Is the POORs hatred of WEALTHY ($$$) people legitimate and morally justifiable?

I am of the belief that their needs to be class competition.
Not everyone is capable or willing to do what it takes to be successfully, financially viable or whatever measure of being wealthy people want to apply.

Their are horrible, evil people that kill, rape, steal and general do terrible things and are poor in life just like their are wealthy people that do those same things.

I am not saying this is the point of the OP but I do not understand the desire some on ATS have to vilify someone for being successful or happy professionally. I don't understand why some folks here assume that being homeless is somehow more noble then living in a nice house.

All that being said... I don't think a poor person should hate a wealthy person nor do i think a wealthy person should hate a poor person.. Both groups should despise the criminals that exist in both types , and everything in between, of life.

Would it be pragmatic and justifiable to have separate cities for rich and poor. Are the poor and rich too mixed together in general. Could a proposal of this nature ever be placed through the countries senate for enacting laws to zone off habitable areas of states from people who have no wealth?

Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."

Jean-Paul Sartre said, "When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

Anatole France said, "I thank fate for having made me born poor. Poverty taught me the true value of the gifts useful to life."


I believe being part of middle class we can see both sides of the stories.

I see more hatred from the rich towards the poor (or middle class) than vice versa. Just look up any thread about welfare, food stamps or health care. There are some nasty, nasty comments with lots of unsupported assumptions. For example, there are certain posters who just love claiming all poor are lazy when studies show over 80% are either elderly, disabled or children.

People should be outraged at the all the government funding and tax breaks the rich receive from the government. They should be pushing for an increase in minimum wage. Giving business higher profits DOES NOT result in job growth. Corps profits have never been higher while unemployment has increased.

Wanting fair laws isn't hatred.

Ones definition of poor is another's definition of doing OK.

Having seen how others live vs how those 'poor' in the USA live, I say they don't have a leg to stand on.

Being poor in Merica is nothing like being really poor elsewhere.

How many poor get free cell phones?
How many poor get free food cards where you can buy junk food?
How many poor get free rent just cause?
How many poor get free medical for their kids?
How many poor get free shuttle services?
How many poor get free monies just cause they are poor?

Being poor in America or most of Europe is NOTHING like being poor elsewhere.

So my answer is a big fat NO. The wealthy pay/work for what they have.

If people can provide info on their areas poor vs wealthy-that would be great. My bubble in life seems to be a unique one from what y'all post.

I agree with the earlier poster who said we don't hate the wealthy, we want them to be held accountable. It wasn't the poor who started WWI and WWII. It wasn't the poor who dragged the US into both. It isn't the poor who caused the massive economic collapse worldwide over the past 4 years from financial shenanigans, and it isn't the poor that cause the Military Industrial Complex to push us into war with other nations to steal their resources, nor is it the poor or middle class who profit from it. It is not the poor who penalize whistleblowers in order to hide the crimes of our government. Nor is it the poor who force all people to take their vaccines or eat their GMO products without scientific studies on the effects these things will have. It is not the poor who engage in monopolistic oligarchies that enact price fixing so we must pay much higher rates for basic necessities like natural gas, petroleum, electricity, and food, than they are actually worth. It is not the poor who engage in futures shares speculation that artificially inflate the costs of food and water and basic needs. It is not the poor who demand that the lions share of our taxes go to military expenditures rather than to healthcare and education.

Massive accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few destabilizes and destroys democracy. It is also not the poor who use massive amounts of money to ram legislation through congress that is detrimental to the majority in order to provide profit for the few.

Is it wrong for working class and sweatshop citizens in other nations to have anger and resentment for their dictators and the ownership class?? Was it wrong for serfs and indentured servants to have resentment for the feudal lords in medieval Europe? Was it wrong for the slaves of rome, Egypt, or the US to have resentment for their masters? Its all the same issue. Its unequal representation in the determination of our own futures and well being. Its other people having an unequal ability to dictate the futures of themselves and their heirs vs ourselves and our heirs, not based upon ability or virtue, but based upon chance, history, and the cultivation of the virtues of acquisition and greed, yes, usually through the ability to manipulate law and financial schemes.

And we are not talking about middle class or upper middle class wealth....that's not who the majority feel resentment to. Its people in Washington, dynasty style wealth, big oil, big agro, big pharma, like that. People who use their wealth in ways that are detrimental to us, the environment, and the future generations, all for the sake of greed.

When we talk about poor we really do not understand what that means. Outside the US poor means you might starve to death any given week, poor means you have basically nothing and MORE IMPORTANTLY no way to get anything. How would someone in America like to be poor with nothing to their name and zero chance they can achieve anything.

Our poor are spoiled brats most of the time. Who cares if someone is rich? Who cares what they do with their wealth, I don't. When we look at the 99%ers we get a picture of young people who get fooled by a University that their degree actually means something and after they finish it they expect a 100k a year job as reward for a 3.5+ grade point average for some totally useless degree.

I hate to say it but not everyone is a winner in the real world. So a person sucks at soccer but they are told they are really good and get trophies to show it, well they still suck and there are no trophies in the real world. This is a shock to many...

Also if you make poor life decisions then guess what? You will reach a point of basically a unrecoverable situation where you will be poor your whole life, some recover, but the 99.9% will continue to make those poor life decisions.

People want a game reset like life will just "redistribute wealth" so everyone starts on a even play field. This would be great for the person one year out of college, but the guy who spent 30 years making his fortune kind of gets screwed don't you think? People today think everything can be a game reset...well it can't and once again, if you make poor decisions you will need to live with them your whole life.

You know some are born lucky, oh the Paris Hiltons of the world. If you spent one second worrying about them then that is one second you are not putting to your own success. Some are born with a Royal Flush and some are born with a pair of 2s, ya the real world sucks, so get over it.

The funny part is the rich were not hated until Obama came on board with his evil rich, need to "redistribute wealth" idea. Well here we are 5 plus years later and nothing, but boy were the masses gullible, but hey it got him elected.

Originally posted by opethPA
I am of the belief that their needs to be class competition.
Not everyone is capable or willing to do what it takes to be successfully, financially viable or whatever measure of being wealthy people want to apply.

Their are horrible, evil people that kill, rape, steal and general do terrible things and are poor in life just like their are wealthy people that do those same things.

I am not saying this is the point of the OP but I do not understand the desire some on ATS have to vilify someone for being successful or happy professionally. I don't understand why some folks here assume that being homeless is somehow more noble then living in a nice house.

All that being said... I don't think a poor person should hate a wealthy person nor do i think a wealthy person should hate a poor person.. Both groups should despise the criminals that exist in both types , and everything in between, of life.

I agree with your post 100%. People here identify wealth as the evil component when the evil is the person wealthy or poor. I don't see posts here vilifying the person who drops out of school, gets into a gang and sell drugs for years until he kills a few people and goes to jail just to repeat the process until he dies.

The truly evil rich is a handful of people. Might as well say all poor are evil people because they are poor.

Originally posted by pexx421
And we are not talking about middle class or upper middle class wealth....that's not who the majority feel resentment to. Its people in Washington, dynasty style wealth, big oil, big agro, big pharma, like that. People who use their wealth in ways that are detrimental to us, the environment, and the future generations, all for the sake of greed.

So lets say you work for a company and make a good wage, do you hate the CEO? Once again your example above is a small majority, and wealth has nothing to do with it. Power on the other hand does, and you don't need to be super wealthy to have power. What you are really talking about is bad people in the position of power, wealth might be a component of that but not the main factor.


Or are you talking about less than 50 people on the planet such as the Rockefeller etc.

reply to post by AthlonSavage


There is no Hate, there is only a current level of disappointment that has grown not only
into a general lack of trust in leadership, but a general lack of faith in humanity.

The imbalance of economic "Fairness" is "De-evolving Mankind.

Are you so myopic and obtuse that you have forgotten this? VidLink:

www.youtube.com...

Or Maybe I am reacting harshly to your naivety?

Either way, This is not an apology.

Another point I want to bring. Sorry guys, but our poverty class is a function of the society we built. It is a direct result of our policies. Many want to blame the poor for their lot...but I guarantee, if those same people you might point to and despise for their laziness, their entitlement, their ignorance...if they were born in japan, Norway, Vietnam, they would be nothing like they are now. When you see a large segment of the population that is singular, unique, different than those that exist in other cultures, an example is the kamikaze types in WWII japan, or the untouchables in india....then those people are a direct product of that society, brought about by social pressures, not their nature. I could be wrong, but I believe that here in the US we have just such a unique group, and I would put forth the idea that this group is the result of our structure and legislation.

But that aside....the majority of people are not like that. This is a fringe that is pointed to in order to arouse your ire. The natural state of a human at rest is not laziness....its creativity. Its just that in the US the norm is so far from healthy that when they have rest they spend the time in decamping, recovering. We have a system here that has completely subverted maslow's hierarchy of need. What I mean by that is this....according to Maslow, we have to fulfill our needs in a certain order. Once we have achieved food, we then need to achieve personal safety. Once we have achieved safety we then need to attain social significance or love. Once we attain these we move on to esteem and self actualization. But in our system we have made attaining food and safety (home) a neverending cost, that people must devote at LEAST 40 hours a week to....their whole lives. And we fill the rest of the time with addictions to distraction, TV, Football, alcohol, drugs. So people never get to the point of actualizing, which is where they would normally discover their full potential and become valuable resources for their society. We have, INTENTIONALLY, I believe, subverted whole generations potential in order to make them into good consumers. And let me add....even the poor are productive consumers. Every single cent of welfare, aid, etc that goes to the poor....goes RIGHT back into the system as profit....to walmart, to hospitals, to cell phone companies and automakers. Ok, I'll get off my soap box now, tequila has me rambling, but these are the thoughts I have on it. Thanks for listening!

reply to post by mikegrouchy


It is comforting to realize that you understand
the disparency.

Remember this? Link:

www.youtube.com...

Originally posted by AthlonSavage

Its a brave new world which is emerging in front of us and with each passing generation it becomes nearer and nearer.

I wont go into details of the brave new world as there are plenty of fictional novels, movies out there that explain where humanity is headed, as population increases, resources become more finite and technological evolution zooms ahead.

Somethings however despite the changing props due to machine advancements never do really change and are constants. An obvious constant is the gap between the Rich Wealthy and Poor, that divide always seems to maintain itself as a large wide and deep Canyon. The external wall that keeps the peasant out of the Castle of privileged estate.

The divide leads to jealousy, resentment and sometimes extreme hatred of between the upper and lower classes.

Is the POORs hatred of WEALTHY ($$$) people legitimate and morally justifiable?

Yes it is because it show the total useless systems that humanity have built in distributing resources that gives manipulative people the possibility to parasite on each others like you do on a farm animal.

People who can control the game to get more than a 100 times more than another and do, are clearly greedy and their greed destroy the pricing for everyone else since it inflations the cost for everyone else to pay for the greedy:s need.

It is not about what you get in numbers but the products and services you can get for the numbers. If you make 1 million dollars and have to pay 999 999 dollars for a basic of living (one room apartment and cheap food) then still you are still poor.

Originally posted by Aphorism
reply to post by AthlonSavage

 

On the poor's hatred of the wealthy—It can be said with confidence that wealth does not make a person. Conversely, one does not, nor can not, hate a wealthy person on these grounds. One can only hate that he himself is not wealthy.

edit on 24-8-2013 by Aphorism because: (no reason given)

That is dung. Just because you hate dictators do not mean you want to become a dictator. I have said no to greed on a moral ground and will not play the game of parasiting on my fellow man in the stock market even if I have done it in the past until I understood how screwed up the human economics system is. I want exactly what I deserve for my efforts. No more no less.

And do you really think people working with money deserve more money. It is common on every company that I have worked in that sales guys have more paid than the ones who create the product. Why is that?

One one side Apple making extreme profits and the other side people in China killing themselves because of to hard working conditions. They cannot even take 10% of their profits to fix the working conditions. That is screwed up on a level that should have everyone saying this system is sick.

It depends upon a few factors, or, questions:

A) Are the poor in question law abiding citizens?
B) Do the wealthy deserve what they have?
C) Would a poor man, with money, squander what he has?

reply to post by SystemResistor

A) Are the poor in question law abiding citizens?
B) Do the wealthy deserve what they have?
C) Would a poor man, with money, squander what he has?

A - Sometimes
B- Unlikely
C - Probably

Being most of my life "poor" as in struggling to finish the month, I never see any reason to hate others who are doing better. My life is my responsibility, it's nobody's fault for living the way I do. I had many chances to change that but the price would have been some moral principles which, justified or not, I was not willing to sacrifice.

I am ok with others being rich; I believe in karma and I'm sure everybody got exactly what they deserve, good or bad. Also I'm realistic enough to realize that if I were in their place I would probably behave the same. In fact many times I'm grateful for not being swapped in this need of having a lot of money; that left place for other wonderful things to discover about this world and my life.
As they say, rich is the person content with what he have, and in this respect i'm almost rich.

Hating people who are doing better than oneself, in any area of life it only makes one weak and corrupt inside; it's a trap where the only one hurt by it is oneself.. Hate is never justified in my eyes.

reply to post by WhiteHat


You sound like you have inner wealth, enlightened.

Originally posted by AthlonSavage
reply to post by WhiteHat

 

You sound like you have inner wealth, enlightened.

I definitely have the aspiration of that, yes. Is the best thing one can aspire for.

reply to post by pexx421


i think this guy nailed it.


thanks pexx