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    Persecuted 1% news

    Had to share this Randian hootfest from one Harry Binswanger (replace g with a k) in Forbes: Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1% in which Harry tells us that it is immoral for millionaires to pay tax:

    Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor
    Lloyd Blankfein in guiding Goldman Sachs to billions in profit has done infinite good for mankind and taxation is the vampire squid wrapping the face of humanity. Plus a whole lot more. All backed up by a three paragraph quote from Atlas Shrugged. Click on his profile and look deep into those eyes. Just look at that void- a seething, unblinking, egotistical, objectivist vortex of shark eyed misanthropy.

    #2
    Persecuted 1% news

    I guess this thread is a good place for this from a few days back:

    The CEO of AIG...

    The uproar over bonuses “was intended to stir public anger, to get everybody out there with their pitch forks and their hangman nooses, and all that-sort of like what we did in the Deep South [decades ago]. And I think it was just as bad and just as wrong.

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      #3
      Persecuted 1% news

      The idea that you can have reasoned dialogue with these people is laughable.

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        #4
        Persecuted 1% news

        First up against the wall.

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          #5
          Persecuted 1% news

          As my old office mate David Herle once said - about something very similar - "Don't get yourself wound up thinking they're wrong and you're right. Because neither is true. They simply believe different things than you believe."

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            #6
            Persecuted 1% news

            But he is wrong.

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              #7
              Persecuted 1% news

              No, there probably is no right and no wrong on this thing.

              Poor people think they're put upon. Rich people think they're put upon.

              Everyone thinks they work hard and deserve more than they've earned. They're universal human truths.

              Why should they stop being so just because we can attach numbers to them?

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                #8
                Persecuted 1% news

                That's just, like, your opinion man

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                  #9
                  Persecuted 1% news

                  Indeed.

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                    #10
                    Persecuted 1% news

                    Given that the AIG guy has already apologised (though he is still facing calls for his resignation), it would appear that at least he thinks he was wrong to equate anti-bonus campaigners with lynch mobs.

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                      #11
                      Persecuted 1% news

                      What sickens most people about the high salary sector is the perception that it's all without any genuine personal risk, and therefore responsibility. If you're paid £1m a year by a bank to gamble with their money, and you know if you fuck it up you'll get fired (but with the £1m in your back poscket), it sounds like a lot of pressure and responsibility, but most of us would say "well give me the chance". Bit like managing Blackburn Rovers.

                      I have heard it said as well that once you're earnnig £1m a year, you would kill your own pets to earn £2m a year, but if it's true that one's greed never diminishes no matter your level of wealth then that's a very depressing indictment of human nature.

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                        #12
                        Persecuted 1% news

                        WOM wrote: No, there probably is no right and no wrong on this thing.

                        Poor people think they're put upon. Rich people think they're put upon.

                        Everyone thinks they work hard and deserve more than they've earned. They're universal human truths.

                        Why should they stop being so just because we can attach numbers to them?
                        Utter relativistic cockrot.

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                          #13
                          Persecuted 1% news

                          Objectively, or because you just don't agree with it?

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                            #14
                            Persecuted 1% news

                            The more you've got. The more you need.

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                              #15
                              Persecuted 1% news

                              What sickens most people about the high salary sector is the perception that it's all without any genuine personal risk, and therefore responsibility.

                              That's true, but on a deeper level there are tangible, evidentiary reasons to be suspicious. Some (most?) of us maintain respect for people whose effort is concrete. The building stands (because someone made it do so.) the car turns over (because someone fixed it), the canvas is on the wall (because someone painted it), the song is performed (because someone wrote it.)

                              What do those people produce that we can respect, and perhaps even honour? They claim they're worth millions, but nothing I see, or hear, convinces me they're worth more than the person that brings them coffee. They make money, so they're worth money? Sorry that doesn't cut it in my world.

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                                #16
                                Persecuted 1% news

                                Yeah the grievances of the rich and those of the poor are equally understandable.

                                So nothing to worry about. Phew, God is great.

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                                  #17
                                  Persecuted 1% news

                                  Thankfully 'the rich' and 'the poor' fit neatly into categories so we don't need to think.

                                  Poor is noble. Poor is victim.

                                  Rich is evil. Rich is undeserving.

                                  Whew. That was close.

                                  Almost had to think of them as individuals with different emotions, motivations, histories, dispositions, ethics, etc.

                                  Imagine the paperwork that would create.

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                                    #18
                                    Persecuted 1% news

                                    No, that's really not what I said, nor Rogin.

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                                      #19
                                      Persecuted 1% news

                                      If that was to me, Amor, I was responding to E10's post. It grates when people attach the object 'the' to poor or rich and then make sweeping statements.

                                      We wouldn't tolerate it for 'the blacks' or 'the Chinese', but for blanket remarks about economic situations it's apparently fine.

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                                        #20
                                        Persecuted 1% news

                                        And I don't disagree with anything you've written, Amor. However, I work all day and don't create a 'thing'. Surely that doesn't mean my work is without value any more than a banker who makes decisions based on his skills and experience that, say, enhance someone's investments so that they can retire.

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                                          #21
                                          Persecuted 1% news

                                          WOM wrote: Everyone thinks they work hard and deserve more than they've earned. They're universal human truths.
                                          I don't think either of those things, so it's not a universal human truth, is it.

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                                            #22
                                            Persecuted 1% news

                                            I think I've done next door to fuck-all, the least amount of toil possible for the most reward I can attain in my circumstances at the time. Usually turns out I've done a lot more than the blowhards who spend their time going on about how hard they work, but there you go.

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                                              #23
                                              Persecuted 1% news

                                              Consider me suitably chastened. I've never met such an honest, hard working yet lazy man before. I shall [mentally] factor you into all future pronouncements.

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                                                #24
                                                Persecuted 1% news

                                                WOM,

                                                this pernicious thinking has undermined the US economy badly- This Selfish Ayn Rand Business Philosophy Is Ruining The US Economy. This article is from that bastion of Marxist critique, Business Insider. It's not just a case of laughing and pointing at the nutty Randians and accepting that there is no point arguing with them, the Randians and their hangers on didn't reach the power and influence they have by not arguing and pushing their agenda did they? This is a real issue and has to be tackled, not ignored as "well that's their beliefs".

                                                We hear much of so called Marxist infiltration in academia but let's not forget that the most ubiquitous presence in the Economics classroom and lecture theatres is Greg "Defending the one percent" Mankiw whose textbooks are set texts in US and UK Economics courses. He was also a chief economics adviser to George W Bush disastrous presidency- "This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base". The Randian perspective at the apex of the US political system.

                                                Randian influence is significant in business, political and educational circles in the US and elsewhere, from Alan Greenspan to Paul Ryan to Mankiw and his set economic texts. It's a misanthropic, greed fuelled and ruinous creed. This is why it has to be challenged head on.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Persecuted 1% news

                                                  Surely you don't take what I've written to mean I support his way of thinking, do you? I'm just saying that the standard outrage [here, on OTF] at right-wing thinking is misguided because it supposes the other to hold a Wrong position while we hold the Right one.

                                                  It's lazy thinking. Just like saying 'the rich' and 'the poor' is lazy thinking. There are brilliant bits of capitalism. There are brilliant bits of communism. And there are tons of brilliant bits from in between. But let's not continue deluding ourselves that we hold the one Truth.

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