The rich really -are- as bad as you think.

a reply to: crayzeed

nice broad swoop of the generalization brush there.

a reply to: f4rwest
Also politicians showed up in the same group. Just look up the definition of a psychopath and you tell me that they haven't got those traits.

Damn, I really arrived late to my party!
Nice thread KaDeCo...I am honored

I agree those incomes in the OP are a bit high but none the less, the bad values I was referring to had more to do with people that are REALLY rich.

Like a couple millions a year...near the point where it stops to "trickle down" as they say.

originally posted by: Eunuchorn

originally posted by: greencmp

originally posted by: Eunuchorn

originally posted by: nullafides

originally posted by: peck420

originally posted by: nullafides
The real problem, IMHO, is the human condition.

IMHO, the problem is the inability of the majority to accept the human condition, not the human condition itself.

And somehow you're able to separate that from the very condition and problem at hand ?

haha, yes, ignorance begets ignorance. Long term conditioning won, we lost. There's only one solution to the problem of the human condition & since no one else seems to want to eliminate our species....

I still stand that wanton & unwarranted wage disparity is the main reason society is falling apart; whether the innate desire for more (greed) is the root cause or not. More tax money is spent to maintain the prison industrial complex of America than it would take to end world hunger, & that's just tax money, not profits.

"Prosperity or egalitarianism - you have to choose. I favor freedom - you never achieve real equality anyway: you simply sacrifice prosperity for an illusion."

-Mario Vargas Llosa

Everything we know is derived from the idea of "economy". I think economies shoulnt exist, thus deciding between prosperity & egalitarianism is an illusion in & of itself.

Birth > school > job > family > death.
What about that cycle is appealing?

Even socialisms have economies, it is simply the word for the scientific study of human interactions.

Economics is not a predictive science and cannot be used to plan said human interactions, it is merely the collective term which we use for the process of documenting and analyzing temporally latent observations.

Etymologically speaking, the term has its opponents. Not least of which being Mises and Hayek who preferred the term catallactics as it is more accurate.

Economy (if the root is to be adhered to) presumes a household budget as the frame of reference whereas catallaxy refers to a mutually beneficial interaction that does not require that participants share the same ends. It also refers to the process of converting an enemy to a friend.

I've wondered: What if they have a pill for greed or selfishness in the future? A sort of "bonding" pill which not only makes someone make friends easily, but also makes them tolerate ALL races and religions (and peoples). This is not quite the same thing as the bonding hormone Oxytocin because that increases aggression towards out-groups. A pill that makes you "I love everybody!" and also "I'll work selflessly for people of all countries!"

Selflessness would solve a lot of crime problems. And as long as people work tirelessly, it'd be highly productive. My personal opinion, is that's the road we'll go down. I don't think we'll become a hive society, but we'll be much more like one than we're today. It may not be a bad thing.

People in the future might view us as plagued by a multitude of psychological disorders which created so much mess for us.

The majority of the extreme wealthy are satanists and have murdered children and others, and they work diligently to block service, deal unfairly, and cause harm to as many possible even with their products. They consider badges in trying to get their dark wings.

a reply to: Unity_99

The majority of the extreme wealthy are satanists and have murdered children

Must be a pain staying in the loop and one step ahead.
I expect you have a heavy price on your head
Do you have to change your disguise and sleeping arrangements every night ?
Keep up the good work

originally posted by: ketsuko
A greedy person grabs all he can for himself and won't seek to risk it. It's his. A wealthy person actually has to risk his wealth in order to have a chance to make more. Many of the wealthiest people in our society came from nothing and had to risk everything to make it where they are.

Wholesale greed would have stopped them at any point in that process.

Now for the REALITY of human history and nature.

In the times of tribal, chiefdom and early agricultural societies, those individuals whom were most "fierce" and took the "most risks", were either quickly killed or seriously injured during, hunts, battles or during day to day labor. In contrast, during these times past, those whom were neither the "most fierce", nor the "most timid", ALWAYS fathered the most offspring and lived longer than average lives. Our current society has been structured in a way to shield imbalanced "fierce" individuals from receiving what "nature" would have normally dealt them, which is death or serious injury, due to poor decision making and the underestimation "risk".

originally posted by: crayzeed
There was a study done here a couple of years ago(I'll have to search it out).where it was shown a majority of rich people are psychopaths, especially people on top companies boards. This also showed in the majority of self made millionaires.
They have the same psychological make up as murderers ie no empathy, a win at all costs but really mean with it. So technically they are mentally wired wrong but because non of their actions aren't illegal we have to live with them.

"Nature" ACTUALLY deals with "risk taking" individuals very differently, than how our current economic structure does. Our modern economic struture insulates them from the "natural" consequences they would normally face. Essentially our modern society is a form of "insurance" for the fool-hady and sociopathic.

a reply to: Borisbanger

Nope. Just keep on talking and sharing, and trying to nudge the world awake, while having gone through intense monitoring due to our sightings, crafts and choppers overhead, phone taps, secret service black trailers parked out front, tall men in black English accented mormon missionaries at night, strange sedans in front and police in back, and then switched and more that was a little more serious when we moved.

But that just means I do not have to waste my time emailing, phoning in or writing a useless letter to our PM that he won't read.

I know my posts are being read, GOOD.

So, I speak up. I speak about what is currently going on, the world as it should be, get upset at the low lifes incredibly dense and shriveled consciousness, running this and give plenty of suggestions for the way it should be run, the only way that is karma free, anything else being crimes against humanity and all souls.

And I give them their F's often in my posts, because that was downloaded and given to me. I was pushed to start posting it too. That they have been given a tiny miniscule drop of power and responsibility (mainly they took it, but we'll be generous and say given), out of an infinite bucket of responsibility in infinity progression, and they blew it big time.

They will not be going to the next level to be with the Big Boys and Girls, where responsibilities include assisting, managing and co-creating entire levels.

Murder, infanticide, extortion, starvation, slavery, corruption, planetary destruction and harm to the living library and to all creatures great and small, does not pass the grade. Greed of any kind. And you never are a stumbling stone to another.

F's!

I always speak up. The only thing that I would be afraid of, is not doing the work given to me. And its from a humble, overlooked by them position.

Last week I pulled up to a stop sign on an off ramp from the interstate.

There was a guy sranding to the side flying a sign that said he needed help and was down on his luck. I gave him my last dollar and wished him luck.

I watched the guy in the suit driving the brand new Mercedes-Benz, nice car, behind me, not even look at the guy. He didn't even come to a complete stop.

To each their own, but it made me feel good for trying to help a person, and sad at the same time because of thw other guys actions behind me.


I tiok a mental note of that

originally posted by: jude11
a reply to: KaDeCo

Just wondering if these are being reported as middle class?

Single parent $260,000

Single person $230,000

Married couple $640,000

Retired couple $180,000

If this is middle class, sign me up!

Peace

These are quite upper middle class. Their lives are similar to yours but nicer and more comfortable. In a wealthy neighborhood of a wealthy city, this isn't too unusual.

Actual rich people---the ones who run government---are much, much, richer than this. Their lives are utterly different.

And they have lower taxes as most of it's on investment income. Why does one party really, really, really hate Obamacare so much? Because its financiers now have to pay Medicare tax on their investment income (like working for a private equity fund) like the rest of us have had to pay on our income since the beginning of whenever. Still their tax rate is much lower (18.6% including the new tax).

Wrong.
My grandparents are very rich, a distant friends father is a multi billionaire.
All the well of people I know actually happen to be the most caring and thoughtful individuals I know.

Or - is it that Narcissistic personality types succeed because they lack the empathy that holds 'regular' people back.... Being cut-throat and greedy is easy when there is no conscience to guide decisions where you will always benefit...often, at the expense of others. Narcissists have a driving sense of entitlement... and can be very good at charismatically manipulating people in their favor.

Dollars are a pretty effective scorekeeper in some people's minds - those who lack the ability to Love anyone or anything but themselves and are aggressively competitive.

I have to laugh at the picture in the OP. If that's middle class, then I'm dirt poor. I make less than $30k a year. My college degree sure counted for much, didn't it?

What percentage of the population makes more than 100k a year? I would be surprised if it's more than 10%. The United States doesn't have nice jobs anymore. They keep saying on the news that the economy is improving and last month they added x number of new jobs, and I have to wonder how many of them are minimum wage jobs at places like McDonald's.

Maybe the graphic with the middle class families is from the distant future, when inflation has risen to the point where people are making incomes that seem lavish to us but are very pedestrian in that modern time.

Due to my job I live paycehck to paycheck in the expensive city of Brentwood. I walk to work, where I have to interact with very wealthy people all day. Like people with hundreds of millions of dollars.

Being poor I get to see the differences in how poor people drive vs rich people. I've noticed that if there is a stop sign the poor person will most likely attempt to stop. The rich almost never. Stop signs aren't for them, thats for everyone else.

I see rich people drive around cars that are stopped at stop signs while mothers walking their 6 year old kids to school are in the crosswalk. The rich person often throws up their hands in disgust at the kids and mothers in the crosswalk, because there is someone inconveniencing them as they break the law and speed through my neighborhood.

I get to see who blocks the intersection in heavy traffic and who doesn't. It's usually the rich people.

Who usually block the cross walk while others leave room for pedestrians to cross. Usually the rich.

Who speeds the most and drive recklessly. Usually from what I've observed the rich.


Who honk their horns the most over the slightest inconvenience. Usually the rich.

Who drive into oncoming traffic down wilshire because they don't want to wait in a line of cars at a light like the rest of the people. Usually I see the rich doing that.

It's safe to say the majority of very wealthy people are jerks by nature. It's probably how they got rich.

Now don't start me on the trust fund kids of Brentwood. I could make an entire thread about just the ones living in the apartment building next to me. There is this nice brand new building on my street. To get permission to build the building they had to make the whole first floor low income housing. So what do the developers do? They move their kids (read 25-32 year olds who have never had a job in their life-hence no income) into all of those units. Within the few months the building has been open. We've had these trust fund kids peel out in their sl550's they've never worked for. Doing donuts at 3 in the morning in them. We've had these trust fund kids start up 6 on 6 soccer matches in the street at 3 am on a tuesday for 45 minutes. until the police arrived and ticketed them. When the neighbors approach them to knock it off cause it's 3am. they literally tell us to go F our selves. We've had one trust fund kid 25 while wearing board shorts and flip flops beat up his girlfriend then take a hand gun and dump an entire magazine into the air in front of a elementry school at 9PM to prove to the world he's king kong. The swat eventually arrested him around 6 am after they had to talk him out of the apartment building he was hiding in. I've had it up to here with these pathological rich sociopaths. The poor folks in my neighborhood aren't doing ANY of that. Why cause they work for a living and are too tired to act like jackasses and a holes when they get back from work.

Talk to any city bus driver. Ask him if there a certain demographics of cars that they know will almost always be driven by a total A hole. I bet you there is. Most bus drivers can tell you which make and model will be a scumbag driver.

I've always felt that you had to be a very insecure person to seek to be that rich and "secure." That often the wealthier you are the less of a man you are. Not sure how it all works but yep there is a definite correlation between having your head up your ass and being wealthy.

originally posted by: FlyersFan

The following is my opinion as a member participating in this discussion.

The other way, is having the right values to become rich.

-Opportunism with lack of empathy
-Overwhelming pride
-Manipulator
-Liar
-Selfishness
-Devious
-Deceitful

Pfffft. There are people at every end of the economic spectrum with those 'values'. It's not a 'rich' thing. It's a 'worst of humanity thing'. There are good and bad rich folks; good and bad middle class; good and bad poor.

As an ATS Staff Member, I will not moderate in threads such as this where I have participated as a member.

While I agree that there are people with these sociopathic, or at least entitled tendencies at every socio-economic demographic, I do think that the prevalence of those with this mindset is far more numerous the higher up that economic ladder you go.

There are numerous studies that support this. Those that are brought up in wealth are less empathetic, more entitled and well... greedy than their poorer counterparts. There are exceptions, but in general it is the case. The more the system self-perpetuates to reward those myopically self-interested tendencies (as it is doing now) the worse this will get.

a reply to: KaDeCo

I think the simple break down for this is as follows:

1. Our system is designed and supported by sociopaths and psychopaths, therefore through it's design it rewards those behaviors.
2. Many rich people/elites are sociopaths and psychopaths, or have very strong tendencies. This in turn allows them to take full advantage of the system they have designed.
3. It's why you find so many apologists for our current system, even if they are poor or lower middle class. They accept the sociopathic/psychopathic design of our system because they hope to take advantage of it as well.

KaDeCo, your OP is great regardless of the angle you present it with (the jerks factor). As Eminem said in Square Dance - "Yeah buddy, life is funny... I have the money to have you killed by somebody that has nothin..." While it's entertainment and I am not sure Eminem believes it, this simply goes to heart of the points you are trying to make.

If you haven't read Wealth of Nations I recommend it. Too many people misquote Adam Smith and don't realize he wrote a very objective book regarding the perils involved with both being a wealthy merchant/owner and a worker. It further demonstrates that our current system has been in place for a very long time and has been continually edging closer and closer to the full benefit of the wealthy elites.

In the end the creators of the system will ensure that they benefit the most from the system. The greatest lie being told is that it's the poor people that are a drain on society. The US government system is currently operating and serving the wealthy elites at a much greater rate than it could ever serve poor people. And for the longest time we are constantly reminded that "they are the job creators."

The above statement is more important because it's more a reminder from the rich to the poor that we (the not wealthy elites) should know our place.

And the truth about what KaDeCo is saying is simply if you want to get ahead in the world many people will have to become like those that run it. Some people call it selling your soul to "the man" or "selling out."

And FlyersFan is right, these behaviors are at all income levels. That's because we (arguably) have a higher rate of sociopathy and psychopathy than we may like to believe. Our current system of greed is good, me first, and "look at me, look at me, look at me" seems to be increasing these tendencies in people that under "normal" circumstances wouldn't present such behaviors.

a reply to: WCmutant

Thank you so much, I am so glad you read and understood it. Thank you thank you!

a reply to: WCmutant

What would it take for a democracy to prevent the wealthy from skewing the system to favour themselves.