That seems to be the burning question on the minds of some rich people
Over the weekend, Mitt Romney held a fundraiser in the Hamptons for a whole bunch of rich folks and a reporter started chatting with those waiting to get in.
As protesters assembled on a beach in advance of Mitt Romney’s evening event at the home of conservative billionaire David Koch, the candidate slipped to East Hampton for his first of three fundraisers on this tony stretch of Long Island.
The line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari began queuing outside of Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman’s estate off Montauk Highway long before Romney arrived, as campaign aides and staffers in white polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of Perelman’s property — the Creeks — checked off names under tight security.
…
A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.“We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”
Part of the problem is that poor people are too stupid to understand that rich people have to cope with major difficulties.
For example, the line of expensive cars waiting to get in under tight security was so long that “A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney, “Is there a V.I.P. entrance. We are V.I.P.”” Alas, there was none. But do you think that the poors will understand how badly your chiffon dress will suffer from sitting for an extended time in even an air-conditioned luxury car? Ha, fat chance! They are probably too stupid and ignorant to know what chiffon is.
That tells you what the problem is right there. They are letting in a much lower class of billionaires these days and so no one knows who the real VIPs are. Before you know it, even Donald Trump will be allowed in and there goes the neighborhood.
And that would be actual class warfare in action. The very rich are completely clueless in how the things they do cause so very many issues for the middle and lower classes…and they actually think they are the smarter people.
I’ve actually worked with CEOs from several large corporations in my career, and they are definitely not the smartest people I’ve ever met. They aren’t dumb, but I would put them mostly as just above average. The real success for the CEOs I’ve encountered is their aggressiveness. And this explains why there is such a mixed record for CEOs…some companies do well under a CEO, others do worse, most just stay the same…no better than random chance. But since they get the big bucks (mostly through insane levels of stock grants), they assume they are smarter than the average bear.
Just listen to their conversations among each other. They talk about where they are going for vacation (out of country most of the time), multiple homes, stocks that are doing well (or not doing well), big ticket items for purchase, etc. Pay attention to what they don’t talk about…prices at grocery stores, uncertainty about being able to pay mortgage / rent, whether they can afford to get their children a really good opportunity in sports or music, whether they can pay for college for their kids, etc. These people are truly, truly clueless.
Most of those people live in a bubble. They have no understanding about the rest of the world on so many levels that it is beyond embarrassing.
CEOs (heck, uppper management) is as much a social club as anything else. As such, they need to show the right cues and signalling or they get booted from the show.
So many of the lady in chiffon’s views speak to that pressure to conform to these in-views. The right has done an amazing job of asserting right-wing talking points into these rich elites culture.
The strangest part to me is that Obama’s policies don’t actually have an real, tangible effect on billionaires and near-billionaires. There’s no politician in America who has proposed anything that would fundamentally change their lives in any meaningful way. They are mentally ill and delusional, the same way as any other hoarder like you see on the TV. The fact that they are hoarding cash and cars and homes instead of cats and old newspapers doesn’t change the fundamental sickness at the heart of their behavior.
Silence! You will not speak ill of the job creators! Now get on your lowly knees, you maggots and kiss their shoes whilst begging for forgiveness! You would cease to exist without their job creating glory! Cease your socialist chatter immediately!!1
/Republican
Why are the rich so selfish?
My concern is that if the wealth consolidation and utter lack of empathy continues at the same pace for much longer, it will ultimately lead to blood shed. There’s plenty of historical precedent.
In a country with as many guns as this one, the rich should be rather anxious about any fluctuations in the whole bread and circuses carnival. Yet they don’t seem to be even aware of it, as far I can tell. Otherwise, I would have thought that simple self-preservation would prevent some of the behavior we’re seeing on practically a daily basis now…
The fact that we are hearing about this means that the Democrats have finally learned how to play politics.
Reality: most voters ARE low information voters and few realize that they are.
Note: I am too; the difference is that I am mostly aware of my own ignorance.
Nevertheless, it looks as if the D’s are going to run with this. Grab the popcorn…
In a country with as many guns as this one, the rich should be rather anxious about any fluctuations in the whole bread and circuses carnival. Yet they don’t seem to be even aware of it, as far I can tell.
The Bourbons were the same; they thought the rubes would never catch on. And they were mostly right, until suddenly they were horribly wrong. The smart ones fled at the first flutters of the gust-front. The ones that went to the guillotine were the bottom end of the bell-curve of rats, the upper end having already fled the sinking ship.
It’ll take a long time before it happens here, if ever. The powers that structured this country as a fake democracy did a good enough job that most people generally never even catch on. The only times the lumpenproletariat show signs of resistance is when it impacts their comfortable-enough lives.
Why are the rich so selfish?
Epicurus made a very good attempt at answering that question; I think it works, namely: those that try to accrue power and wealth do so in the attempt to protect themselves against others and misfortune. The problem with that instinct is that there is never enough power and wealth that will make you feel secure and comfortable, if you’re not the kind of person who can feel secure and comfortable with what you already have -- so they “need” more and more and more.
Epicurus:
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity. (vatican sayings)
Some men want fame and status, thinking that they would thus make themselves secure against other men. If the life of such men really were secure, they have attained a natural good; if, however, it is insecure, they have not attained the end which by nature’s own prompting they originally sought. (principal doctrines)
I ran a software company that I founded in 1998 (I served as CEO until 2000) and I did all the venture capital financing. So I had some “angel investors” who were very wealthy indeed that I basically borrowed millions of dollars from, in the hope that I could return their money tenfold (or more) and in return I’d get to move up a rung closer to being a minor member of the oligarchy. As it happened, that didn’t work, but that’s another story…
One of my investors was very very wealthy. I visited him a couple times at the suite that he keeps at the Ritz in NYC (for when he wants to stay in town, so he skirts the residency requirement for tax purposes) and one time he was complaining to me because the tech stocks were getting hammered and he was going to have to cancel his lease on the Lear Jet and his wife was torturing him about it because she wasn’t going to be able to fly to Palm Springs to get her hair done every couple weeks. I looked at this guy, whose shoes probably cost more than my car, and wondered why he possibly imagined I would feel sympathy for his plight. Another time he launched into this long explanation about how he’d made his initial fortune by borrowing capital to buy a failing business, turn it around, and sell it to a major company, then use that money to speculate (at which point he hit it big) I realized that he’d never really done a day’s work in his life, except to buy and sell other people’s work -- but he really believed that he’d worked his ass off and earned it all. The fact that he was able to borrow his initial grub-stake because he’s a Rothschild apparently didn’t count.
Yes, the ci-devant are not like the rest of us.
The attitude here reminds me of Machiavelli’s introduction to The Prince. It’s been a while since I read it, but the gist is easy enough to follow:
Machiavelli uses the analogy of viewing a mountain and viewing an open field. In order to properly see the mountain for what it is, one must be a significant distance from it… say, on an open field. And in order for a person to properly see the field for what it is, they must be a significant distance from it… say, on that mountain. One cannot see the mountain from the mountain or the field from the field, because that’s too close for proper perspective. This theory is then extrapolated to society: only the ruling class can see the commoners for what they are (and what they need and how they should act) because they’re sufficiently distanced from that society. And conversely, only the commoners can see the ruling class for what they are and how they should act, for similar reasons of distance. And then the rest of the book is the author telling his prince that it’s perfectly okay to be a sociopathic monster, so long as it’s for the sake of maintaining order.
Unfortunately, the notion of “the rich know what’s best for the poor and the poor know what’s best for the rich” is shady at best, and has been utterly corrupted into “the rich know what’s best for everybody; if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be rich in the first place.”
Let them eat cake!
Let them eat cake!
Let them ride tumbrils.
For the record, many commentators believe Machiavelli may have intended The Prince to be satire or deliberate irony. He was a republican.
Past time for la jacquerie to get organized again.
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!”
--Kurt Vonnegut
The New Yorker, May 16th, 2005
Vonnegut and Heller, right on the mark.
One would hope so, but the masses are so numbed by the media, and by media complicity in the class system, that those who preach revolutionary rhetoric are the ones who are the staunchest defenders of said system.
What I don’t understand is that the rich are wealthy because they have managed to acquire a greater proportion of wealth from everybody else. Without a strong middle class maximally consuming a lot of those rich folk would lose out. I don’t think that they understand that they are rich because of the society that is around them. This is generally my argument for a progressive tax rate as the rich should have to pay more toward a maximally consuming society because they benefit from it more.
I’m probably wealthier than everyone on this topic put together. The sad truth is, you’re all stupid ignorant trash, and you’re not even able to see it. Ignorance and arrogance is in the same class. It clouds your minds.
Love a true elite: J.C. de Rothschild~
Hey so just a reminder no matter how much money you have, or get from your parents, you’re all gonna be maggot food, just like the ‘poor’ people, you are all the same. Maggots will feast on your lifeless corpses, oh and there is no god, no pearly gates, you’ll just cease to exist. All rich people are the exact same as poor people, they all have the same quality, mortality.