44 Replies to “Eat The Rich”

  2. Brilliant! Mike Moore’s take on wealth as a national resource reminds me of the upcoming tax cuts and how the Libs framed it. They suggested that the money cut from taxes belongs to the government and we allow them to have it. Sorry, but money that government has not taxed is not public money. This sense of entitlement is ridiculous, and seems to be common to such people. It is as though the tax rate is 100%, but then the government allows you to keep some of this out of their generosity.

  3. Nice sermon, but he’s preaching to the choir.
    Few connect any of these numbers with their own lives, and will not until they are smacked in the forehead by a fiscal two-by-four.
    Peace and prosperity was great while it lasted, but there’s not much historical evidence that human beings know a good thing when they see it.
    Catholics would chalk it up to Original Sin, which is a little too specific for me, but you can certainly see what they’re getting at.

  5. +45 million Americans on food stamps, healthcare for all, and an open border taking in millions of uneducated third worlders to add to the US problems.
    Lots to go around? There are another +5 Billion more, exponentially growning third world people standing in line for thier handout.
    It’s time for Michael Moore and all of his flock to sell and give away all of thier assests to lead the cause. We’ll see how they make out first.

  7. ’More than just preaching to the choir: Bill Whittle’s providing ammunition to counter the deeply subversive idiocy of the Left. E.g., Michael Moore says the US isn’t broke, but is rolling in cash. Bill Whittle shows that this is poppycock: even if the government appropriated all the wealth of every significant sector in the US, it would barely pay for the debt of the next year (let alone beyond that). That’s like eating one’s seed corn: once that’s gone, so is the ability to build the economy for the future. (Then what, Michael? Oh yeah, people like that don’t think beyond their noses. Heck, they don’t think at all! But a lot of useful idiots listen to the Michael Moores—and Obamas, Jack Laytons, Michael Ignatieffs, and Elizabeth Mays—of this world.)
    I’m becoming increasingly alarmed at the dangerous stupidity we’re seeing everywhere these days: has the world gone mad? It seems like it. Timothy 2: 4: 3-4:
    “[3] For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings,
    [4] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.”
    We’re there. A critical mass of people have been completely hoodwinked by the myths of the Lefties—who are everywhere, telling their usual, outlandish and deeply subversive lies—and the fallout’s pretty ugly. As anyone here knows, trying to give some balance on the other side usually gets one labeled an idiot, a bigot, or worse. Sensible non-Lefties are being marginalized on a massive scale.
    As the psalmist says, “All my bones are out of joint”: I find the darkening of the human mind and spirit truly frightening. Look around: the twisted ideas of the Left, with the associated thuggery to which they feel fully entitled is bending the whole world out of shape. “Love thy neighbour as thyself”? Forget it! (Re Islam, how about: “Love my enemy as myself?” Suicidal!) When people are trained to be self-referential—the therapeutic mindset encourages this pathology in all our institutions—and are then propagandized, they turn out much more like programmed zombies than good citizens. ’Very scary . . .
    Bill Whittle’s a regular at PJTV and is well worth a regular look. He and Iowahawk, whom he references (iowahawk.typepad.com), are, like SDA, light in the gathering gloom. I’m feeling sort of pessimistic these days—and need to remember that a lot of the backlash and fury is because we, on the “non-Left, are hitting back. That’s good! It’s always darkest before morning: I like to think that’s what’s happening—but I’m not sure. (And I’m not kidding!)

  8. But wait a minute, according to Marxist philosophy, the ‘pie’ is always limited and that’s why it is necessary to redistribute wealth.
    Right?

  9. I’m sure Lisa LaPhlemn will feature this segment tonight right after Fifes, Licking Of The Iggys Twins, segment. Lookout, you are dead on, this phoney Harvard/Canadian election is nothing more than a power play of the left, with their useful idiots in our MSM doing their part. Remember Globull Warming people, where is it now.

  10. Lookout…Bang on!
    I’m also to the point I want to scream but I have nobody to scream at…You scream at lefties supporter and they look at you as if you are speaking another language: The zombie thing.
    How can one argue applying comment sense and facts again’st myths and propaganda?…Lefties refuses to study and analyse. They consume prepackaged pop culture only…Al Gore’s science is pop culture…Micheal Moore’s politics are pop culture…You get my drift.
    Like you say, very scary. I am pessimistic too these days.
    I think I obsess at trying to fix/improve a situation that will require nothing else but violence, bloodshed and mass suffering to correct. It’s too late otherwise.

  11. Cute presentation, but even as it illustrates the magnitude of the deficit — which is of course a problem — it misses the point that critics of wealth distribution in the US are making.
    Just for kicks, try guessing at the distribution of wealth in the US — what percentage is in the hands of the top 20%, the 2nd 20th, the middle 20th, and so on.
    Then take a look at the reality. And ask yourself which quintile you and yours might fall into.
    There are other data points, like the fact that during the US economic boom of the early 2000s, 75% of total wealth gains accrued to the top 1%, while the remaining 25% of “new” wealth was split by the bottom 99%. Or the fact that among top 20%, 73% have pension coverage, while among the bottom 20%, only 18% have that benefit. And so on.
    Nobody is seriously suggesting “confiscate all the wealth of the rich.” But the current skewed distribution is the result of decades-worth of lobbied tax loopholes, exemptions, and political influence. Fix that, and the middle class might start to feel a little less pinched.

  13. Right Honourable Terry Tory: “Lookout…Bang on!…How can one argue applying comment sense and facts against myths and propaganda?…Lefties refuses to study and analyse.”
    It’s a bit ironic that, in praising facts and analysis over myths and propaganda, you applaud lookout’s comment, which not only cites Biblical scripture — hardly the best source document for facts and analysis — as though it were literally predictive of the state of our modern times (“We’re there”), but cites a specific piece of Biblical scripture that warns against the folly of listening (reading, watching) only to ideas and viewpoints you already agree with on an avowedly conservative blog that stridently promotes a political viewpoint that, by all appearances, lookout already agrees with.

  15. Davenport>
    “But the current skewed distribution is the result of decades-worth of lobbied tax loopholes, exemptions, and political influence”
    As in Tax loopholes, exemptions, and political influence by Republican lobbyist’s/ politicians or could you mean Democrat politics as well?
    Is the answer still Obamba the savoir of all that is poor, suffering and the downtrodden? I thought he was supposed to be “Change we can believe in”. If what you are saying is true, then he’s not changing things much.

  16. Davenport, I quoted scriture as A source and fully documented my thesis. You dismiss the Bible as mere myth and propaganda? You “know not what you do.” Poor you. And poor us that there are so many fools like you out there. (Your comments are also narrow minded and bigoted. Think again–if that’s possible.)

  17. To see how this turns out, look at history of the Soviet Union.
    In the name of social justice, they destroyed the ‘merchant class’ by taking over all means of production and replacing it with a central committee.
    And, in the end they did achieve equality … equality of misery.
    One day, after the inevitable collapse, the citizens woke up and were told their ruble was now worth one-tenth what it had been the night before.
    But it didn’t stop there.
    My cousin flew over to visit us about 20 years ago.
    Five years later, we received a letter. The postage on the letter was pretty close to what she had paid for her return flight just five years before.
    They truly are like pigs, who feed on the root of a tree until it is dead.
    The roots of our prosperous society is the creative genius of individuals and the risk-takers who finance these great ideas.
    No central committee in a People’s Republic has been able to match it.
    Those who do not learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.
    Any argument against the utopians are best countered by placing facts in a historical perspective.
    And, as Bill Clinton said, ‘It’s the economy, stupid.’
    Inevitably, the economy is all that matters.

  18. jcl: “Do we have a similar distribution for net tax “revenue” per income bracket???”
    I take it you’re trying to make some variation of the “But the rich pay most of the income tax” argument. Fair enough — here’s some supportive data, from a friendly source: american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes/article_print.
    The problem is, that argument looks only at a snapshot of taxes and income, not accumulating wealth over time. It’s true that wealthiest 1% of the US population earn about 19% of the income but pay roughly 37% of the income tax. But 19% of total income amounts to over a trillion dollars, while 37% of total income tax is “merely” in the hundreds of billions. In other words, even though they shoulder a disproportionate share of the absolute income tax burden, their incomes are so much more disproportionate compared to the income of the average US worker that they still manage to accumulate wealth after taxes at a far faster clip and to a far greater extent than those in the middle and working classes could ever dream of.

  19. Knight 99: “As in Tax loopholes, exemptions, and political influence by Republican lobbyist’s/ politicians or could you mean Democrat politics as well?”
    Both, equally. You think I’m a fan of the Democrats? Given the choice between their policies and Republican policies, sure, I’ll take the Democrats’. But I’ve never place much faith in Washington’s ability, or even desire, to truly serve the interests of the entire public, regardless of which team happens to be occupying the Oval Office at the moment.

  20. Davenport >
    With all of the lefts interest in perpetually raising taxes, why don’t they just voluntarily pay more themselves?
    Here is an MSM 20/20 article revealing the cheapness of blue states over red as far as charity. Why is it that “Liberals” live in the same houses, drive the same cars yet give the least as an overall group to those in need the most? It’s always about spending someone else’s money while hoarding their own.
    http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=2682730&page=1

  22. Davenport >
    “Both, equally. You think I’m a fan of the Democrats?”
    I wouldn’t know, you haven’t described your politics any further than thinking the rich don’t pay enough tax and that you’re dissatisfied with _______? Capitalism possibly?
    You have outlined what you think is wrong with the “system”, yet have offered nothing in the way of your solution. As an American for example, there aren’t many options other than seeing Republican/ Democrat in Congress, the Senate or the Whitehouse for many years to come.

  23. “It’s a bit ironic that, in praising facts and analysis over myths and propaganda, you applaud lookout’s comment, which not only cites Biblical scripture — hardly the best source document for facts and analysis — as though it were literally predictive of the state of our modern times (“We’re there”), but cites a specific piece of Biblical scripture that warns against the folly of listening (reading, watching) only to ideas and viewpoints you already agree with on an avowedly conservative blog that stridently promotes a political viewpoint that, by all appearances, lookout already agrees with.”
    Davenport
    First of all, thank you for acknowledging that the oldest best seller of all time is Conservative in it’s basis.
    “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings,
    [4] and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.”
    “Sound teaching” means something that might require hard work and discipline to follow through .
    To “listen to suit your own liking” often implies following the easy route; like enacting laws and regulations to take away from the productive to “redistribute” to the non productive for example.
    Oh and yes, it is a mainly Conservative site here at SDA…I’m happy you made progress and realized that today…Maybe now you will know that we won’t necessary write stuff “to suit your own liking” because we promote “sound teaching” here. So I invite you to find a site that “suits your own liking”.The MSM for example.
    Unlike ‘progressive thinkers’, we use history to guide us. We don’t attempt in trying something that has proven time and time again that it simply does not work.
    “Progressives” think they can circumvent human nature in trying applying social dictates and it fails every single time.

  24. Knight 99: “As an American for example, there aren’t many options other than seeing Republican/ Democrat in Congress, the Senate or the Whitehouse for many years to come.”
    In that case, fighting for proportional representation might be a start. It would, for example, allow Tea Party candidates to be represented in Congress as an independent voice for its supporters, rather than the current situation where they have to negotiate and compromise with the old-school Republican leadership.
    Tax reform is another; campaign finance reform a third. But those might require the above to happen first, if only to shake up the two-party system and the entrenched power that it has tended to establish and maintain.

  25. Knight 99: “With all of the lefts interest in perpetually raising taxes, why don’t they just voluntarily pay more themselves? Here is an MSM 20/20 article revealing the cheapness of blue states over red as far as charity.”
    This isn’t about conservative or liberal, blue state or red state. This is about those with power, and those without.
    Even the 20/20 article you cite, which is mostly beside the point in this current thread, notes that “while the rich do give more in overall dollars, according to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, people at the lower end of the income scale give almost 30 percent more of their income.”
    As with charity, similarly so with taxes. Yes, the rich pay a bigger share of the income tax burden, but that’s because their incomes (and wealth) dwarf to an even greater extent the incomes (and wealth) of those at the lower end.

  26. LC Bennett: “Not for Davenport, of course, because he already knows the Truth.”
    I haven’t heard the podcast, but I’ve read Sowell’s book, and while he makes some valid points about sizes of households, # of workers per, accounting for government transfers, income mobility, etc., he’s still focused on annual income rather than accumulated wealth over time.
    And therein lies the limitation of his argument.

  27. People at the lower end of the income scale don’t accumulate wealth because they don’t understand delayed gratification.
    They spend money they haven’t even earned yet on things that don’t make more money for them.
    Wealth is making your money work for you generating more money and Democrat taxation policy + business regulation is designed to create barriers to prevent that from happening.
    If all the poor became wealthy, Liberals/Democrats would become politically irrelevent because they wouldn’t have a constituency.
    Their policy is designed to create more poor by destroying wealth and if it doesn’t create poor people fast enough their immigration policy is designed to import poor people who don’t have any skills.

  28. Davenport >
    “This isn’t about conservative or liberal, blue state or red state. This is about those with power, and those without”
    I’ll agree that the overall issue of corruption and the looting of the public is indeed that. As far as this thread is concerned, it is about Red & Blue, it’s about Liberal support for Obamba spending the economy beyond its means, and attempting to tax a way out of an impossible deficit. Namely, taxing the “rich” who provide the jobs and create the true stimulus the economy needs.
    The point of the article I posted for you was about the hypocrisy of these same people who pretend to have the answers for the financial mess, while stimulating the mess further.
    The financial value of someone flipping hamburgers is not equivalent to a successful entrepreneur, nor should it be. If it were, we would all sit around and starve to death. Wealth is relative; the Liberal left picks and chooses who they believe is deserving of their wealth based on political and social affiliations. For example Michael Moore is exempt along with the bulk of left-0-weird entertainment.
    Without a doubt the entire system has been hijacked by corruption “at the top” regardless of claimed political stripes. Yet no one is really addressing that issue, instead they are beating their war drums like monkeys wanting their cut of the next guys pie.

  29. But Davenport, you have to remember that we really do live in an equal opportunity society. The key word here is “opportunity”. Sure there are vast wealth disparities, but we all have the opportunity to change our circumstances. Most of the guys I went to high school with are making less than I do, a couple are doing better, and one or two are doing vastly better. Hard work, luck, guts, they all play a part.
    This is the part about concentration of wealth that is little understood. Sure, there are vast concentrations of seemingly eternal family wealth, but someone had to lay the groundwork, and someone else has to keep it going. Those vast fortunes employ millions of people, so it’s not as though it’s just sitting idle. For example, I entered the work force 32 years ago and went to work in a company doing about $10M a year in sales, at the very most. Maybe only $5M. Today, that company is worth a about a quarter-billion, and it’s all owned by the three children of the company founder. It got that way through risk, smart management, and some luck of course. The biggest component was that the man who started that company had an unflinching dedication to having us make the best product on the market. When I see oilwells pumping oil, I know that many of them are attached to products that I made at one time, and I know they’re the best in the world.
    That company now employs about 500 people, maybe more, from Alberta to California, Texas, and Louisiana. These are good, middle class jobs, and anyone working for that company has the opportunity to build a career and start their own family fortune.
    It’s also worth noting that, in the darkest days of the NEP, I painted the inside of the manufacturing plant twice in one year, while our lathes and milling machines sat and looked pretty. I was an apprentice machinist at the time. Thus, the idea that we should tax the wealthy even more than we do, doesn’t ring true for me. Let’s just spend less on government and then there will be more and better jobs available for all.

  30. I’m not sure what you mean by “accumulated wealth over time”, Davenport, but Sowell does talk about wealth accumulation of individuals over time. Individual wealth is not static – people move from student to wage earner, immigrant to entrepreneur, etc.
    Individual societies also get wealthier over time – most of our poor are have ipods, cellphones and all have access to free K-12 education. In fact, The total wealth gains and increased standard of living of the poor “over time” (income plus government entitlements) rivals the wealth accumulated by the rich. By looking at who is paying the tax bills, that redistribution could not have happened without allowing the rich to prosper.
    My favorite video about the income gap is this one.

  31. I’m not sure what you mean by “accumulated wealth over time”, Davenport, but Sowell does talk about wealth accumulation of individuals over time. Individual wealth is not static – people move from student to wage earner, immigrant to entrepreneur, etc.
    Individual societies also get wealthier over time – most of our poor are have ipods, cellphones and all have access to free K-12 education. In fact, The total wealth gains and increased standard of living of the poor “over time” (income plus government entitlements) rivals the wealth accumulated by the rich. By looking at who is paying the tax bills, that redistribution could not have happened without allowing the rich to prosper.
    My all-time favorite video about the income gap is this one.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw&feature=player_embedded

  32. Michael Moore made over $60 million on books, videos and “documentaries” based on the false claim that Bush had caused 9/11 — that it was an oil conspiracy between Bush and the Arabs.
    It started the whole “truthers” movement and years of ridiculous speculation and investigations. I’m sure there are even a number of newly graduated PhD’s out there who got their degrees defending that phoney thesis. The “truther’s” claims have been widely refuted and are now completely untenable with the recent Wikileaks revelations.
    So Moore has to find some new phoney conspiracy to make multi-millions on. The man is a Commie scam artist, raking in big capitalist bucks on the backs of the working class. Moore’s even more of a Commie propagandist than the Castros are: the communist party of Cuba banned his movie “SICKO” because when it was shown in Cuba there was such a public outcry against it — any idiot in the street living in Cuba knows that its medical system is a complete disaster and not the “paradise” that Moore painted.

  33. “The financial value of someone flipping hamburgers is not equivalent to a successful entrepreneur, nor should it be.”
    True — I’m not saying they should be paid the same, or even close. But we’re also not talking about entrepreneurs here, at least not in the small business sense. We’re talking about investment bankers, hedge fund managers, CEOs, etc. People whose net worth is thousands of times higher than that of the average worker (who would not be a lowly burger flipper), and who will take home more in one year than that average worker will make in a lifetime. So ask yourself, is the financial value of a hedge fund manager in one working year equivalent to the financial value of, say, you over your entire working life?
    “The point of the article I posted for you was about the hypocrisy of these same people who pretend to have the answers for the financial mess, while stimulating the mess further.”
    There are more efficient, and more equitable, ways to assist those in need than through charity. Under a fairer political and tax system, capitalism would still be in place, entrepreneurship would still thrive, the rich would still be comfortably wealthy, but the least well-off would be less dependent on the charity of strangers.

  34. So ask yourself, is the financial value of a hedge fund manager in one working year equivalent to the financial value of, say, you over your entire working life?
    So I didn’t have the choice to become a hedge fund manager?
    I don’t envy the hedge fund managers their choices or the life they have because of those choices.
    I am content with my choices and I don’t want some commie undercutting my choices or making them for me.

  35. Davenport >
    “So ask yourself, is the financial value of a hedge fund manager in one working year equivalent to the financial value of, say, you over your entire working life?”
    Sure. I hold no envy or jealousy over anyone who earns more money than I do. I only expect that it be done honestly and legally. If not, as many of these so called Wall Street fund managers allegedly do, I expect them to be investigated and charged accordingly. There in lay’s the problem with our current financial system and it’s government enablers.
    That is not the same thing as demanding the wealth of honest individuals.
    I can’t disagree with your last line, except to question, who are these “least well-off” you mention? Unfortunately our current culture of entitlement by the mere existence of a warm body in western countries has created another level of criminal parasitic behaviour from the bottom of the food chain.
    “There are more efficient, and more equitable, ways to assist those in need than through charity”
    If you are familiar with Singapore “the Asian shining light of 1st world socialism”, charity is soley how they care for the “least well-off”.
    Nothing but the crickets heard from western Liberals.

  36. I agree, Oz. The government should not be in the business of putting an upper limit on success.
    Davenport, charity for the poor that relies on personal donations is already virtually extinct since most charities are funded by government grants. So, in essence charity and government have completely merged.

  37. So ask yourself, is the financial value of a hedge fund manager in one working year equivalent to the financial value of, say, you over your entire working life?
    I’ll trust the market before I trust some idiot Marxist on the Internet telling me what he thinks a “fair” ratio is.

  38. So ask yourself, is the financial value of a hedge fund manager in one working year equivalent to the financial value of, say, you over your entire working life?
    It all comes down to the politics of envy.
    How to keep up with hedge manager Jones?
    Don’t keep up with him, break his legs, steal what he has worked for.

  39. ‘You can no longer log in to Youtube without Google account’
    Well, fuck you Youtube, you are an Al Qaeda media outlet anyway.

  40. So ask yourself, is the financial value of a hedge fund manager in one working year equivalent to the financial value of, say, you over your entire working life?
    The hedge fund manager’s employer thought his financial value to the company was worth far more than “you’s” employer did.
    So you answered your own question with a resounding yes.

  41. Davenport said: “There are more efficient, and more equitable, ways to assist those in need than through charity.”
    Now all you’re proving is that you haven’t done your homework. Private and particularly religious charities are -always- more efficient than government. Compare Salvation Army’s performance to any similar government operation, you’ll see it isn’t even close.
    What you want to do is -compel- people to help “those in need”. That’s not charity, its theft.
    Which, according to my lyin’ eyes, isn’t working. Despite having more people employed by government than ever before in history, I might add.
    I look forward to voting against your policies and beliefs at the polls, Davenport. It’ll be fun.

  42. The United States would be awash in food if Michael Moore hadn’t got to most of it first.

  43. Posted by: Doug at April 1, 2011 8:50 AM:
    But wait a minute, according to Marxist philosophy, the ‘pie’ is always limited and that’s why it is necessary to redistribute wealth. Right?
    True, if innovation never occurs (or is never allowed to occur).
    Some economic systems want to lock down on their current mode of operation for fear of the “owners” losing control of it.

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