View Full Version : The humble origins of the super rich....
RadioRaheem84
3rd November 2010, 21:26
Carlos Slim supposedly still lives in his small home in Mexico and Warren Buffet still lives in his humble abode in Nebraska.
Are not these moguls supposed to be buying up huge mansions so as to let their wealth trickle down into jobs? Isn't every purchase they make a job for their people, yet the media is showing how humble they are by remaining in the same homes they grew up in.
This is all besides the point. The main point is that I want to know just how much of this trickle down shit is BS, mainly by using their own sources against them and turning the logic upside down.
Does anyone have any stats or links on how the rich actually horde their wealth rather than spend it on domestic job creation?
Tavarisch_Mike
3rd November 2010, 22:20
Dont have any stats or soo, but i just wanted to say that this remindes me of the founder of IKEA Ingvar Kamprad, who is said to, currently, have a fortune of around 23 billion dollars, yet he still buys the cheapest coffe brand when hes out shopping. He always flys in tourist class when hes about to travel somewhere, which seems just ridicolous, btw hes also a former nazi.
RadioRaheem84
3rd November 2010, 22:35
Holy shit a former Nazi? And that goes to show how the media loves to portray these men as still being "humble" when the economy relies on their careless spending.
Animal Farm Pig
4th November 2010, 06:15
These 'humble' people are wrapped up in the idea of the 'honor of poverty.' It meets its converse in the 'burden of wealth.' The ones who craft the ideology of capitalism have fucking sold it to the people that it's actually a burden to be wealthy. What house those super-rich live in or what car they drive isn't important-- what's important is that they don't have to ask some dickhead supervisor if it's okay to visit the latrine to take a leak and they don't get chided for being 3 minutes late to their shift.
Savings is a non-starter in terms of capitalist economics. Remember that GDP = C + I + G + X(n). Nevermind the Gini coefficient! Nevermind non-economic activities or measures of development. Some asshole will just point to the Harrod-Domar model (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrod%E2%80%93Domar_model). Nevermind that it doesn't actually work (William Easterly has written a whole book about its failure).
I don't think debating the capitalist on capitalist grounds is so worthwhile. They will always find some way to justify capitalism. Capitalist arguments may work on the less informed, but if you play on their ground against a smart capitalist, you cannot help but lose. I think it's better to point towards the injustice of the forcible expropriation (through capitalist state power) of the surplus value created by the working people.
RadioRaheem84
5th November 2010, 20:34
:thumbup1:
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