Doug Casey on Class Warfare

Via Casey Research

Justin’s note: Are billionaires bad?

Many Americans on the left are asking themselves this question. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – the Democrat’s new rising star – is certainly no exception. Just look at what AOC said in a recent interview.

It’s not to say someone like Bill Gates, for example, or Warren Buffett are immoral people. I do not believe that.

I do think a system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong.

AOC, of course, isn’t alone. Two weeks ago, The Huffington Post published a piece titled “Should Billionaires Even Exist?” The New York Times followed up a few days later when it ran a similar piece titled “Abolish Billionaires.”

In short, class warfare is no longer just a radical leftist idea. It’s gone mainstream.

To figure out what’s behind this, I got Doug Casey on the phone. Below is a transcript of that conversation.


Justin: Doug, class warfare is heating up in the United States, and billionaires are getting the worst of it so far. What do you make of this? Are billionaires as bad as the left says? Should they be allowed to exist, or is that a “policy failure?”

Doug: Well, I’ve said for years that the time to eat the rich would come. That is, of course, a very bad thing. Here’s a fact. Most people who are rich got that way because they’re smart, productive, hard-working, and virtuous. Most people who are poor suffer from stupidity, sloth, and bad habits.

Yes, I know saying that is extremely un-PC, and smacks of Calvinism. I’m very aware that some rich people are swine, who stole their wealth. And in today’s world, where the government is involved in everything, and is expected to be a cornucopia, increasing numbers got it by being cronies. I’m also very aware that there are some righteous poor, who suffer from bad luck. Nor can everyone be Helen Keller. Or The Who’s Tommy, the deaf, dumb, and blind kid who nevertheless played a mean pinball.

That said, bad luck tends to afflict the unprepared. But that’s another discussion…

The intense hostility towards the rich, combined with the visceral hatred between “red” and “blue” parts of the country, tells me that we’re moving into a time similar to that before the French Revolution. Or the War Between the States. Or maybe the Russian Revolution.

And this trend is accelerating. It’s going to be very tumultuous for reasons I’ve spelt out in past interviews.

It’s said there are about 2,200 billionaires in the world, about a quarter of them in the U.S. But I’m sure there are many more that keep themselves under the radar. Certainly those who made a killing in drugs, politics, or other criminal activity.

Politicians and the rich have always feathered each other’s nests. Since government today is far, far more powerful and intrusive than ever before, the rich are more inclined than ever to curry favor with politicians. And politicians are equally anxious to cozy up with the rich. It’s much easier to get a few checks with lots of zeroes after the dollar sign, than cadging nickels and dimes from the unwashed.

Many billionaires are wealthy largely because they’re cronies. All of them have benefited from being connected to the firehose of money created by the Fed. They receive favors from the government. They’re granted government contracts, licenses, monopolies, and the like. Frankly, they deserve to be eaten.

But those are exactly the ones who are safest. The rich can make massive campaign contributions to politicians in the present. And it’s understood that they’ll assist in paying huge speaking fees, consulting fees, book deals, directorships, seven-figure employment, sweetheart investment deals, and the like after the pol is out of office.

In our interview on AOC, I said she was already well on her way to her hundred million dollars. She’ll get that, but not the traditional way, with briefcases stuffed with $100 bills. That no longer works in the U.S. because of onerous bank regulations, money laundering laws, and the decreasing utility of cash. In addition, the U.S. is still a relatively “high-trust” society. Government officials are reasonably comfortable waiting a few years for a fat payoff. It’s different in the Third World, where trust is very limited, and payoffs tend to be in cash on the barrelhead.

Justin: Sure. But not every billionaire exists because of government handouts. Right?

Doug: Of course, many billionaires are wealthy because they’ve created immense wealth for the common man. The average human should worship creative billionaires for vastly increasing his standard of living. Instead they prefer to apotheosize political figures and actors – who throughout history have been classed with prostitutes, con men, and professional liars. Mass media and the leisure economy have inverted many traditional values.

The problem is that humans are essentially chimpanzees – and I don’t mean the gentle bonobo either. As individuals, they can be quite rational. But they immediately fall to the lowest common denominator if you put them together. It’s easy to get them to hooting and panting, anxious to tear apart some real or imagined enemy.

And a lot of that has to do with envy, a much nastier vice than simple jealousy or covetousness. Jealousy says: “You have it. I want it. I’ll take it from you.” That’s understandable. It’s how the world has worked for at least 500 million years, since animal life arose.

Envy, however, says “You have it. I want it. I’ll not only take it from you, but I’ll hurt you for having it. And if I can’t have it, I’ll destroy it, so you can’t have it either.” One chimpanzee has a bunch of fat appetizing grubs, and the other chimpanzees – well represented by all the Democrats running for president – are chock-full of envy. I’m afraid that’s just the way things are on Planet Earth today. Not just with chimps, but even more so with humans.

It’s well known that Earth’s twenty, or whatever, richest people control about half of the planet’s wealth. And half of the people on Earth have approximately nothing. That doesn’t seem “fair” – an extremely dangerous word when we’re talking politics. So, it’s perfectly natural for the poor chimpanzees to try and take it away from the rich chimps.

They’ll use the time-tested method of violence in some places. But the political process is a much lower-risk way to get what you want – if you’re incapable of creating something and trading. They’ll vote for someone who promises to give them free stuff and even things out. Make things more “fair.” That’s what happened in Venezuela. It’s what happened in Zimbabwe. It happens constantly in Africa, although sometimes things get a bit out of control, as they did in Rwanda twenty years ago where, you’ll recall, a million folks were hacked up with machetes. It’s happened in scores of countries in just the last century. It can happen anywhere. The United States is no exception. In fact, it’s starting to happen here right now.

Justin: Yeah, all this hate directed at billionaires and support for things like wealth taxes tells me the U.S. is moving closer to full-blown socialism with each passing day.

Doug: Well, this term socialism is bandied around constantly. However, very few people know what it actually means. Let’s define a few words. If you can’t define a word precisely, then you can’t really understand what you’re talking about. I’m afraid that’s true of 90% of people. Add to that the fact that they don’t actually think, they feel. No wonder tempers run high when either politics or economics are discussed. We revert to mimicking our cousins, the chimps.

Karl Marx defined socialism as a system where the means of production – farms, mines, schools, hospitals, factories and the like – are owned by the people, which is to say by the State.

Socialism is supposed to be a temporary stage on the way to Communism. Communism is a system where not only the means of production are owned by the state, but where consumer goods are also common property.

Under socialism, consumer goods – like cars, houses, retail stores, handicrafts – are still privately owned. This ties into what fascism is – another term often used descriptively, but never defined. Fascism has nothing to do with jackboots and black uniforms – those can be a part of any statist system. Again, if you don’t define words properly and precisely, it means that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

Let me define fascism. It’s an economic system where both the means of production and consumer goods are privately owned, but – very important – they’re totally regulated by the state. In today’s world, the only real socialist countries are North Korea and Cuba. Every other country in the world is fascist, in the sense that both the means of production and consumer goods are privately owned but are all regulated – controlled – by the state.

Justin: So, you don’t think there are any capitalist countries in the world?

Doug: No. Capitalism is a system where everything is not only privately owned but it’s totally privately controlled. In other words, the state has no intervention or influence in the economy at all. Capitalism doesn’t exist anywhere in the world today.

Justin: And yet, people blame capitalism for all of today’s problems. I don’t just mean some people. Distaste for capitalism has gone mainstream.

At this point, there’s no doubt in my mind that the Democrats will rally around eating the rich during the next presidential race.

Doug: No question about it. We’re on the cusp of a cultural revolution, not dissimilar to what China went through between the mid-sixties and the mid-seventies.

And it could totally overthrow America’s most important traditions. The U.S. has been mutating, on its way to becoming another country for a long time. It used to be unique and exceptional. Now it’s just another nation state like the 200 others covering the face of the globe like a skin disease.

It’s a major trend. And cultural, civilizational trends usually accelerate until they reach a crisis.

The thing is that most people have no understanding of economics. Why? Because economics is an intellectual matter. And people are not interested in intellectual arguments. They’re only interested in emotional arguments.

Justin: In what sense?

Doug: The key is the difference between “think” and “feel.” Those words are used interchangeably – which is absolutely wrong, and part of the problem. People don’t think – which means using logic, reason, and solid fact. What they do is feel – using emotion, stray anecdotes, and gut impressions. They dramatize their buried psychological aberrations. They have very nebulous, undefined, notions of right and wrong.

One thing that’s for sure, though. They’re interested in feeling like they’re the good guys. They want to be on the right side, the moral side, of issues. Everybody likes to feel god’s on his side. It doesn’t matter whether it’s Yahweh, Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Odin, or Crom.

Here’s the critical thing: the socialists have positioned themselves as the good guys, the ones doing the moral thing. And nobody, with the exception of Ayn Rand – and libertarians – has ever defended capitalism on a moral basis. Which is actually the way it should be defended. But their arguments are intellectual, not emotional. So they’re totally lost on the average chimp.

The Republicans are completely worthless, less than worthless, in this battle. They’re an active liability. At best, they make a weak effort to defend the free market based on the fact that it’s productive and efficient. But that’s not going to cut it. No wonder they’re viewed – correctly, in my view – as weak-kneed sellouts, hypocrites, and moral cripples. The average person is going to go for what he thinks is socialism because he wants to feel that he’s doing the right thing.

I’m afraid the battle is completely lost at this point. The only way to change course is through intellectual arguments. That’s supposed to happen in school – but perversely, that’s where arguments for socialism are made instead. The average person just gets the bottom line: socialist values are good and right.

I’ll tell you what they want. They want free housing, free medical care, free schooling, free food. And if it’s not completely free, then it should at least be subsidized. They want to be taken care of. What they really want is a fascist welfare state. Why? So they can still own stocks, and maybe get wealthy.

Socialism is just kind of a buzzword for free stuff, for the fascist welfare state. People don’t really care who owns the means of production; they think “stuff” is produced magically.

Justin: Yeah. It is quite remarkable how people pin so much blame on capitalism while ignoring the fact that socialism has destroyed entire economies countless times.

Doug: And it will happen again. It will, ultimately, result in the collapse of the economy. Producers will decide, “To hell with it. I’m not going to bother. It’s not worth it. I don’t want to be a milk cow.” For a considerable number of people, it’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth to produce when you account for all the aggravation, the risks, and hard work that goes into being an entrepreneur. Anyway, it’s kind of fun having a guaranteed annual income, and binging on a TV series all day.

Is a new Dark Age possible? Of course. Anything is possible, on both the upside and the downside.

There are, of course, some reasons for optimism. One is that the average person – notwithstanding socialist rhetoric and welfare state benefits – is wired, like a squirrel, to produce more than he consumes, and save the rest. Which creates capital. Another is technology which – believe it or not – has been advancing at the rate of Moore’s Law for about 200,000 years.

It’s possible that technology in the form of artificial intelligence, nanotech, biotech, and such can advance quickly enough to create new wealth faster than stupid ideas can destroy it.

Perhaps, only a generation or two from now, robots will produce everything that people need. That’s possible, though unlikely in the short-term. What’s more likely is that stupid ideas, which also seem to be gaining ground at an exponential rate, will destroy immense amounts of capital. Perhaps enough that there won’t be sufficient pools of capital to conduct science and build new technology. These things are highly capital-intensive today. We need large pools of capital to keep advancing. The kind of pools that hated billionaires shepherd and make grow.

If socialists succeed in making it impossible, or perhaps just unpalatable and apparently anti-social, to become a billionaire, you’re not going to have the pools of capital to keep science and technology advancing. The economy and society will fall apart. That’s what destroyed the USSR and Mao’s China.

It’s possible that we could be facing either the Singularity or a new Dark Age. I don’t know which it will be. It’s a toss-up. Maybe both, in different areas. But the best predictor isn’t going to be think tanks. It will be science fiction.

There will be political ramifications. I fully expect the Republican Party to break up into at least two. But that’s a subject for a different discussion. However the most degraded, ignorant, misguided, and unintelligent people are those rising to the top in the Democratic Party. Which, incidentally, is also going to break into at least two pieces.

Just wait until the U.S. economy collapses later this year. Now, I know I’ve been very premature on this call. But I’m convinced it’s imminent.

When that happens, people will start losing their houses. They’re going to have their cars repossessed. Even if they don’t lose their jobs, they’ll be unable to service all their debts. They’re going to go wild.

Things will get ugly. Could we have a real civil war? As you know, I’m prone to look at the bright side. Since half of the country is on Prozac, Ritalin, Xanax, and 50 other psychiatric drugs, and the other half is glued to their video screens, maybe people will give fighting a pass…

Justin: I hope I’m outside of the States when that happens. Like you, I’d much rather watch this play out on the television, preferably in a country where things are more stable.

Doug: Yeah. But Joe Louis was right. You can run, but you can’t hide.

Justin: Thanks for speaking with me today, Doug.

Doug: You’re welcome.

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e.d ott
e.d ott

So Uncle Warren and his pal Charlie Munger aren’t crony capitalists?
I beg to differ. Seems Uncle Warren got more than a few sweet deals on warrants and Class B shares unavailable to small investors on a certain institutions he bailed out during the last recession that made his investors millions. Will those tight-fisted bastards decide to buy and distribute ammo before jetting off to their New Zealand bunkers?
No, and neither will the International Man.

22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice
22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice

Just because this image never gets old:

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Ned
Ned

Of course, many billionaires are wealthy because they’ve created immense wealth for the common man. The average human should worship creative billionaires for vastly increasing his standard of living.

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Llpoh
Llpoh

So, Ned the moron fails to understand how the standard of living of the average American has grown vastly in the last 100 years, large thanks to the titans that employ vast numbers of Americans.

There is a lot of research out there, dumbass, detailing the advancement in the standard of living. You might look it up.

BTW – just what has your parasitic ass added to the overallvalue of the nation?

Ned
Ned

Most people who are rich got that way because they’re smart, productive, hard-working, and virtuous.

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22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice
22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice

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robert h siddell jr
robert h siddell jr

Open warfare worse than the 1960s riots is coming because Urban Jungle Great Society Black Democrats are now more Communist and more dangerous than the Blacks of Zimbabwe, Congo, Rwanda, Somalia, and South Africa; and they will be joined by the new Muslim and Mexican gangs. TPTB have set US up for Planned Chaos, the cherry on their NWO cocktail.

22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice
22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice

Listen. I ain’t foolin’ and you better think again.

Mankind is shackled in the chains of political systems, monetary systems, and belief systems that are so fucking obsolete in the face of the GREAT AWAKENING that is taking place as we speak- it boggles the mind.

Hopefully some day our children can visit HUMAN SLAVERY museums filled with exhibits like “Federal Reserve Note Terrorism” and “The Horrors of Faked Nuclear Weapons” and “The Pestilence of Very Real No Fly Zones and Cannon Fodder Warfare”.

They will marvel at these exhibits and wonder how their grandparents lived through the madness that was the past century of human history and got past the utter delusion that is THE MATRIX that their grandparents battled and smashed into dust.

We are the grandparents.

All of us alive today, in America.

Armed to the teeth.

Getting ready to fight to the death.

Before the lights go out.

FOREVER.

Ned
Ned

If I had a dollar for every time that CAPITALISM was blamed for the problems caused by GOVERNMENT, I’d be a fat filmmaker with a baseball cap.
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anarchyst
anarchyst

Henry Ford CREATED a market which had not existed when he paid his employees $5.00 per day when the average wage of the day was around $1.25 per day. His premise was not entirely altruistic as assembly line work was monotonous; a way had to be found to retain employees, as well.
Of course, the wall street types and the banksters howled that Ford’s wage rates would destroy capitalism (as they knew it-those at the top reap all of the benefits while the proles are forced to live on a bare subsistence wage, due to the machinations of those at the top).
Guess what??
The OPPOSITE happened. Henry Ford knew one of the basic tenets of a truly free, capitalistic society, that a well-paid work force would be able to participate and contribute to a strong economy, unlike what is taught in business schools today-that wages must be kept to a bare minimum and that the stockholder is king. Our free trade politicians have assisted the greedy wall street types and banksters in depressing wages on the promise of cheap foreign labor and products.
Henry for was instrumental in helping to create a true “middle class”-which has been eroded since the 1970s.
A good example of this is the negative criticism that Costco receives for paying its employees well above market wages. These same wall street types praise Wal-Mart for paying its employees barely subsistence wages while assisting them in filling out their public assistance (welfare) forms.
Any sane, rational person KNOWS that in order for capitalism to work, employees need to make an adequate wage. Unfortunately, this premise does not exist in today’s business climate.
Henry Ford openly criticized those of the “tribe” for manipulating wall street and banksters to their own advantage, and was roundly (and unjustly) criticized for pointing out the TRUTH.
Catholic priest, Father Coughlin did the same thing and was punished by the Catholic church, despite his popularity and exposing the TRUTH of the American economy and the outsider internationalists that ran it . . . and STILL run it.
Our race to the bottom will not be without consequences. A great realignment is necessary (and is coming) . .

CCRider
CCRider

“Behind every great fortune there is a great crime” Balzac

BTW, that was the quote Mario Puzo used on the 1st page of “The Godfather”

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

You lost me at the chimp comparison . We have witnessed the greatest transfer of wealth from the once thriving middle class in America over the last 50 years . In the last 20 it became an avalanche as the federal reserve flooded the system with virtual free money to the 1 to 10% of elitest investor class . This move of wealth also purchased great political power and favor . It also left over 100 MILLON working Americans in the financial dust with bankrupt pensions rising costs on everything and shrinking wages . The figures published always seem to paint a false picture of economic life in America today . This is especially true once the curtain is peeled away and the results appear .
As the system crashed those who benefited the most from leading the nation to financial disaster were bailed out by the bought and paid for political class by TARP ! Great plan the crony connected are bailed out with bonuses and the great unwashed are left holding the debt created .
Wash rinse repeat , the circle jerk of crony capitalist from Wall Street to K-Street to Capitol Street have left quite a trail of tears in their wake . Steel mills and heavy manufacturing jobs gone where one high paid union job supported 3 other jobs from bakers to plumbers . The schools and roads were all built from that tax base and it’s “GONE”!
The public pensions are all circling the drain and who do you think the government cronies are looking to to bankroll the shortages on those $7 trillon in pension shortages those 100 MILLON bankrupted chimps not the bailed out billionaires .
So to the question of why socialism is on the rise regardless of the historical horrors and failures look in the mirror billon dollar monkey brain , you over played this poker hand and now your bluff is being called !

starfcker
starfcker

I actually enjoyed reading this. I don’t think Doug Casey has a real grip on things in this department, but it is obvious that he’s thinking about it. A lot. When smart people have their bubble burst, that’s where solutions come from, eventually. Look at Jim Kunstler. He had his sort of dogmatic outlook on the world, and the world changed on him, so his writing no longer made sense. But being a smart guy, he realized that fairly quickly. His rethink didn’t take too long. Now he’s back to being his razor sharp self, and his observations are pretty damn accurate. Looks to me like that’s what’s happening with Casey. We might see a few of these, where he’s thrashing around trying to put his finger on things, but he’s another smart guy, and I expect that it won’t take him long to figure it all out.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Boat – you should do some, you know, actual research imstead of buying into the transfer of wealth, income equality shit.

You can look up how much the wealth of the rich has grown after taxes, how much the buying power of the “poor” has increased, how great the numbers of non-working have increased, what the income of the midfle class has done, etc.

Listening to MSM asshats talk about inequality will rot your brain if you do not augment their bullshit with actual facts. The facts are out there. You just are not aware of them, it seems.

With regard to taxes, what I believe you will find is that taxes as a percent of GDP is virtually unchanged. And that tax base is augmented by a further trillion in deficit spending. So your comments on tax are bullshit.

Your comments on manufacturing and union job losses to overseas are also largely bullshit. In 1960 about half the people would have worked in manufacturing – or the equivalent to arpund 75 million people. Today there are around 10 million in manufacturing in the US. You think 65 million jobs were shipped overseas? What bullshit.

Do you know that manufacturing as a percentage of GDP has remained largely unchanged? What does that tell you? It telss you jobs were not shipped overseas, but rather were automated out of existence.

Yes, the US imports a lot of mfg goods these days. It is primarily done with borrowed money.

What has changed is that the US still makes as much mfg goods as ever, but it now consumes goods at a far faster rate, and thus is now importing goods as well as making them locally.

The bullshit abou all those jobs being shipped overseas you have bleated on about many times. It is still just bullshit.

Re the steel mills – they deserved to die. They were dinosaurs, the wages they paid were absurd and unsustainable, and the steel they produced per man hour, even ignoring the enormous cost of that man hour, was 1/4 of what new mills in Japan were producing. US consumers were not benefitting from them, they were directly subsidizing them.

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

You keep believing your nonesense preached by the likes of the Koch brothers and ass wipe investor types like Mitt Romeny .
But to clue you in now that’s right now today : US Navy vessels are at a historical low as far as readiness ! Why you may ask ? Not enough steel mills , not enough foundries , not enough machinists or tool & die makers to fashion the parts or maintain the hulls and gear needed to go to sea and be combat ready . Not enough dry dock space to do the work desperately needed currently !
During the flag waving nonsense of Desert Storm the us had to lease ships from McConnel’s father-in-law a shipping billionaire from China to supply our troops .
Maybe China will allow help again the Republicans father-in-law made a fortune for his company and China on the last round maybe not . I do not listen to the left or the right nor the MSM and government to me they are all equally worthless !
I do however have not had my ability to recognize bull shit when I hear it and for 100 MILLON plus Americans it’s currently coming from all sides !

e.d ott
e.d ott

Read the latest ZH article on Buffet and Munger’s quarterly loss on Berkshire Hathaway.
They’ve been resisting splits for years and buying back shares to increase EPS for investors. BRK-B is comparatively more affordable than the BRK-A shares, but still outlandishly priced. They love dividend stocks and the profits while much of the value in BRK hasn’t been returned through distributions.
In my opinion, they’re cash-hoarding misers who’ve earned profits but haven’t truly returned the value back into the economy by underwriting and investing in smaller businesses. The wealth is concentrated and because BRK is so huge a real downturn is going to hammer them … and to make things humorous, these two geriatric cash hoarders are gold and silver bashers.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-23/berkshire-letter-highlights-shocking-25bn-loss-buffet-bashes-deficit-doomsayers

Morongobill
Morongobill

Their money, their plan- unless the investors make a redemption run, I doubt that Buffet Munger Inc will change.

Llpoh
Llpoh

Ed – what were the quarterly losses, Einstein?

It was the change in market value of their businesses, which new rule now require be reported as losses. Fact is, ignoring those artificial booking of losses, they were asprofitable as ever. They were very cash positive. They had to book the sharemarket drop as losses, which is absurd, but there it is.

A downturn will not hammer Berkshire, as they almost never sell. A downturn will present buying opportunity for them, and they will cime out of a downturn smelling like a rose.

They have no obligation to invest in anything. They will invest, as they always have done, when they find assets appropriately priced.

But feel free to invest your assets as you see fit.

Thunderbird
Thunderbird

Every person has a different point of view. No two points of view are exactly the same. Also we are all beings that manifest three forms of expression; thoughts, feelings, and sensations activated by three different centers; or brains. When all these centers are in balance harmony exists within us.

Capitalism, socialism and fascism are three different economic systems of the external material. When they are in balance harmony exists. Right now they are out of balance.

Administrative law cannot balance economic systems because this form of law only operates on facts without human values which creates disharmony.

Only conscience can balance these systems but hardly anyone knows or wants to access their conscience because it is too hard to face our contradictions. And until we do we will not be able to balance our economic problems.

So what is coming to america is socialism. It will be a hard slap in the face to many who are now well off. And it will be a disaster to america.

I guess we will have to learn the hard way until we face our conscience and get things right.

22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice
22winmag - Yankee by birth-Southerner by choice

Romania got things right back in the 90s.
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yahsure
yahsure

Eight years of class and race warfare by Obama was enough for me. Hatred and jealousy pushed by the left is meant to undermine the country and destroy our current system. Life isn’t easy and things are not perfect. I sit here watching TV on my big screen TV and drinking coffee. I feel like I have won life’s lottery by being an American.

Stucky

“Most people who are poor suffer from stupidity, sloth, and bad habits.”

Really? There are surely dozens of reasons why people are poor. What a piece of shit you are, Mr. Casey. I wouldn’t piss on you if your hair was on fire.

Seriously, folks … with elitist pricks like Casey, is it any wonder that Marxists like AOC have a following?

Llpoh
Llpoh

Stuck – his comment was entirely accurate in my opinion. You think the poor are generally smart, hard working, and have good personal habits? Really? If you assume that the bottom 20% might be considered poor, what do you consider their IQ on average. I am betting below 85. I will try to get data on that.Why would they work when free shit!

He is just telling the truth. Guess that makes him an elitist these days.

Stucky

“You think the poor are generally smart, hard working, and have good personal habits? Really?” —-Llpoh

I suppose much depends on how one measures “being poor”. As you and other have mentioned even those in the USA classified as living in “poverty” have lots of goodies; big TVs, expensive cell phones, cars, electric appliances, etc. etc. But, I think the articles and comments reflect this idea of being poor —- not having lots of excess money.

By that definition, my father was poor most of his life. But, he surely wasn’t stupid (he spoke 5 languages fluently, and conversant in a few others). He worked HARD his entire life. And his personal habits were impeccable. Being poor, we had lots of poor friends. None of them were stupid, lazy, or slovenly. In fact, I’m poor as well.

You seem to think the rich are all, or mostly all, smart, hard working, and have good personal habits. I just shake my fucken’ head at such illogical and irrational thinking. There are millions of smart, hard working, good habit people in this world. Why aren’t they all billionaires, hmmm? Maybe because there’s a LOT more to it than Casey’s simplistic elitist rantings?

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To be clear, I am NOT saying that those in poverty make bad choices, and that those bad choices have played a significant cause leading to their poverty.

Casey pisses me off because he paints with such a BROAD brush by implying that virtually all poor people are poor because of his very NARROW criteria (intelligence, work habits, and personal habits.) You’re a smart guy fer sure and I’m surprised you subscribe to such simplistic explanations.

Much poverty is caused by things an individual can’t control; access to clean water, food, and other resources, or political conflict. And of course the Biggie — government policies definitely help make or keep people poor (just look at Venezuela as but one of many many examples.)

Llpoh
Llpoh

Here you go Stuck. Read ‘em and weep.

The incredible correlation between IQ & income

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

To Llpoh , how much money paid to industrial workers was excessive . Since you fall back on the comment that the wages were ridiculous , do you know what a shipyard mechanic or welder made in the 70’s & 80’s ? I sincerely doubt you do but I bet you know some inflated exaggeration .
If steel workers were overpaid with wages and benefits then police fire and teachers plus all paper shufflers in government are grossly overpaid now
Fact : one heavy industry union wage supported 3 other jobs in the community from the local diner to the hardware store not to mention the schools and roads teachers etc all now crying for funding but the tax base that built it is gone to the count of over 100 MILLON last count !
I remember you speaking about buying a bulldozer to replace a shovel . Someone only capable of operating a shovel placed at the controls of any heavy equipment will most likely destroy it and your job site but a trained experienced operating engineer will make money for you but not for $15 per hour

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