Rags to Riches Stories used by Right Wing Capitalists to prove Capitalism can work fo

[tradeunionsupporter]

Rags to Riches Stories used by Right Wing Capitalists to prove Capitalism can work for all People. Rags to Riches Stories can't happen for most Working Class People only a minority of the People will be Rich. Capitalists seem to think it is everyone's dream to get Rich. Would anyone agree that it doesn't matter of the Poor or the Middle Class can get Rich since People get Rich off of the Slave Labor or the Wage Slavery of the Workers ?

Question: Under capitalism, what will happen to those who are born without the wealth and opportunities enjoyed by others? Doesn't capitalism make the rich richer and the poor poorer?

Answer: Quite the opposite. Capitalism is the one system that leaves everyone free to rise by his own efforts. The history of capitalism provides countless instances of people who improved their lives through work and ability. There are the millions of immigrants who came to America and worked their way up to the middle class—or higher. One of the great historical examples was Andrew Carnegie, who rose from a penniless sweeper at a steel mill to revolutionize the steel industry and make one of the largest fortunes of his day. It is no coincidence that 19th century America—the most purely capitalist era in the nation's history—brought us the phrase "from rags to riches."

http://www.capitalismcenter.org/philosophy/FAQ/

Why Is Bill Clinton Cultivating Envy?

by Stephen Moore

Stephen Moore is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute.
Added to cato.org on September 22, 1997

This article appeared on cato.org (http://www.cato.org/) on September 22, 1997.

Republicans shouldn't have wilted so easily. They should have met the class-warfare argument head-on. This is not -- nor has it ever been -- a nation principally motivated by greed and envy. Most Americans don't hate rich people as much as Dick Gephardt apparently does. Americans don't begrudge billionaires like Microsoft's Bill Gates or Federal Express's Fred Smith their fortunes. The vast majority of Americans don't want to tax the rich out of existence; they want to become rich themselves.

http://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/why-is-bill-clinton-cultivating-envy


Tax Cuts and Class Wars
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD (http://www.house.gov/paul/mail/welcome.htm)

The class war tactic highlights what the left does best: divide Americans into groups. Collectivists see all issues of wealth and taxation as a zero-sum game played between competing groups. If one group gets a tax break, other groups must be rallied against it — even if such a cut would ultimately benefit them. Yet the class warriors forget that American wealth is not static, but rather very dynamic. Poor people become rich, and rich people lose all of their money. In fact, at no time in American history have more of the nation's wealthy earned rather than inherited their money. Rich family dynasties are increasingly rare, and are quickly destroyed by unproductive spendthrift generations. So when the left attacks the rich, they're attacking a fluid group that many poor Americans hope to join someday by moving up in life. Upward mobility is possible only in a free-market capitalist system, whereas collectivism dooms the poor to remain exactly where they are.




January 22, 2003



Dr. Ron Paul is a Republican member of Congress from Texas.



Ron Paul Archives (http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul-arch.html)

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul74.html

[seventeethdecember2016]

Similar to a caste system, with a few differences.

I feel sorry for anyone that actually buys into this crap.

[pluckedflowers]

I call bullshit on a system that requires, as a structural necessity, a massive labor force dispossessed of any control over means of production while simultaneously promising that we will all be free to become CEOs if we try hard enough.

[campesino]

I think this is where materialism comes to play, materialism holds that everything there ever was or will be is material. To believe in a rags to riches story, you have to believe that people can override material conditions, but this is an impossibility. Those who go through rags to riches life, have unique material conditions that will lead them through that path.

capitalist are selfish and fascistic, in immediately forgetting the suffering of the poor when they imagine themselves becoming rich, and in blaming the poor for their poverty and believing the poor deserve their poverty and the rich deserve their riches(a sort of financial "might is right").

the most important issue the capitalist ignore is that capitalist make their money off the labors of other, they ignore that capitalist produce nothing and only have control over the means of production through money.

BS on that "Rich family dynasties are increasingly rare" , the Kochs the Forbes the Waltons. The media doesn't report on it anymore because, they control the media.

[Psy]

Americans don't begrudge billionaires like Microsoft's Bill Gates or Federal Express's Fred Smith their fortunes

I don't get how one can hold up Bill Gates as a good example of anything. He was a mediocre programmer that just helped port Basic to the Altair 8800. If you look at the real engineers back in the begging of the home computer market like Steve Woz, Jay Miner and Bil Herd you notice capitalism didn't appreciate their genius and they were just talent to be exploited by capitalists that took all the credit.

It is clear the engineers that actually created all these new commodities would be happier in a workers society,it would mean it would be engineers like them in the spot light instead of their capitalist masters and that they would get proper credit for their genius.

[Regicollis]

Going from rags to riches may be well and good for those who manage to pull it off but it still doesn't explain why people have to be in rags in the first place.

This mythology completely overlooks the fact that rags to rags or the riches to riches are much more typical stories in a capitalist society. By focusing on these few anomalies one completely overlooks the facts of real capitalism.

Even if it were true that you could become rich if you worked hard it still doesn't justify a system which insists on keeping poverty. Is it okay to have school yard bullies simply because the kids who gets picked on can become bullies themselves if they do enough push-ups?

In a fair system nobody would be poor and nobody would be rich.

[Tim Cornelis]

Yeah, no.


Lawrence Summers estimated that as much as 80% of personal
wealth came either from direct inheritance or the income on
inherited wealth. A study published by United for a Fair Economy
in 1997 titled “Born on Third Base” found that of the 400 on the
1997 Forbes list of wealthiest individuals and families in the US, 42%
inherited their way onto the list; another 6% inherited wealth in
excess of $50 million, and another 7% started life with at least $1
million ...
Chuck Collins and Felice Yeskel report: “In 1976, the wealthiest one
percent of the population owned just under 20% of all the private
wealth. By 1999, the richest 1 percent’s share had increased to over
40% of all wealth.” And they calculate that in the twenty-three years
between 1976 and 1999 while the top 1% of wealth holders doubled
their share of the wealth pie, the bottom 90% saw their share cut
almost in half.2 Between 1983 and 1989 the average financial wealth
of households in the United States grew at an annual rate of 4.3%
after being adjusted for inflation. But the top 1% of wealth holders
captured an astounding 66.2% of the growth in financial wealth, the
next 19% of wealth holders captured 36.8%, and the bottom 80%
of wealth holders in the US lost 3.0% of their financial wealth. As a
result, the top 1% increased their share of total wealth in the US from
31% to 37% in those six years alone, and by 1989 the richest 1% of
families held 45% of all nonresidential real estate, 62% of all business
assets, 49% of all publicly held stock, and 78% of all bonds.
Moreover, “most wealth growth arose from the appreciation (or
capital gains) of pre-existing wealth and not savings out of income.
Over the 1962 to 1989 period, roughly three-quarters of new wealth
was generated by increasing the value of initial wealth – much of it
inherited.”

From 'ABCs of political economy'

[Lowtech]

"Capitalism is the one system that leaves everyone free to rise by his own efforts." if this were true, capitalism wouldn't be so bad, however it isn't true and anyone who believes this statement is disgustingly unaware of economics and the current state of our civilization.

off topic, i wonder if these right-wing original-posters ever respond to discussion they generate, or do they post and disappear? and if so, would that not fall under spammy-activity?

[DinodudeEpic]

Only one sentence can describe the stupidity that is 'Rags to Riches'.

For every Carnegie that you get, there are a million desperate workers.

[ed miliband]

there's a marx quote, i can't remember it exactly, but he says that capital can quite happily assimilate people who climb ladder, so to speak, from labour. and it's the first form of class society that can do that.

but the point is that capital wouldn't survive without the billions of people who can't climb that ladder, who have to sell their labour-power or live miserably as surplus population. people can and do find success in capitalism - i don't see any point in denying that - but that success is relies on the existence of those who have to spend their whole life as wage labour.

[Ocean Seal]

I mean its all irrelevant, capitalism will eventually be overcome not because of its ethical drawbacks, but rather because of its structural insustainability.