Cracked.com: 6 Things Rich People Need to Stop Saying

[backscatter712]

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage

All of a sudden, it's like you can't make huge amounts of money without people getting all pissed off about it. And it's only going to get worse -- with the election coming up and the weather getting warmer, this whole "Occupy" movement is probably going to come back strong. The 1 percent will feel even more besieged than before.

"What the hell?" you're probably thinking, if you're somehow both rich and reading an article with this title, "I didn't crash the economy!" You might even be tempted to take to a microphone, to defend yourself and your wealthy friends. But before you do, I want you to stop and ask yourself, "Will this make me sound like an out-of-touch douchebag?"

...

What They Think They're Saying:

"Come on, we're all in this together! It's not like I have infinite money."

What We Hear:

"When my family's Aruba vacation went over budget, that was exactly like you being unable to afford medication for your child's excruciating chronic illness!"

[phantom power]

1. "Not allowing the wealthy to hunt man for sport removes all motivation to succeed."

[Schema Thing]

2. This puts into words my frustration. I want everyone to read this.

[bigendian]

3. Tell me if I am wrong.

People who make $250,000 are part of the 99%, right?

[zipplewrath]

4. Yes

"It depends" is probably the most accurate answer. 1% vs. 99% usually refers to WEALTH not income. You can make that kind of money and not be all that wealthy. If you make that from your investments, you might be part of the 1%. Maybe.

You have to understand just how wealthy the 1% are. It's not a linear curve, where there are twice as many making 100K as those making 200K. The top 15% or so make a family income of around 100K, last I checked. 200K usually broke you into the top 10%. But that's of income, not wealth. One of the funnier realities is that there are people who THINK they are the 1%, but their not.

[dmallind]

9. Technically I think 1% is about 363k income or 8-9MM wealth

pretty close to those anyway.

The silly ideas we see here that "only the 1%" can buy cars, or homes, or eat out etc are self-defeating and only minimize just how rich the 1% really are. The median income of a new Porsche 911 buyer is under that of the 1%.

[BanTheGOP]

5. I don't care about income or dividends. Wealth is wealth and must be repatriated

Wealth controlled by elite repbulicans is the greatest threat to the security of the entire planet. We MUST not just heavily tax income and wealth generation, we need to actually take it and use it through democratic, progressive agendas that will help us ensure that all people benefit. Anyone with over a million dollars with non-progressive values should all pull a Breitbart and die. I don't care how.

[Lucky Luciano]

15. Pol Pot...is that you reincarnated? nt

[longship]

6. cracked.com is brilliant

R&

[BlueIris]

7. Lightweight.

Pulling a lot of punches there.

[hay rick]

8. Great Mitt quote:

"I think it's about envy. I think it's about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus one percent -- and those people who have been most successful will be in the one percent -- [it] is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God."

Guess Mitt picked up the puritan ethic while he was governor of Massachusetts: work = success = money = salvation. I always thought that "under God" was a sanctimonious but, vague to the point of being meaningless, phrase. I was wrong. I totally missed the economic implications. Now I know why the 1% dominate our society- they have God on their side.

[saras]

10. GodDAMN this guy is brilliant. Economics 101 in a single paragraph

It's like setting a jar of moonshine on the floor of a boxcar full of 10 hobos and saying, "Now fight for it!" Sure, in the bloody aftermath you can say to each of the losers, "Hey, you could have had it if you'd fought harder!" and that's true on an individual level. But not collectively -- you knew goddamned well that nine hobos weren't getting any hooch that night. So why are you acting like it's their fault that only one of them is drunk?

more...

If you live in my part of the country, you'll hear hard-working, rural farmer types say, "I got my own piece of land, I grow my own food, all I want is to be left alone." All right, well tell me this, cowboy: Let's say some mean, even richer guy, like a wealthy gangsta rapper, hired a bunch of armed thugs to come take your farm. What would you do? Your shotgun won't fend them off -- they have a hundred bigger shotguns. What will you do, call the cops? That is, other people, who will risk their lives while being paid with still other people's tax money, who will try these bad guys in a court funded by yet other people's tax money, under laws passed by legislators paid with other people's tax money? Whoa, slow down there, welfare queen!

But if none of that stuff existed, there would be nothing stopping Jay-Z from taking your farm. In other words, you don't "own" shit. The entire concept of owning anything, be it a hunk of land or a house or a fucking sandwich, exists purely because other people pay other armed men to protect it. Without society, all of your brave, individual talents and efforts won't buy you a bucket of farts.

So when I say "We're all in this together," I'm not stating a philosophy. I'm stating a fact about the way human life works. No, you never asked for anything to be handed to you. You didn't have to, because billions of humans who lived and died before you had already created a lavish support system where the streets are all but paved with gold. Everyone reading this -- all of us living in a society advanced enough to have Internet access -- was born one inch away from the finish line, plopped here at birth, by other people.

[FiveGoodMen]

14. Amen to everything you said!

[awoke_in_2003]

18. Jay Z took my truck. nt

[NightOwwl]

11. I love Cracked

[Warpy]

12. Once in a blue moon, they get it right

and I don't see a single thing in this article that I can criticize.

Good work, Cracked!

[OmahaBlueDog]

13. Huge K & R, and if you're on Facebook, "share" this article

It still won't shut up your conservative friends, but it might make them think for a moment (if they bother to read it).

[Martin Eden]

16. Big K&R

Thanks for sharing!

[surrealAmerican]

17. k & r

very well written article

[Morning Dew]

19. Thanks for posting this. Well worth a read. n/m

[bvar22]

20. DURec... Go to the link & read the entire article.

Here, I'll make it easy so you don't have to scroll all the way back up:

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-things-rich-people-need-to-stop-saying/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=fanpage&utm_campaign=new+article&wa_ibsrc=fanpage




In the conservative, rural area where I live, I frequently hear this one:
"No poor man ever gave me a job."

I always respond:
No RICH man ever gave me anything.
How do you thing they got RICH?
Rich people don't "give" things away.
I EARNED every single job I have ever had.
I've worked for some RICH people,
and they were even RICHER after I left.
They MADE money off my work.
THAT was the DEAL.
They didn't "GIVE" me anything.



Cherish your memories,
because "they" are taking everything else.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
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