LAGC you are famous!!!!!!!!! Boortz hates you....!!!LOL

[CalvinandHobbes]

Here is a article my GF told me about. She knows i visit DU...
Let him have it..........

Ladies and gentlemen .. may I present the dark workings of the liberal mind:
(Then comes LAGCs post about why they hate rich people)

I'm honestly trying to figure it out.

Is it envy? I don't have any particular desire to be rich myself, especially if it means attaining such wealth the way so many other people have.

Is it jealousy? I don't particularly like the fact that there are so few rich people when there are so many more poor people who don't have what they have, but I don't really resent them for that reason alone.

What is it then? Could it just be the fact that to become rich it means stepping on so many other people below you in order to get ahead? In effect, EXPLOITING people in order to attain for oneself a vastness of resources that you in effect deny everyone else? Even this wouldn't be so bad if the rich didn't bitch about the fact that a portion (or even half) of their ill-gotten wealth gets taxed back by the PEOPLE that the government is supposed to represent!

I mean, you watch reality shows like "How'd You Get So Rich?" with Joan Rivers on the TVLAND channel, and listen to the "rags-to-riches" success stories. Doesn't it ever strike you how in all of those cases its either: a) getting people underneath them to make money off of their labors; OR b) charging exorbitant prices for their products which in effect distributes wealth from everyday people into their greedy little hands?

Do I think we should do away with all rich people? No, for you can never mandate total economic equality without a government gaining too much control over its populace. But do I have a problem with "redistribution of wealth" where the rich are taxed slightly higher than everyone else to pay for their unfair burden of resources that they hog to themselves? NO! After all, it's often THEY who benefit the most from government protections of all their wealth in the form of the police and courts, and from wars and other machinations of the State. They ought to pay their disproportionately fair share!

Am I really wrong to think this way?

Well ... Yes. You are wrong to think this way. Almost all of the premises you set forth in your jealous screed are wrong. You sense this, but you don't quite understand why. So, I'm here to help. Read on.

You probably think you're highly educated. My guess is that you've been through many years of school, but you weren't all that good at learning. No ...wait! Don't quit now. This is really going to help you. Just keep reading:

You really do think you're an educated person, and you believe that very few people out there will work as hard as you will to make it in our economy. You have a job, you do the work assigned to you, and you believe you do it well. I agree. You probably do. You also pay your taxes, obey the law, keep your lawn mowed and give to charity - though by your way of thinking you are "giving back." And THERE, my friend, is your problem. You don't really recognize that wealth is earned .. you think that it is handed out by some great unseen and ultimately unfair force.

Look at you! Here you are ... you've done what you were supposed to do. You went to school. You got a job. You worked hard. You are a good citizen. You're involved. You care about those who have less than you ... and despise those who have more. Why? Because you just can't figure out why they have all this stuff, and you don't. You're a good person, and you've played by the rules ... yet you're not rich. So, in your mind this means that those people who ARE wealthy aren't really good people and they didn't play by the rules. That just has to be the explanation for why they're rich, and you're not.

If you really knew these people, you might feel different. If you knew the risks they take, the hours they work, and the imagination they bring to the table you might recognize that their wealth was earned, not seized. If you watched them create jobs in their community while working 80 hours a week and risking all that they have to build a business you might re-think your line about "exploiting" people. If you saw them competing with other similar businesses in the marketplace - keeping their prices low enough to attract buyers, yet high enough to stay in business and eke out a profit, you might have other thoughts about "charging exorbitant prices."

Here's the bottom line. You just cannot accept the idea that those with more than you obtained their wealth through hard work, risk-taking and good decision making. I mean, after all ... if that was all it took then YOU would be rich, right? You work hard; you're not afraid of risks; and you make good decisions, yet you're not rich. NO! That just can't be the explanation. You're good, so they have to be bad. To believe anything else is to recognize your own shortcomings.

Hope that helped.

[Mythsaje]

1. "To believe anything else is to recognize your own shortcomings..."

Or, instead, recognize that success in this country isn't so much a matter of hard work and good decisions as it's a matter of pure luck. Assuming that one person's lack of success given the same general attributes as another who has been more successful has something to do with "shortcomings" rather than with the various twistings of fate and causality is remarkably suggestive.

As I said in response to that initial post IIRC "I don't hate rich people. I hate selfish rich people." But I'd like to amend that to say I dislike selfish people period. Hate is too strong a word for what I feel--either too strong or not really very descriptive. I detest people like Rush Limbaugh and his ilk, but this has as much to do with his towering ignorance and bullying demeanor as it does with the fact he's leveraged these things into wealth at the expense of decent Americans.

It's not prejudice to dislike someone for being an asshole, after all, since no one was BORN an asshole. That's a choice.

[hfojvt]

2. I never heard of this LAGC and wondered what it stood for

I also did not see this thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6330152&mesg_id=6330152

As for the Boortz response. Well, it is clearly simplistic "wealth is earned". That's obviously only partly true. So some rich people perhaps put in long hours. There are plenty of other people who put in long hours and barely make middle class. I used to work at a factory job making a whole $7.15 an hour making auto parts. Many of my co-workers were also dairy farmers. Thus, they got up really early and milked cows, then worked a factory shift and then went home and milked cows again.

At the same time, I also had my own business and put in seven day weeks at my janitorial job and six day weeks at my store. Let me just check my earnings record for those years. It says $10,295 for 1997 and $10,944 for 1998. Not a very good return for 3500 hours of work.

Now consider the 13,776 people who made more that $10,000,000 in 2005. Are you saying that they worked HARDER than the rest of us? Their total income was 376 billion dollars. Of that number 191 billion was capital gains, 22 billion was dividends and 24 billion was interest. That's about 63% of their income that comes from unearned sources. They don't work for money. Their money works for them.

Do they provide jobs? Yes, they do, but so did a slave owner. Should a slave thank his owner for providing him the job of going out to plant or pick cotton in the hot sun? Our jobs are a large step up from slavery, but the principle is pretty much the same. The laborer creates value through his/her efforts. They are paid a fraction of the value of what they produce and the rest is skimmed off for management salaries and benefits and profits. It's a great system, if, as Bellamy made the analogy, you are one of the people who get to ride in the coach while other people pull it.

You are the one, Mr. Boortz, who cannot seem to accept the reality of the world or of history. That there are many ways to acquire wealth, not all of them socially beneficial or honorable (see Haliburton, Enron, Harken Oil, etc.). That there are Mr. Potters in this world, using their wealth and power to squeeze and exploit the working classes, the rabble, the canaille. A George Bailey can go from $45 a week to $20,000 a year by selling out to them, and many people do. They are then lauded as fine upstanding citizens and so are the Mr. Potters and Mr. Taylors. Why wouldn't they be? After all, they own the newspapers.

They probably own you too, and pay you well to say all the "rah rah for rich people, they are just so much better than the ordinary losers and failures who are just bitter and in denial about their own stupid decisions. Yes, we are probably all irresponsible drunks clear into our 40s just like George W. Bush and that's why we'll never amount to anything. Just like George W. Bush.

[pyoom]

4. Nice post. nt

[HughBeaumont]

3. 6 paragraphs to say "they DO work hard, and you're just jealous"?

It's funny how Republicans blather Foster-Wallace-ly for pages on end, only to find they have very little substance behind what they're yakking about. That whole romanticized screed about the noteworthy hard work and long hours of the rich does absolutely NOTHING to answer the underlying problems unequal societies (particularly ones that have very little in the way of truly enforced progressive tax structures) cause to the short term and long term economy.

First of all, NO millionaire or billionaire in this country is entirely self-made. Flat/fair-taxers like Boortz don't seem to get that if you use a disproportionate amount of resources to run your businesses compared to individuals, you should by rights, pay your fair share in taxes. Since these people think the rich obtained their wealth fairly, through one hundred percent hard work, no outside help from any government entity and no good luck, the rich therefore should get a break on taxes, or to the extreme, not pay them at all. After all, if you give them more, think of how many jobs they can create as a result of it! As the article proves, that premise is flawed 8 ways till Sunday. Tax cuts on the rich did NOT lead to job growth, as all of Bewsh's economic team incorrectly theorized. It was a legalized pillaging and the "fight them over THAR" voters fell for it. Twice.

Also, what communities are they "creating jobs" in? Certainly not ours as of late. Job creation in any sector has been downright lousy these past 10 years. And for all of this talk about how we should laud and heap praise on them for what they've done to the American landscape, what good has really been accomplished the last 30 years from their "efforts"? Real wages have either been in flatline or decline on and off since 1979. Wages have NOT kept up with the cost of living, which is why we have the consumer debt problems and negative savings rate that we do in the modern era. All the while, wealth has disproportionately increased for the upper 5%, anywhere from 29 to 500%, depending on where one falls.

Let's not forget that business practices and standards as of late haven't exactly been on the level and without problem, and it's not just a few "bad apples", it's plenty. The very real and disgusting routines of job offshoring and degree devaluation have gone a long way in turning the American economy on its back. Not only that, but the whole "benevolent rich don't exploit, they distribute good will in a voluntary process" theory is a high mound of manure. The American workplace has become a miserable place to work as of late, especially if you're in the service/retail sector. We still don't have mandated vacations or maternity leave and one of the worst social safety nets for the unemployed in the industrial world. Nor do we have subsidized college educations, which cuts the legs off of many as far as individual career progress goes.

Boortz should really spare us all the agonizing "hard work" mantra; it discounts the efforts of thousands upon thousands of well-meaning individuals who worked just as hard, if not harder, than those who somehow made it to the top of the pile. It just makes you ill reading such garbage when in reality, this land really does not offer the golden opportunities that didn't take a pile of cash to start off with as it did in years past. Almost any entrepreneur is going to be undercut and at a massive cost disadvantage by the purchasing power giant warehouse chains have.

Individual effort only goes so far; the reality is that luck and connections DO play a more-than-minimized role as far as how big one makes it in the business world. This country is slowly turning into a land of diminishing opportunities for most, thanks to the fact that we don't subsidize health care and education and are pricing the middle/working/poor classes out of both.

[KG]

5. that's alot of wordage to prove you have no idea what you're taking about.

so, go have another glass of kool-aid. Bernie Madoff's buying.

[fasttense]

6. If we all become toadies and boot lickers to our corporate masters,

like Boortz, Limpballs, etc, then we all could make millions.

Some people have more respect for themselves.

[HughBeaumont]

7. Kick for the morning crowd.

Some good responses to this one. This "the Rich work FAR harder than you" myth has to be stopped. They don't work any harder or longer than any other laborer out there. Market timing, connections, start up capital and luck also factor in.

[Robb]

8. Boortz produces nothing of any value.

He creates nothing. Zero.

What does he know? Not how to write, certainly. How to talk. Good. He's one up on my 10-week-old.

But not for long.

[LAGC]

9. LOL, that's hilarious!

Did he actually read my post on the air or was it just on his web-site there?

Of all the right-wing shock jocks, I actually like Neal the best. His libertarian rants against authority and religion are always enjoyable, even if he does go over the top sometimes (comparing Muslims to cock-roaches and the like)... don't know why he hates poor people so much, esp. the victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.