Wow, this is how the ELITE think....celebrating the 85 richest equal to 3.5Billion poorest

Sorry if posted already,


But this guy is a D**K....Saying its greeat news the 85 Richest have the same wealth as the 3.5 billion poorest!! However the interviewer is classically funny...."let me pull up my sock, oh wait I don't have any"

reply to post by projectbane

This the same video?

Sorry to burst that demagogic bubble there, but wealth is measured in fiat currency.,

Governments print fiat currency out of nothing.

Which makes GOVERNMENTS around the world the 'richest'.

I saw pieces of this the other day… thought I was going to wretch.

He's so happy about it because he's one of those "happy happy" wealth elite.

Trust me, its a show. He's not that happy. Just think about how much he has to worry about someone taking it all away from him.

Plus, damn, he can't take it with him.

Riches aren't that important. The more money you have the more expensive your emergencies are.

reply to post by projectbane


You're absolutely right, he is a dick!

What makes this guy think that seeing uber rich people will convince others that "hard work" is the key to gaining the necessary wealth to join this club of elites?

Especially when everyone knows that most, if not all, of those 85 richest people have never done a day's worth of "hard work" in their entires lives. Hell, I'll bet you couldn't account for a single day's "hard work" between them collectively.

I suspect that the truth regarding how they gained their wealth has nothing to do with "hard work," but a lot to do with the mentality portrayed in this short video clip;



F&S for the OP!

Didn't he make his money selling a defunct company to IBM Mattel which subsequently lost their investment when they tried to develop it?

Just a thought......

Shouldn't the 85 people be a little worried that they are vastly outnumbered and if it ever came right down to it that no matter how much money they have that it could all be taken away from them if they became the targets of the rest of the world?

JHumm
Just a thought......

Shouldn't the 85 people be a little worried that they are vastly outnumbered and if it ever came right down to it that no matter how much money they have that it could all be taken away from them if they became the targets of the rest of the world?

They might be if they didn't already own our governments and armies.

Actually, you're right. IMO, they should be worried.

So lets all follow his advice and see what happens. We'll all pull up our socks and work to become the 1%, right?

Well the existing 1% isn't going to give away their money, and as of now they have the system rigged so that the wealth always returns to them. They own all the debt. However, there is still only 50% of the wealth in the world left for the remaining 99% to work with, as well as all the governments. So the best that will happen is that inflation will increase and they will still always be the 1%. Lets say we all become millionaires, then a million will inflate to where its value is worth nothing, and they will still be sitting on trillions/billions to our millions. Or lets just say that out of that 99%, you get another 1% that grabs the rest of the remaining 50% of the money left out there. Now you have 100% in the hands of 2%, and nothing left for the rest of the 98%.

What he is saying only makes sense to him because he knows that the more people that work to get into the 1%, is just more money that ultimately goes into the already existing 1%'s hands because they hold all the debt, they own all the banks, and they control all the start-up capital.

As a matter of fact, lets just look at the show he hosts, “Shark tank”. What's the point of the show? Rich investors are given proposals by inventors for start-up capital to develop their product. So when an inventor designs a good product, yeah they might get rich, but the investors get even richer without having done any work at all. And that's the way the system is set now. You're always are making the 1% richer no matter what you do, or how hard you work to become one of them.

reply to post by projectbane

reply to post by defcon5


Yes same video thank you. I messed up the video on my OP

reply to post by boncho


Why yes he did. He cooked the books of his company selling it to Mattel for $4B. They subsequently fired him from his job of running that division and later sold the company for $27M. He apparently 'only' made $11M personally. So he lied and cheated to gain his fortune. And his 'investment' company has come under serious suspicion as well. He's a dick and a cheat. And the sad part is he doesn't even remotely qualify to be counted amongst the 'elite'.

neo96
Sorry to burst that demagogic bubble there, but wealth is measured in fiat currency.,

Governments print fiat currency out of nothing.

Which makes GOVERNMENTS around the world the 'richest'.

Would it be better if a govt was not rich? it is WHO controls the govt that it becomes a problem. A benign and caring leadership combined with a rich govt would be utopian reality.

No bubble bursted.

If millions of morking people continue to be poor, that is no good.

When O'leary states "work hard and you MIGHT be rich"... that is a SCAM!... pyramid scheme.


If i knew that everyone works hard, but most stay poor. then it would be 1,000,000,000 times better to DESTROY the parasite ELites..

Then go back to work. the parasite ELites are like a horse eating you out of house and home.. They have so much wealth.. that they still command a profit from, the more wealth, the higher the profit, then there is nothing left. They already have all the wealth and it is not enough.

Better to destroy them than to continue slaving for nothing so THEY can live it up..

Rich or poor they are all equal because they will all die eventually. I wonder if mega rich people are trying to make up for something?

reply to post by neo96


Plus...

It is not just the wealth the ELites already have. It is the power that gives them in ENSURING that they can use their current money to BOGARD the future wealth.

Having wealth and then using that wealth as leverage to HOG all the future wealth is the true problem,.

Ever play monopoly? When the guy winning has all the properties, and the rest of the players are spending more on rent than they receive for passing go, there is an end.. it cant continue unless you start xeroxing the money..

They will never stop winning until we stop playing.

And the way we stop playing is by knocking the board onto the floor. RESET!

reply to post by HanzHenry

Would it be better if a govt was not rich? it is WHO controls the govt that it becomes a problem. A benign and caring leadership combined with a rich govt would be utopian reality. No bubble bursted.

Caring ?

CARING ?

I am so GD sick and tired of people who thinks it means robbing from a minority to pay for the majorities every little desire that free fiat currency so they can go out and buy all the GD corporate products they want.

Last time I checked that kind of caring has put current federal spending on that ideology alone at over 2.2 trillion dollars, and over 120 trillion dollars (unfunded liabilities).

When O'leary states "work hard and you MIGHT be rich"... that is a SCAM!... pyramid scheme.

The scam is what is already been said take from the minority so the majority can have more stuff.

If i knew that everyone works hard, but most stay poor. then it would be 1,000,000,000 times better to DESTROY the parasite ELites..

The elites are parasites ?

Really ?

Not from where I am sitting them bloody evil rich only exist to pay for the whims of the majority.

Take a gander:

In 2010 alone, government at all levels oversaw a transfer of over $2.2 trillion in money, goods and services. The burden of these entitlements came to slightly more than $7,200 for every person in America. Scaled against a notional family of four, the average entitlements burden for that year alone approached $29,000.

online.wsj.com...

I am sure some people will not be convinced of that, here is another one:

www.usdebtclock.org...

There is them unfunded liabilities because there is not enough money to pay for them., hyperbole and vitriol over a minority that has led to a century old effort of nickling, and diming them still can't pay for the majorites wants.

Hell even printing trillions of fiat currency doesn't began to pay for those wants,.

Hell even borrowing trillions of fiat currency from other countries still doesn't pay for the majorities wants.

The only parasites I see are those who think the so called bloody rich exist only to service of the GD majority.

No words, no words...

okay a few then but still.. as the reporter herself, you can't argue with such people.. better stop the converstation.

They are so full of themself they can only think about what they might think or feel, it's all about themself.
Even when they say they care about someone else it's still about their own huge polished ego underneath.

defcon5
As a matter of fact, lets just look at the show he hosts, “Shark tank”. What's the point of the show? Rich investors are given proposals by inventors for start-up capital to develop their product. So when an inventor designs a good product, yeah they might get rich, but the investors get even richer without having done any work at all. And that's the way the system is set now. You're always are making the 1% richer no matter what you do, or how hard you work to become one of them.

Dragon's Den or Shark Tank is not a realistic look into business. As I mentioned before Kevin O'Leary made his fortune initially by pulling a one over on Mattel. (Mixed it up with IBM in the first post.)

In 1995, Softkey acquired The Learning Company (TLC) for $606 million, moved its headquarters to Boston, and took The Learning Company as its name. TLC bought its former rival Brøderbund in June 1998 for $416 million. In 1999, TLC and its 467 software titles were acquired by Mattel in a $3.8 billion stock swap.[8] Sales and earnings for Mattel soon dropped, and O'Leary departed from Mattel. The purchase by Mattel was later called one of the most disastrous acquisitions in history.[9]

Wiki

Mattel bought in with great enthusiasm at the top of the market in 1999 at US$3.65B, but ultimately found itself losing money with 467 software titles. This acquisition was intended to broaden Mattel's product line and help Mattel sell more products that appeal to boys, but TLC began reporting unexpected losses before the deal was even completed. The deal was supposed to immediately add $50 million annually to Mattel's bottom line. The company instead lost $82.4 million in that fiscal year because of a number of problems with the acquisition, including a loss of a key distribution deal and a high return of unsold products from retailers. In October, Mattel announced that its earnings would fall well below expectations, prompting the departure one month later of TLC's O'Leary and another founder.

en.wikipedia.org...

Kevin was aided by Bain Capital (Mitt Romney) and while he plays a billionaire on TV, he never actually made billions of the overvaluation of his company, and subsequent tanking of Mattel stock. Since the 3.8 billion acquisition killed the stock price of Mattel to the tune of 2 billion in share price drop, and their investment (TLC) ended up being sold for a merely 27 million.

Still, in 1997, TLC called in a group of investment firms, including Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital Inc. Together, they pumped in $123 million in exchange for an ownership stake and the right to name three board members.

*********************************

In 1998, toy giant Mattel Inc. made a takeover bid for TLC. Desperate to reverse a steep slide in the company’s stock price, Mattel CEO Jill Barad seized on educational software as a driver of future growth.

The takeover offer shocked many. Software-industry analyst Sean McGowan couldn’t believe that Barad zeroed in on TLC, given that it was a well-known “house of cards” that was burdened with tired brands—not helped by the fact that O’Leary had slashed R&D from 24% down to 11% of expenditures. “There was a lot of [TLC] inventory out there that was not moving very well,” McGowan says. “They pumped up the sales by repackaging and distributing to convenience stores and drugstores. And that’s stuff which sits there and gets returned.” Indeed, TLC was accused in a shareholders’ lawsuit and later by a Mattel executive of “stuffing the channels”—shipping product at the end of a quarter and recording it as revenue, even though much of the merchandise would be returned. “Stuffing the channels was part of the business back then,” says a former TLC sales rep based in California. The suit’s allegation is denied by former TLC executives such as former CFO Scott Murray. “There was no overstocking in the channels or overinventorying in the channels,” he says.

Mattel purchased TLC for about $4 billion in the spring of 1999. (Depending on how debt is considered, the figure ranges from $3.4 billion to $4.2 billion.) O’Leary took over as president of Mattel’s new TLC digital division, having received a hike in salary from $400,000 to $650,000 and an increase in his severance package from $2.1 million to $5.25 million. A few months after the sale went through, O’Leary sold most of his Mattel stock and pocketed nearly $6 million, according to a court document.

Weeks after the sale, CFRA produced a critical report on Mattel, claiming TLC was already experiencing collapsing revenue, a surge in receivables and a deterioration of operating cash flow. In the third quarter of 1999, Mattel expected profits of $50 million from the TLC division. When Mattel revised that estimate to a loss of between $50 million and $100 million, the announcement wiped out more than $2 billion in shareholder value in one day, as the company’s share price slid from nearly $17 to $11.69. The actual divisional loss for the quarter turned out to be $105 million; the next quarter, the loss was $206 million.

In November of 1999, O’Leary was fired, six months into a three-year contract. Four months later, Barad, the CEO, was forced out too. “There is nothing I can say to gloss over how devastating The Learning Company’s results have been to Mattel’s overall performance,” she said.

Mattel hired Bernard Stolar, a video-game executive, to see if he could salvage TLC. “It was an absolute disaster,” he says. “TLC had a lot of overhead and product wasn’t selling. They were way overstaffed. They had 20 offices when they only needed two.”

In 2000, Mattel handed over its multibillion-dollar acquisition to another firm for $27.3 million and a share of its future profits. Mattel’s purchase of TLC was eventually labelled by Businessweek as one of “the Worst Deals of All Time.” Shareholders launched a class-action lawsuit, naming O’Leary as a defendant, accusing him of insider trading and of being part of a scheme to obscure TLC’s financial state. In court documents, O’Leary denied the allegations.

In 2003, Mattel settled the lawsuit for $122 million—considered a “mega-settlement” by Cornerstone Research, a litigation consulting firm. O’Leary has sometimes been called a billionaire due to the size of the original deal. That overstates things: O’Leary in fact netted $11.2 million between his severance package and sale of his Mattel stock. The real money in the transaction was made by Bain and its partners.

www.theglobeandmail.com...

jtma508
reply to post by boncho

 

Why yes he did. He cooked the books of his company selling it to Mattel for $4B. They subsequently fired him from his job of running that division and later sold the company for $27M. He apparently 'only' made $11M personally. So he lied and cheated to gain his fortune. And his 'investment' company has come under serious suspicion as well. He's a dick and a cheat. And the sad part is he doesn't even remotely qualify to be counted amongst the 'elite'.

He may have earned his position there now though. Since he's proven useful at bilking money.