunteer if I can bring along a few friends) would hold down Cooperman and read to him Chapter Four of Dean Baker's "Rigged," on waste in the financial sector (*cough* hedge funds *cough*) complete with charts and graphs and footnotes showing how good it would be for the economy to eliminate that waste - $460-636 billion estimated in 2015, no doubt even more now. These guys don't produce anything except fees for enabling transactions that could be carried out more efficiently without their skimming. Far more than Obama ever did, Warren has their number and they know it. I hope his tears reflect his inner conviction that the day is coming when he and his fat cat buddies get regulated down to size.
Most hedge funds are shit investments. The vast majority underperform the market. Many studies over the last 20 years have shown that the greatest hedge-fund managers are not nearly as good as simply throwing darts at the WSJ stock listing page once a year.
So why do rich (and supposedly savvy) people hand over vast sums to hedge-fund assholes? Because the successful hedge-fund assholes make lots of money FOR THEMSELVES while convincing fund members that, someday somehow, you might get a taste of this. By the time your investors start to wise up, you're a billionaire and that OBVIOUSLY makes you a genius. Cue the next round of suckers, er, investors.
It is sad that this rings true. I feel like those characters in John Carpenter's They Live who put on the glasses and see the aliens for what they are.
There are millions of people working multiple part-time jobs and living in rented trailers who will hear some billionaire's sob story about how the evil Demoncrats are coming for his money, and those impoverished souls will side with the billionaire. After all, asking him to pay 2% of his net worth above $500 million is exactly like the government confiscating your trailer AND your tattoos. And you wouldn't want that, now, would you?
The number of lottery tickets sold nationwide, when it would be about equally productive for people to take that money and set it on fire, is just one indication that too many of our fellow citizens identify upwards.
I had two guys who worked for me who lived in trailers and were adamant that the Death Tax be repealed. They were convinced that the government was going to force their families to sell everything to pay the Estate Tax.
Many think they're temporarily inconvenienced millionaires; still others suffer Ralph Cramden syndrome and believe they're just one lucky break away from being Bill Gates. But far more prevalent and damaging is the profound ignorance created by conservative mal-information campaigns. Did you know that 57% of the entire population pays no taxes? Joe Average reads that and he's outraged because Joe pays taxes--lots of taxes! How do these people get away with paying no taxes?!?! The taxes these people aren't paying are federal income taxes because they don't make enough money--just like Joe. But Joe doesn't know that, so Joe will happily vote for anyone who says he's going to make those shirkers pay up! Flat tax!
Hey man, what else have they got?
Steinbeck's line about most poor Americans thinking of themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires still rings true.
I think it's worse than that: they don't really believe that they'll ever be rich, but they believe that the only way their small bit of job and property can be secure were if the entire wealth of the billionaire were absolutely untouchable, and that even if this isn't exactly so it would still be _wrong_ to touch the billionaire's stash.
Won’t Someone Please Think Of The Billionaires doesn’t have much of a ring to it, but I expect to see something like it on a bumper sticker or T-shirt in 2020.
Fuck, and I cannot stress this enough, this guy.
I'd kill and eat him, but I don't know where he's been.
First you gotta chop -off their head. That's where all the poison
is, and you don't want that infecting the carcass.
The mind boggles.
In Which Yet Another Crack-Brain'd Billionaire Wants To Turn The USA Into A Private "Hunting The Poors" Preserve, Sentiments Be Damn'd, Part The Way Too Numerous To Mention
Billions aren't enough. They really do want us to kiss their ass.
Like that scene in Catch-22 (the movie, at least). Buck Henry as Col. Cathcart. Some schmuck (Yossarian?) asks him, with all their power, what do they want from the poor fools whom they send on the dangerous missions? We're risking our lives! What else do you want from us? "We want you to like us."
It's only class warfare when the peasants fight back.
Cooperman likes to think of himself as a measured, even-handed guy who just happens to have gotten rich by making lots of money producing not a damn thing. (Fun with math: Cooperman is worth $3.4 billion. You, too, could be worth that if you started making a million dollars a month in 1736.) To show how bipartisan and unbiased he is he peppers his "letters" with phrases like "class warfare," "soak-the-rich," and "bloated entitlement programs."
Or, "Your villification of the rich is misguided, ignoring, among other things, the sources of their wealth" -- yeah, innovations like credit default swaps, insider trading, rigged Abacus deals, or, say, Daddy's real estate fortune.
Regarding Warren, he told Politico that all he wants to do is "elevate the dialogue" because "this is the fucking American dream she is shitting on." At least he didn't bring up Steve Jobs, the perennial poster-boy for billionaires, who could at least be said to have actually produced something.
No one should be a billionaire.
That's a hefty upgrade Cooperman has given the American Dream. It used to be "home ownership," which itself is pretty far out of my reach here in Los Angeles. But now I'm supposed to Dream about "being absolute monarch of an aristocratic society in which millions of my fellow Americans live to bask admiringly in my benevolence"? Eesh, I should have stayed in school! (I did stay in school.)
Only Champagne Socialists Indulging in the Politics of Envy criticise Billionaires who Care, I know. But after a glass or three of Prosecco, I just can't seem to help myself.
I wish someone (I'll volunteer if I can bring along a few friends) would hold down Cooperman and read to him Chapter Four of Dean Baker's "Rigged," on waste in the financial sector (*cough* hedge funds *cough*) complete with charts and graphs and footnotes showing how good it would be for the economy to eliminate that waste - $460-636 billion estimated in 2015, no doubt even more now. These guys don't produce anything except fees for enabling transactions that could be carried out more efficiently without their skimming. Far more than Obama ever did, Warren has their number and they know it. I hope his tears reflect his inner conviction that the day is coming when he and his fat cat buddies get regulated down to size.
Most hedge funds are shit investments. The vast majority underperform the market. Many studies over the last 20 years have shown that the greatest hedge-fund managers are not nearly as good as simply throwing darts at the WSJ stock listing page once a year.
So why do rich (and supposedly savvy) people hand over vast sums to hedge-fund assholes? Because the successful hedge-fund assholes make lots of money FOR THEMSELVES while convincing fund members that, someday somehow, you might get a taste of this. By the time your investors start to wise up, you're a billionaire and that OBVIOUSLY makes you a genius. Cue the next round of suckers, er, investors.
It is sad that this rings true. I feel like those characters in John Carpenter's They Live who put on the glasses and see the aliens for what they are.