How much anger at the "elites" is due to jealousy?

[arandomuser]

alot, especially on the right, but look at nazi germany for example it still fell apart because of the incompetence of the "master race" Also the people were very jealous of the jews which is in part why they supported the nazi dehumanization.

neoliberal capitalism is the system that has sustained america for over so many years, and now thanks to an infiltration by our enemies(russia) people are starting to believe in voodoo magic of fascism.

[NineSpine]

No, my parents didn't give me shit. No clue where you came up with my parents giving me 'hundreds of thousands of dollars'.

You said Bezos created Amazon himself, when in reality mommy and daddy financed him.

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Hatred of the rich has been a thing throughout history, only in the US do we admire the rich to any degree.

I think it's because our early rich people were nice guys for the most part or if they weren't nice they made up for it by donating a lot to charity.

I'm thinking of Rockefeller and Carnegie for the most part. Poor people wanted to be like them.

Our early rich people were mostly slave owners.

The robber baron era that you refer to was known for the horrible abuses of the people by the robber barons, including mass murders of strikers.

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I say live your life and stop worrying about what others are doing unless it negatively impacts you and others.

It negatively impacts me and others when the wealthy hoard so much wealth that it stagnates our economy.

[Radaney]

I don't care about rich people being rich. I care when they fuck me or others over by influencing politics, law, the environment and the future and wellbeing for others for their own greed.

See; CEO wages being like 25x times the average worker. For example in my area a headteacher who is also part of a teaching alliance earns 25x that of his teachers.

Internet infrastructure in America.

Nestlé thinking Water isn't a human right.

The War in the Afghanistan

and I could go on forever.

and the flipside I imagine lots of scientific and technological advancements that make our lives better are done by rich people.

[Unholyground]

It negatively impacts me and others when the wealthy hoard so much wealth that it stagnates our economy.

This is why everyone should pay a % of their pay rich or low income and it should be redistributed among everyone so many times a year.

[NineSpine]

This is why everyone should pay a % of their pay rich or low income and it should be redistributed among everyone so many times a year.

Absolutely.

[Powerogue]

We also live in a time where income inequality is greater than it has ever been in human history. The richest 1% are projected to control 66% of the entire world's wealth by 2030, and the gap between the rich and the poor is growing quickly in just about every country. A third of the richest people in the world are rich simply because they were born rich.

https://www.theguardian.com/business...ing-point-2030
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfa...-160117-en.pdf

This is a problem for everyone and it needs fixing at some point because historically whenever the gap between the haves and the have-nots gets too large, it leads to a revolution.

It seems like we've just held it off due to bread and circuses, really. Revolution happens when people are focusing on how desperate their situation is, but if you can keep people distracted (and preferably sheltered) from that, you can prolong the inevitable. "The Great Firewall of China" comes to mind, with people distracted enough to be complacent but sheltered enough to be blissfully unaware of the true extent of their oppression.

[Louisa Bannon]

Life between humans is, has always been, and will always be a perpetual power struggle.

You are really dragging the rest of us down.

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I say live your life and stop worrying about what others are doing unless it negatively impacts you and others.

Um, except that's the problem - the Koch Bros aren't satisfied to be rich as fuck already, they want even more and to dictate terms to everyone else. Do try to pay attention, yeah?

I now see that Adam made this point using this exact example, more or less.

[Shadowferal]

Can't be jealous of the stupid.

[Louisa Bannon]

I don't care that someone like Jeff Bezos has trillions of dollars, fifty mansions, a fleet of yachts and his own intergalactic starliner. Good for him.

What bothers me is how he can't trim a little off the top to alleviate some of the suffering his warehouse workers undergo with low wages and an inhumanly fast tempo. How he can't pay a little bit in taxes to fund the services that make lives better for Americans.

Just finessing this - the fact is you do care and you recognize that his conspicuous wealth indicates he could do something about worker wages. Which makes him a greedy, selfish asshole. If I were him, all of my employees would be the first people to likewise be rewarded with good salaries.

[NineSpine]

Just finessing this - the fact is you do care and you recognize that his conspicuous wealth indicates he could do something about worker wages. Which makes him a greedy, selfish asshole. If I were him, all of my employees would be the first people to likewise be rewarded with good salaries.

I can provide some insight into this as someone who works as a consultant. Wealthy people are insanely resistant to paying people more, even if you show them hard data that shows that it will increase profits. They care WAY more about imposing their right wing worldview than with increasing profits. This fallacy has permeated the culture so much that you even see shareholders start bailing when a company increases wages, even if it is EXTREMELY clear that the increase in wages will increase profits. It's actually a great example of how the notion that business operates in long term self interest is childish and delusional.

[NineSpine]

I don't know if it's a human thing or a western thing or what, but people seem to have huge issues with other "regular" people getting something.

For some reason no one bats an eye at MegaCorp Inc getting another 22 billion from taxpayers or whatever, but you talk about raising wages or something and everyone loses their minds. Like in that one company that was talking about raising all of their employees wages and some people quit just because they were so upset by other people getting raises even if they were getting one, too.

In my experience it's way worse in the US than elsewhere.

[beedeehee]

You are really dragging the rest of us down.

If that's all it takes, perhaps you weren't hanging on tight enough.

[Coolthulhu]

Can't be jealous of the stupid.

Adaptive preference formation in action.

[Shadowferal]

Adaptive preference formation in action.

I submit Trump Jr as proof.

[Coolthulhu]

I submit Trump Jr as proof.

The strenght of your argument convinced me.

[Deleted]

It really depresses me how much people look at twitter for ''news''

[Femininity]

Gimme that pool any day. You can keep kids and the "happy" boring family life. I just want the pool and we're good.

I agree with this so much.

[therealbowser]

It worked.

Wow, you really are shameless, aren't you?

[ipaq]

Wow, you really are shameless, aren't you?

#winningest

[Louisa Bannon]

In my experience it's way worse in the US than elsewhere.

^ This.

In the U.S. politics and religion cross over very pointedly - so much so that I would argue that most organized faiths no longer deserve a tax free status as they are clearly just branches of a certain political party. But most people are sheep and have no moral compass of their own, they have to be told how to think, behave, vote, etc. As someone that has actually read the Bible several times, its necessary to point out that most people that claim the Bible as their guiding light have clearly never read the thing nor do they follow ANYTHING stated in it. Instead, they are often the most deplorable, judgmental jerks the world has ever seen. They just itch to judge one another unworthy for some pretended offense.

[sarcasm]...Because that's what Jesus would do.[/sarcasm]

I know someone that owns part of a very valuable corporation. This person is worth millions of dollars. The only people that advance in that place are family members, everyone else has an arbitrary ceiling. I've heard this person complain that they would give the employees benefits (they have only the things required by law) if they could be paid less (than minimum wage). This person is a very serious Christian.

I don't believe in Christianity, but if I did I'd think that that there was zero chance of this person getting into heaven. God would look into that person's heart and see that it is plainly hardened by an overweening greed.