<p>I know I’m stealing many people’s thunder in posting this, but I am absolutely livid about it. Whatever is to be done?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/national/class/HYPER-FINAL.html</a></p>
<p>Does this involve math?
Seriously I am already rich in the ways that count
I live in a beautiful area, I have two lovely kids and a husband who is home at night and a yard and a house and a dog.
I have enough free time so that I can pick my daughter up from school just like Melinda Gates does.
I have enough money that I can pick up something at the deli instead of cooking to take to those office potlucks
I have free time to read ( currently I am reading An Unexpected Light by Jason Elliot) obviously free time to waste online and I have an easy time going to sleep,even though we don’t have 600 count egyptian sheets from cotton harvested in leap year.
We do have our own raspberries, and tomatoes, and the pleasure of camping among cedars in the north cascades on the weekends.
We don’t need air conditioning, and last winter we barely used our furnace. I can ride my bike to puget sound and watch the tide come in and the little kids discovering that if you dig a hole on the beach it will fill with water.
Everybody wants to come visit us, but our house is too small so they have to stay in a hotel if they don’t want to sleep on the floor- so not much extra work for me!</p>
<p>“even though we don’t have 600 count egyptian sheets from cotton harvested in leap year.”</p>
<p>Sorry, I got the last ones. I found them at Value Village. ;)</p>
<p>I must have developed a tough hide over the years. The high thread count sheets are not as comfy to me. I like the stiffer, more standard count sheets. Despise the flannel and satin.</p>
<p>I have health insurance for my family and a dry warm place to sleep every night. I wish more resources would flow to the people who have little or no insurance, who lack shelter, and who went hungry to bed tonight. Did you ever read the essay, “Parade of Giants”?</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.basicincome.com/basic_gendata.htm[/url]”>http://www.basicincome.com/basic_gendata.htm</a></p>
<p>This essay borrows heavily from the original “Parade of Giants,” that I read back in the 70’s. It appears to be the Canadian version.</p>
<p>Driver:
</p>
<p>Marx beat you to it. (Karl, not Groucho.) WHAT IS TO BE DONE?
And I think it’s one of those books, like The Kinsey Report, that conservative pundits would like to photoshop out of existence.</p>
<p>emerald, I like your take on it. Wealth is a state of security and state of mind. I agree with Mr. B. Sharing is a good thing. Because my wealth is a state of mind, my sharing is not as much as I would like. But share I do. I find those who have few resources are more willing to share than those worrying about who might take away what they have amassed. And then there is the humanized Bill Gates, bless him!</p>
<p>Here I go again–fools rush in, etc.</p>
<p>What’s to be done? Check this out: <a href=“http://www.fairtax.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.fairtax.org</a> . (Non-partisan, by the way)</p>
<p>But that’s only part of the story. Emeraldkity is correct in her perspective. In addition, I believe that it is self destructive to get mad over things like this-- the poor will always be with us, as will the rich, super-rich, and hyper-rich. This is why envy is one of the 7 deadly sins. I’d rather get mad pondering the motivation of the NYT in publishing “non-news” like this that is specifically designed to promote discord and class warfare ;).</p>
<p>Overseas is absolutely correct, it is people of limited means who provide the lion’s share of voluntary charitable contributions to all causes, not the wealthy. Which IMHO puts the lie to those in our society who insist on non-voluntary transfers of wealth:
<a href=“http://www.townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/pj20050605.shtml[/url]”>http://www.townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/pj20050605.shtml</a></p>
<p>And we’re all entitled to our opinions, TheDad, without being compared to bookburners. If you had read the article in Human Events to which you refer, you would have recognized that the point was to encourage more reading of these books, not to ban them. The editors of HE have faith in the intelligence, common sense and wisdom of ordinary people (as do I) to see the true nature of works such as the Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, and The Kinsey Report when read as original works. What is objectionable is the pre-digested, sanitized “Cliff Notes” versions that are thrown out there for public consumption by various groups as attempts to influence public opinion.</p>
<p>OK, I have my heat deflectors up :eek: !</p>
<p>“What is to be done?” was by Nicholas Cherneshevsky.</p>
<p>(Doestoevski’s “Crime and Punishment” was written partially in response to it, asserting that it is not possible to eliminate “pure evil”. At least he knew it when he saw it. ;)).</p>
<p>I don’t understand why the article should bother anyone. I read the times and found some of it amusing. I particularly liked the old antique dealer lady who was stunned that one of the nuuuvoooo residents would inquire as to just why she should want a tray with someone elses monogram on it. I agree with that. </p>
<p>As for some of the other stuff. The flower dealers complaining about being sued wasn’t so hot. But jackasses and bullies come in all varieties of income.</p>
<p>The fact that people earn a lot of money is just llife in the big city. If you want it, go get it. You can even spend some of it on Nantucket.</p>
<p>So what else is new? The very wealthy have been getting hyper wealthy since the early 80’s. Yes, they got some new tax breaks, but I do think there’s a strong arguement that this is good for the economy. Just look at the number of private planes theses people own, the home furnishings for $15 million dollar homes, the clothes and jewlery. Retail sales were up last quarter and we can thank them for it. The Nantucket story highlighted that there were so many high paying jobs on the island that many people flew in daily to work them. </p>
<p>In the past, this kind of wealth was most often inherited. Children were taught growing up to downplay their wealth. The new hyper rich are self-made. They don’t feel the same need to “apologize” for their wealth that people who inherit do. The WSJ also recently ran an old money/new money story. I think it’s a hoot. Why should any of this bother the rest of us?</p>
<p>I sympathize with both sides. I think the key is the word “earned”. If Bill Gates, or Steve Jobs earn a lot of money, I say more power to them. They created something, implemented their creation, and they deserve to reap what they sowed. If it’s a lot, so be it. They earned it.</p>
<p>But I have an objection to multimillion dollar contracts with CEO’s who are minders, not finders, and only get the huge bucks from inbred, inactive boards. Why should a CEO, hired to run a company, but instead manages the company into significant revenue losses, get paid millions and millions of dollars? The board pays say, $2mm a year salary, another 50mm a year slides under the radar as signing bonus, then a guaranteed $100mm as a loan (which is immediately forgiven, so it’s compensation). The company loses money, CEO gets fired - then gets another huge severence package. Something’s wrong with the boards of directors in this country.</p>
<p>I agree with dadx, why should this article bother anyone? People sound ridiculous asking, “what can we do about this?” I say you quit your whinning, who cares if some people have a ton of money…that’s the way the world works. People work hard they earn money, some are more intelligent/have more opportunities so they earn more money, etc. Seriously what can we do about this? As if there were something wrong with people earning lots of money. There are always going to get rich, middle class and poor people, get used to it.</p>
<p>i say if you want equality then also implement a flat tax so that you don’t punish the wealthy for working just as work as others but making more money.</p>
<p>The article itself doesn’t bother me - but I agree with Hayden that some of this problem is CEO compensation (which, as most of you know, has increased relative to average worker compensation in the past few years). I do have a problem with CEOs taking huge severance packages when the employees don’t get their pension funds. Aside from being unconsionable, having old people without adequate income is horrible for our country. OTOH, I’m not a fan of thinking that everyone who earns a six-figure salary is overpaid. A lot of those people are almost underpaid, given the workloads, stress, family problems, divorces, and heart attacks that follow such salaries.</p>
<p>
I thought it very amusing as well, which is why I posted it. It’s another very transparent attempt by the NYT to generate populist outrage against the administration. What makes it so amusing is that they’ve tried this so many different ways, with their target group being the middle class, without success (“How can all these dummies keep voting against their economic interests???”). Now, they’re trying to see if they can’t get a rise out of the well off by instigating another kind of class envy. The lame, the pathetic, the NYT.</p>
<p>exactly driver…i didn’t catch your sarcasm the first time around (kind of tough through a computer).</p>
<p>What I don’t get is why 7 paragraphs detail the increasing wealth disparity and the next 25 proceed to talk about the Bush and Reagan administrations… in an article entitled “Richest Are Leaving Even the Rich Far Behind.” Did the title person only read the first few paragraphs? Isn’t there a little more than seven short paragraphs which could be written about the class differences and the effects of more “uber-wealthy” persons? In those 25 paragraphs, why was inherintance/estate tax NOT mentioned?</p>
<p>Having watched some of the machinations that people pull to try to elevate themselves, I will agree with Hayden. I don’t have the solution, though. For every investment bank that refuses an underwriting because of terms that are too favorable to founders, or management, there is another who will do it and the public just ignores it. There are other instances of egregious compensation packages, as well as stock goosing, and other devices that ought not to go unpunished.</p>
<p>ariesathena. Apparently, the estate tax is not mentioned in part because it is one of the reasons for writing the article. The house voted a permanent repeal in April, and articles like this one are aimed at derailing a Senate approval. If you leave out the reference to it, it helps it look more like journalism and less like propoganda.</p>
<p>Typical response, Driver: the Republicans practice class-warfare to make the world safe for Paris Hilton and then decry any criticisms as “fomenting class warfare.”</p>