being rich itself is NOT wrong (it's the 10% of 1% are convicts of the
forbidden sin = {money power lust CONTROL network} aka {the WALL}
...
finally: the money EON empire
...is the biggest WALL of all works-in-progress...
hints: em-ARSE-gods may learn from the Mongolian & ??: it’s the *people-be*
the best “wallaw”:
“build the wall” to “destroy the people”
(hints: public education, healthcare…)
that’s the ONLY way to “protect the empireS” = “national security” of
Trump, China CP, Vietnam CP & other C?P’s
that’s WHY it’s a “do or die” 4 em-ARSE-gods, the wall must be built at any
cost (not the PUNY 5.6 B Trump requested)
...
On Friday, March 8, 2013 at 1:44:10 AM UTC-5, archytas wrote:
>
> We must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth
> concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both. (Justice
> Louis Brandeis)
> The rich are independent of the rest of us. Obviously they are
> materially independent so long as their property rights remain
> recognized. They can achieve what they want by themselves, that is by
> buying it from others or paying someone else to do it for them. But
> this power of command also generates a social distance from society
> that allows them to become 'ethically independent'. Since they don't
> depend on the goodwill of others to succeed - for example, few of them
> have recognisable jobs - they may become less concerned in general
> about whether they deserve goodwill.
> That means that the rich don't have the same political interests as
> the rest of us. They aren't worried about crime (their gated
> communities come with private security) or the quality of public
> education (their kids go to the fanciest schools money can buy) or
> affordable accessible health care, job security, public parks, gas
> prices, environmental quality, or most of the other issues that the
> rest of us have no choice but to care about, and to care about
> politically since they are outside of our individual powers to fix.
> The political concerns of the rich do not lie in the provision of
> public goods, but in furthering their private interests, whether their
> personal wealth and power or their political whimsies. This is why
> Adam Smith warned us so vehemently to be suspicious of their self-
> serving rhetoric (e.g. WN I.11.264).
> It is sometimes thought that the rich are necessary to the flourishing
> of a free market economy, that because they have more wealth than they
> need for their own consumption it is their investment of capital that
> makes the economy spin around and create jobs. Thus the claim that
> there is a trade-off between democracy and material prosperity. But
> that ‘job creator’ thesis is out of date and back to front.
> First, while in Adam Smith's time it might have been true that
> economic development required capitalists to reinvest their profits
> this was because everyone else was too poor. But these days the
> economies of democratic societies are characterized by a broad middle-
> class whose savings are quite sufficient for funding business
> development and expansion (such as through the share-ownership of our
> pension funds or the bank loans backed by our deposits).
>
> Second, the greater the wealth inequality, the worse we may expect the
> economy to perform. A flourishing economy requires customers as well
> as investors. If the gains of economic productivity are overwhelmingly
> transferred to some small group (as profits) that means that they
> don't go to ordinary people (as wages). (For example, since 1979 all
> the productivity gains of America's economy have gone to the richest
> 1%.) The implications are, first, that economic growth does not
> increase national prosperity because it does not increase the economic
> command of ordinary people to satisfy our wants (which is how Smith
> defined the wealth of nations). And, second, economic growth itself
> will eventually suffer since high inequality limits the extent of the
> market (fewer customers) and thus the scope for innovation.
> Hence my modest proposal. We should first identify with some precision
> the category of what it seems reasonable to call the rich i.e. those
> people whose capabilities for independence from and command over the
> rest of us crosses the threshold between enviable affluence and
> aristocratic privilege. Then, when anyone in our society lands in the
> category of the problematic rich we should say, as at the end of a
> cheesy TV game show, "Congratulations, you won the economy game! Well
> done." And then we should offer them a choice: give it away (hold a
> potlatch, give it to Oxfam, their favourite art museum foundation, or
> whatever) or cash out their winnings and depart our society forever,
> leaving their citizenship at the door on their way out. Since the rich
> are, um, rich, they have all the means they need to make a new life
> for themselves elsewhere, and perhaps even inveigle their way into
> citizenship in a country that is less picky than we are. So I'm sure
> they'll do just fine. Still, we can let them back in to visit family
> and friends a few days a year - there's no need to be vindictive.
>
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