Is the system designed to keep the rich, rich?

And this is everything from house insurance, to mortgages , to loans.

Do priests molest children?

The system is very good at filtering people by behavior and to some extent circumstance.

No. The system is not designed to keep the rich rich. It has been tweaked to assure that they grow richer NO MATTER WHAT. The only thing standing between Bangladesh levels of poverty in this country are government programs, and as with EVERYTHING else in the society, such programs are tolerated only to the extent that they comply with furthering the primary directive that THE RICH GET RICHER. In fact so imperative is this dictum that it is now essential that it no longer merely the poor are required to get “poorer”. The folks who visibly OWN the government now insist that the sole entity regulating the rate of impovershment of the non rich-“the government is the problem”. So pervasive is this indoctrination of the populace, that a man who has never held a job yet built a fortune through manipulation of the primary directive has acquired the Preidency through the simple but ludicrous promise of “giving the suckers a break”. Think of it. A man whose career amounts to a lifetime of flaunting his wealth and crass ostentation – a man who brags openly about living in assortments of gold plated buildings- this clueless man is the salvation for us all?

Good answer @stanleybmanly !!

LOL. Look at the empirical evidence, then tell me what you think.

Hmm, exactly what “system” are we talking about here, anyway?

And it always blows my mind when those who advocate for “more government” seem to be somehow surprised when more and more powerful (and already rich) people take advantage of that and line their own pockets – and then the call goes up from the disenfranchised and their notional advocates for “more government, to fix this problem”. With predictable results.

@CWOTUS I know right? That’s why “big government” democratic socialist states like Sweden (who take in lots of refugees) are doing so horribly right now!

…Except they have a more balanced wealth distribution curve, are much healthier, have better work/life balances, are happier, better educated AND doubled our GDP growth rate. Weird. It’s almost like conservatives are completely full of shit!

Is the system designed to keep the rich, rich?
It is set up to do that, not so much by design, necessarily, as by systems of ideas, and by capitalistic tendencies. When you allow companies to dominate markets and customs, they tend to agree to set things up in their own interest. So they entrench expectations in such a way that it’s considered normal to constantly pay as much as people can afford, in one way relationships, with ideas and patterns of shame set up to benefit those with the wealth and power, since they write the rules, business practices, contracts, laws, etc., and they’re mostly framed in ways where money in the price, the consequence, the requirement, etc., to be able to do all sorts of beneficial things.

A while back I asked a question is the system designed to keep the poor, well poor?
To which the answer is also yes it’s set up that way, if not always consciously designed to be so.

People got defensive saying no it’s just the poor are a greater risk to do business with so in turn they must be charged more to go with that risk.
LOL. Well, there you go. Systemic thinking and buy-in, rather than completely conscious design.

That makes sense the poor have a hard time paying so we must charge them more,(the risk of doing business with them). Now the wealthy get charged less, (because the risk is lower) they get to pay less and keep their wealth.
No, it’s a rationalization and justification for one aspect of the system. One counterpoint is that it’s self-referential: Why do the poor have a hard time paying in this system? What if everyone had a right to a pile of interest-free credit, for example?

Does the wild bear shit in the woods? Does the Pope use Holy Water?

The operation of the free market makes the rich richer and the poor poorer. “The System”, or government, endeavours to correct this inequality. However if you vote in someone like Trump this is not likely to happen.

God I hope so!

It isn’t the size or extent of the government that is at issue. Whatever the size of the government, the critical question remains “who controls it ?” The answer to that question is determimed can be gauged through observing whose interests are served. For example: Whose interests are served through laws forbidding Medicare or the VA to negotiate the best price for pharmaceuticals? The bitching and moaning against “Big Gubamint” are never about for example the gargantuan extent of the military budget. It’s such things as Social Security or school lunch programs that are supposedly bankrupting us. Those and of course the “overregulation” from agencies strangling us with commerce killing prohibitions against lead in paint or the dumping of dioxins in rivers. In other words, any tendency obstructing maximum realization of the prime directive must be vigorously opposed and demonized as “unAmerican. The current resurrection of the gilded age directly reflects the exact issues of the original. The urgency of the rich to get richer now boils down to a barely disguised war pitting profit against people.

WOW! @stanleybmanly I wish I could give you ten thousand great answers votes for that one!^^^

It’s amazing how the wealthy get people believing that helping the poor, or giving a break to the working class is going to put the entire nation on skid row.

First, define “the system”. Not everyone who has power wants or is trying to accomplish the same thing.

Forget about the definition. Whatever the “system” or however you care to define it, the key to understanding it lies in the one thing the outnumbered rich understand and the rest of us rarely appreciate. And that is: To a very large extent it is THE GOVERNMENT that determines the degree to which WE will prosper or fail. THIS is how it is possible in a supposedly free and open market to stumble over so many ignorant or stupid people with more money than God.

No, it is not designed that way. Lehman Brothers would still be around today if that were true.

I never said they can’t be stupid ,but in the long run they are given a lot more breaks than the average working slob.^^

There are no breaks in the long run if you don’t have money. Their poor investments reduces them below the level of the average worker. There are no “breaks” because they are no longer rich. You can only get “breaks” if you can maintain your accumulated capital.

Well sir @GregOP you just answered the question, you can only get breaks if you have money.
I totally agree, so indeed the system is designed to keep the rich ,rich.

I don’t think we’re on the same page. You seem to think long-term financial stability equates to people with money being privy to breaks. I’m saying the opposite. I’m saying that the system isn’t designed to keep the rich, rich because rich people still lose their money despite the breaks they’re privy to utilizing.

The landscape for people with money is severely leveraged in their favor as opposed to the terrain laid out for the guy punching a clock. The inequities inherent between the treatment of passive income compared to the wages of people who work for a living is so egregious that the difference is downright scandalous. Nothing you can imagine Surpasses the tax codes in demonstrating just how skewed the field is in favor of the rich.

The argument isn’t that the rich can’t fail. Hell, even a whale can drown! But to posit that the ocean puts an elephant and whale on the same footing because they both can swim is ludicrous. The fact that whales might occasionally strand themselves on the beach does not discount from the OBVIOUS fact regarding which creature is favored by an ocean environment.

I don’t see how you can say The argument isn’t that the rich can’t fail when the term keep means retainment of a possession. A continuity. The implication is infallibility. Clearly that’s not the case.

70% of all lottery winners lose their money despite being privy to financial advantages. In these cases, elephants were given whale capabilities and still managed to fail.

It should be no surprise that people unaccustomed to wealth might well squander a windfall. It’s a good bet that those who do lack even basic knowledge of how to manipulate the cards stacked in their favor. It’s a case of whalelike capabilities minus the whale’s knowledge or instincts. And I’m not stating that rich folks can’t lose their money. What I am saying is that the rich as a class see to it that measures are promulgated to augment and enhance their wealth and that this process more often than not works to the detriment of the non rich.

SUPER EXCELLENT ANSWER, @stanleybmanly !!^^^

@stanleybmanly

You admit that rich folks need brains to retain their capital and then you admit that despite the need for brains and taking measures to enhance their wealth, rich folks can and do lose their money. You rendered your point invalid. Your point only works if it can be shown that these advantages that come with being rich ensure long-term prosperity. They don’t.

The rich have breaks, the average working slob does not if the wealthy choose to do stupid things with their wealth and then loose it,that isn’t the system fault it’s that individual choosing not to be some what intelligent with their wealth.

So done correctly and taking advantage of those so called breaks the wealthy can not only keep their wealth but build greatly on it,but they can blow it like any one else can.
And no system is going to protect them from that.

I would hope that it is designed for the cream to rise to the top. For those who succed and work hard to be rewarded. Idealy . But the system is still working out the bugs. Good example the inventor of the DOS disk operating system sold DOS to Bill gates for $50,000 and Bill Gates became the worlds richest man among law abiding citizens.Steve jobs wasn’t very honorable either. I’m not sure, but I think Steve Jobs reversed engineered a gift he got from Japan and made the first American smartphones.

@RedDeerGuy1 And its sad that I don’t know the inventor of DOS’s name. Can someone tell me his name? Also if he got more than just $50,000 for it?

Tim Paterson

@GregOP I admit rich folks need brains to retain their capital. Those brains however need not be their own. The brains required are for sale just as the brains of those responsible for greasing the system to their advantage are bought and sold. I’m sorry if I misled you into thinking I believe every man with a fortune is guaranteed to keep it. That is definitely NOT what I think. Here is what I believe. I believe that as a class the rich MUST subvert and undermine the interests of the non rich in order to increase their own percentage of the available wealth. If, as is no longer disputed, the rich as a class manage to accumulate an ever increasing percentage of the wealth while all other classes experience declining standards of living, the only possible conclusion is that wealth is being transferred from the bulk of the society to those at the top. The fact that an occasional billionaire goes bankrupt or is convicted or the occasional immigrant claws his way out of poverty does not negate the reality regarding the overall trend. I also contend that this trend could neither persist nor accelerate without manipulation of the government against the public interest. To put it as bluntly as I can manage, the primary business of the rich as a class boils down to deflecting and obfuscating the interests of the non rich, and this they cannot achieve in a land with effective universal suffrage minus government participation in the suppression of those interests.

That’s absolute nonsense, @stanleybmanly. Wealth is created “out of thin air”. Money may not be, but wealth certainly is.

This explains a lot to me about your perverted economics. So thanks for that, anyway.

@stanleybmanly

Money is being transferred willingly by the consumers and the standard-of-living increases as a result. An example…Bill gates made/makes products that people wanted which made him a billionaire and the people more efficient. Win/Win. Carrier invenfs the modern air conditioner, a product the people want. He reaches the billionaire club and the people are much more comfortable when it’s hot. Win/Win.

You 2 are both missing my point. Wealth is indeed created, and billionaires do arise as a result. Society DOES benefit from this. I don’t dispute ANY of that. What I’m talking about is the proliferation of more insidious methods of accumulating wealth at the direct expense of the public

welfare. The rise of “innovations” from student loans through the private prison boom are clear cut examples of wealth being transferred upwards with GOVERNMENT guarantees of profitability. The healthcare/pharmaceutical debacle in this country is another open and indisputable example of this at work. The derisive title of “Obamacare” does not do justice to the truth of the matter. The thing is in actuality The Insurance Corporation Enrichment Act. But never mind my ranting and raving. Let’s leave it at this: I contend that the rich grow richer while the rest of us either stagnate or lose ground. You can either or agree or dispute this. If you choose to disagree, I would appeciate an explanation as to why; and if you agree, I would be interested in any supposition explaining how this might be possible minus the manipulation of government toward the pursuit.

The “system” allows the very wealthy far too much influence over the political process in America. Look what we’ve got just now for example. America isn’t meant to be like this. You are being ruled by an aristocracy of the very wealthy who will do whatever they can to ensure their wealth and power not only continues but increases.

Excellent answers, ^^ both of you, never said the system would make you rich,but used correctly by the wealthy it will let you keep more of your wealth than joe blow working slob, why is that so hard to grasp?

Oh now I get it,if the working slob realizes that the system is stacked against him/her, the wealthy will have a harder time selling their story that they have it just as hard as the average working slob!

Oh your right the wealthy sure have it hard, I don’t know how they manage,wink,wink.

No, @stan, I get it completely. The extortion of forced “contributions” from those who can least afford them to benefit the well-off – and mandated and enforced by government minions (whether you want to call them jack-booted thugs or not, if they wear jack-boots and riot gear when they come to the door carrying guns to “request one’s compliance”, then that’s close enough for me) – IS “the system”. I get that completely.

But as we’ve said, and as you seem to agree, that is not how wealth is primarily generated. It’s how those who can’t otherwise opt out of mandated systems are cheated of their own share, and it’s how the government games are rigged in favor of those who prop up and pay for the best government that money can buy.

However, anyone who believes that he should become rich “working for a salary” (and whose salary isn’t paid as if he’s a first-round draft choice of one of the major televised sports leagues) is simply an idiot. Every “system” is rigged against idiots.

But it’s not necessary to be a first-round draft choice OR born into wealth OR a lottery winner OR a criminal to become rich, if that’s what one wants. What it does take is a tremendous drive to do that to the exclusion of much else; a lot of energy and ambition; a tolerance and willingness to accept risk, and the intelligence to recognize, minimize and mitigate those risks. Those qualities are not in such abundance, but those are the people that “the system” really depends upon. Every system depends upon them.

Fortunately for most of us in the West, those people are generally rewarded by whatever system they work under (and who are generally not responsible for having placed “the system” in place when they started that trek, but have to deal with it the same as any other entrepreneur), and who provide us with the goods and services that we’re free to bitch about at our considerable leisure.

Define wealthy because to be frank there are not that many “wealthy” people. Those few we can for all intents and purposes regard them as oligarchs and they indeed not only stay rich and get richer from our system, they continially craft and manipulate the system for their benefit. They are mostly untouchable by us or our Gov’t because they own it all.
What some people regard as wealthy is actually what is left of the middle class and usually any tax, scheme or plan to level the playing field between the rich and poor will take from the middle class and render everyone “poor” in comparison. The people who have enough old or new money not to have to worry about paying a mortgage or grocery bill or even need to work for a living are few but the gap is obscene. Another thing to consider though is that even though we are in this system of have and have not “having” does not exactly mean going without, unless you consider not having waitstaff on your personal yacht going without. Also, the system does not exactly block any single person from gaining wealth, it’s just hard to do so but still very possible. For those of us who remain in the .01% our stratification on the wealth scale is largely behavioral with a bit of luck and some circumstance.

That is “not having” does not exactly equate to going without.