Why is it that the poor hate the rich so much?

because the riches often intentionally or unintentionally rape the poor every single day.

would you hate if you were asked to get raped everyday and your only choice is to enjoy it more?

Because is they have problem using proper in English sentence.

Why, hello there, Mr. Potter.

Because I can’t have insurance since that would mean my boss’s boss would make ten bucks less a year.

The idea that a poor or working class person can succeed by trying harder, and become wealthy, and that they are somehow responsible for their own poverty is a hoax, perpetrated by the elite for many hundreds of years. If you believe it, you are either not poor, or you have been duped into acting against your own best interests.

Also, @AstroChuck do has a point.

@pdworkin It may not work for some but there have been cases where immigrants have come to this nation not speaking a word of English and with @250 or less in their pocket and inside of 10 years obtain wealth. Not saying the poor here have no moxie or sabbotage themselves but why can an immigrant do it and not many born here? I think the immigrant just believes in the “land of opportunity” more. They believe all they have to do is just get here and they can make it. They are not thinking that someone in the shadows or the “Ivory Tower” are somehow going to block them once they get here.

yeah blame the immigrants.

I think there is a sense that many of the rich have not done enough to “deserve” the wealth. (Paris Hilton, anyone?) There is the feeling that it’s not fair for someone to have all that wealth just by virtue of being born in the “right” family.

Just my opinion, though.

@Hypocrisy_Central Can you cite your source for that immigrant story? I’d like to read it.

@Hypocrisy_Central I see you have drunk the Kool-Aid. Did your mommy read you Horatio Alger stories?

Because you don’t make your money off the backs of hard working people without sharing the wealth. You don’t obliterate 401k plans, you don’t set the price of stock so high, or set a minimum limit for purchase so that most cannot afford to buy stocks, overcharge people to the point that they can’t afford health insurance, run up the cost of heating so that 13 million homes can no longer afford it, allow saftey features in cars that only the rich can afford, piss away billions of tax payer dollars in executive bonuses, even though those same executives ran the business into the ground…..I mean, do I really need to go on?

I don’t have any problem with people getting rich. More power to them! But you don’t get rich at the expense of everybody else, then look down your nose at them because they’re poor. People can barely afford to live paycheck to paycheck. We have very little left to give. This is what causes revolutions. As the wealthy get greedier and frolic and play, things are already reaching the breaking point. Famous last words….Let them eat cake.

By the way, don’t worry about your grammar. Everybody understood you just fine.

@phillis- That’s probably because the question has been edited.

Because people expect things handed to them. They don’t want to work, they just want the product of work.

Many people think every rich person does not deserve their money. Many people think they deserve more money than they have. Its how people are.

@gemiwing I will have to get back to you on that, the last article I read on that was near 2 years ago and I am sure that magazine was tossed. Maybe it is archived somewhere on cyberspace. @AstroChuck Did not want people to lose concentration off a little grammer and lose the jist of the question. @phillis There are always rich people <ahem> Paris Hilton <ahem> that give the rich a sour taste, and we won’t even mention that douche bag Maddof but then again, he screwed other rich folk. Not all are but nuggets just as all poor people are not criminals waiting to jack a car or burglurize your home the moment they know you are gone. Things in the economy are as they are, I think everyone had a hand in it, in some small part; the rich, middle class, and the poor.

I can’t fight what the laws won’t allow me to fight, and the laws are geared toward the rich. Those laws are paid for by the rich. I have exactly zip for extra money. Should I picket as a party of one outside Trump Towers? What would you have me do, besides send daisy cutters through the senate floor?

Work harder to become rich? Bahahaha! Oh if only it were that easy. The poor hate the rich because, um, well, rich people have money and poor people don’t. Makes sense to me.

You can’t deny there is a certain level of unfairness amongst some rich and some poor. It’s not so much hate as it is people tired of seeing so much unfairness. I knew kids in high school crashed cars and had a new one the next week, so it just seemed asinine that someone could seem so lucky especially when they didn’t do anything for it. Everyone knows all poor people can’t just work hard then become rich, sometimes its all about who paid for your college or who your dad knows, and that’s just the way it is, you’re born into it, or you just get lucky somehow I think.

@gemiwing he may not be able to cite the source of this story but I can say that my very own uncle worked his way from high school drop out to current owner of a multi-million dollar collision repair business. He started painting a gremlin that didn’t even run in the garage connected to his house. And through grit and determination has worked his hobby into his life. No high school degree, not even a GED, and failed vo-tec school. But I’m assuming you’ll want a citation for this story too.

I don’t remember where I heard it, but there’s a great analogy about the division of wealth in America: it’s like 8 people eating a pizza. We are taught to believe that there’s a slice for everyone, but really 1 guy controls 7 slices, making the other 7 guys fight over the last slice. You’d think most people, especially those with annual incomes of under $50,000, would want a more equitable distribution of wealth… Instead you have the poor, deluded Republican masses, who’ll fight for unregulated business, less government intervention, free market principles and catch-phrases like “work hard and you’ll be rich” because they have the absurd and greedy hope that they might one day be the guy with 7 slices.

“Things in the economy are as they are, I think everyone had a hand in it, in some small part; the rich, middle class, and the poor.”

And that’s why your opinion is not valid.

Envy. The poor are just envious of the rich. Even though there are lots of robbers in the rich category, there are also some who made it rich via honest means, to be fair. By the way, there is no point to envy the rich who made it illegally.

Because, in general, rich people are usually dicks.

p.s.
@phillis Well said.

@citizenearth Valid points. And you’re right – it isn’t okay to hate or begrudge someone just because they are rich. If we all had that option, we’d be rich, too. Envy does play a part. We could go for an hour, coming up with names of the ones who made it
(Famous Amos! Heines! Stone cold Steve Austin! – sorry, got carried away. Hehehe!), but it doesn’t fix what’s wrong with this lopsided picture. It doesn’t address the issues that keep people downtrodden.

I’m not one to turn belly up and pee submissively, but for 98% of us, no real money will never come no matter how hard we work. And forget about pensions – they’re disappearing, never to return again. It’s the end of an era. Dental, vision and hearing is drying up, too. Guess who gets that money now? The person who owns the company. Is it any wonder people hate the rich?

You have to have money, to make money. Comparitively speaking, the footpath to riches turns into a super highway when you have a college degree, but higher education is so expensive that not many can afford it. If you come from a poor family, chances are you’ll be poor, too. You weren’t afforded the same opportunities as the rich, AT ALL.

I’m not suggesting we wallow in the self-pity muck, but until we hit on a viable plan, it is only getting worse. Hell, most people can’t even afford a Roth IRA or a state 529 plan. That’s just fucking pathetic.

The implicit bargain Reagan brought before the American people was this: get off the backs of the rich and the middle class will be better off (there was the occasional talk of some of it eventually trickling down to the poor, but concern for them outside of charity was already being labelled as “un-American”, “socialist” or “communist”). Middle America bought it and it seemed to work for the most part from 1984 to 2000 with a minor recession in the early 90s and a major boom in the late 90s. Note that this was and is still the reigning orthodoxy despite changes of the party holding the White House. However, the other side of the bargain was dropped in 2000 (if not earlier).

Real wages for those outside of management lucky enough to remain employed have been stagnant or have dropped. The federal books were cooked with redefinition of terms so things wouldn’t look as bad (dropping those too discouraged to actively seek work from the commonly-cited unemployment figures, ignoring underemployment, attempting to define fast food workers as “industrial workers” to hide hollowing-out). Wholesale overseas outsourcing of technical occupations joined skilled and unskilled labor. Management pay and bonuses skyrocketed and became startlingly independent of performance. Regulation was either removed or left without adequate means of enforcement. Some large corporations became fraudulent shell games to benefit insider cliques. A party and administration utterly deaf to criticism and public accountability became entrenched. To be followed by another that appears to be going down the road of going through the motions of change without changing anything fundamental at all.

Mainly JEALOUSY

@Grisaille It is all the rich’s fault? When Middle America was trying to get into larger homes and cared not that getting it $23,000 less was due to the fact that illegal workers set the tile in the bath, and kitchen and put on the roof, they had no hand in it? When Mr. Poor America went to the big box department store for jeans and a nice jacket because it was so dirt cheap but never thought to look at the label to see it came from India, Korea, China where the labor was cheaper had no hand in it? I did not see him boycotting buying from such places until they got American made goods. He was darn happy he did not have to spend $45+ bucks for the jeans and did not have to spend $167 for the jacket. Americans wanting to pay near free prices de factoly pushed a lot of jobs across the waters. You won’t get $12 American made jeans because union workers and I hate to say it because I am a union worker won’t work cheap enough to make that possible. Just as the greedy rich guy who takes is plant overseas to maximize profits, John Q public enables him to keep doing it.

There are a few reasons. Envy is one. The people uptown have pools, they have tennis courts, they have a Ferrari… I live in a flat which smells like vomit and has funny stains on the ceiling… Hey presto, the recipe for jealousy is complete!

Another reason…. the rich tend to have a habit of screwing over the poor. They convince people to buy their stocks, and then they leave just as the company tanks, landing thousands of poor and middle class folks in the shitter whilst they sail off to a tropical island, laughing all the way. Rich people often get rich by exploiting the poor in their own countries and in other countries also.

I don’t hate rich people in general….I hate arrogant rich people. They have nothing I need, or want.

I don’t think the poor hate the rich, they have too much shit to worry about like food and shelter and kids. You know, stuff that matters. Further, you’re generalizing – it’s not like there are two camps. Lastly, if you have any background whatsoever in politics, economics, sociology, college, common sense, you’d know that it’s not about ‘working harder and isn’t it great that one random person with $50 to his name ended up being a billionaire?’ but it’s more about the ever increasing gulf between the majority who have a little and a very small minority that have a lot. Besides, it seems to me that a lot of rich people hate the poor, if you’re going to go there. No one is standing with welcoming arms to anyone, that’s a joke. The rich hate the rich more than they hate the poor.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Now is one of the times I wish I could give more than one GA.

@Arisztid I’ll take your comment any day.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir :)

I agree with @Simone. You’re oversimplifying. The “us vs. them” mentality bennefits neither supossed camp (although the media sure loves it). I think there’s enough envy, dislike and misplaced blame to go around independent of what “camp” you may fall in.

Also, bear in mind that a family living below the poverty level may consider a family making $100k/year rich. Meanwhile that family sees themselves as middle-class and may envy someone making in the millions. Everything’s relative and some folks just love to spew bile. Easy targets all around.

Ultimately, it comes down to personality. Assholes have bank accounts of all sizes.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir What a beautiful answer. we need a double love button sometimes.

@addicted2porn My, you sure do assume a lot don’t you? I’m actually interested in hearing anyone’s story where they make it big. It’s uplifting. So please, take your venom and aim it in another direction.

@gemiwing thank you

I’m not going to attempt to supply my input on the subject, because I have my own rules of discussion. Never talk about politics and religion. With that being said the best phrase through out this whole thread goes to @phillis for, ”....Let them eat cake.”

haha I love it!!

@Hypocrisy_Central Did you ever consider that perhaps the reason why “Middle Americans” sought out and continue to seek cheaper prices is because they don’t have the money to buy more expensive things? Inflation has been growing at a rate of at least 3% annually for many years now, yet wages for middle-class and lower class Americans have remained nearly the same since the late ‘70s. If the prices are going up and your wages stay the same, wouldn’t you seek cheaper items to keep from going into debt because you can’t afford jeans?

Why do you think credit card companies have made a killing in the last two decades? People can’t afford to live in America, so they pile on the debt. Instead of increasing our wages, we are taught to consume, and max out our credit cards, because it is “good for the economy.”

I think a big thing most people miss is that the economic problems in this country come from the top down, not the other way around. Laws made to keep the rich with their money (like Bush’s revised estate taxes) have created the greatest welfare system in the world… for the rich. You think poor people have it good with the federal welfare system? How about those lucky individuals born with last names like Trump, Gates, Rockefeller, Hilton, etc? Keeping the money concentrated at the top encourages behavior at the bottom which perpetuates the system into an ever degrading downward spiral. Unless things are changed at the top, things will continue to get worse for 90% of Americans. And the worst part is that they won’t even realize what is being done to them.

@drdoombot First off I grew up under that system of state aid, so many hear probably had more and did more as a child then I did. Growing up I thought middle class was rich did not even know anyone wealthy but thought them less than a thousand across the US. Growing up under state aid sucks, not than many here has done it I believe I could be wrong but you certainly better be glad if you missed it. Yet I did not hate the rich or see them as the root to my troubles, I just tried to figure out what they did and how I could do it; like a golfer who wants to be better studies Tiger Woods instead of grumbling because they can drive a ball down the fairway like him.

Middle America is not wearing potato sacks many still find ways to get stuff other than the thrift store. Last I was at WalMart I did not see the parking lot full of Rolls, Ferraris, Lamborghinis etc. Sure was not confused as if I were on Redondo Beach, and such. If they really could not afford jeans they should get to the thrifts for a used pair, cost about $5 or less.

Middle America wants a wigget, company ‘A’ makes this wigget. John Q citizen don’t want to pay more than X amount for it. Company ‘A’ can’t sell it that cheap he has union workers who won’t work for less than X amount and hour and ‘B’ benefits package, there is the cost of shipping, insurance, getting the trash hauled away, water to the factory, power, so if he wants to sell enough wiggets to stay in business he has to find a way to make them cheaper, so he mechanizes part of the plant. There goes a horde of jobs. Now he is some heartless greedy bastard because he made a move that axed dozens of jobs. John Q still wants the price lower, so company ‘A’ manufactures the parts here but sends them to India to get put together. Now it is as cheap as John Q wants to spend but now he and his friends are bitching because company ‘A’ axed all those jobs and sent some overseas greedy SOBs <sarcasm served dryly> John Q should either pay the higher price and keep his American pals working, get his junk and if his pals lose their job so what, or do with out the wigget, it was not food, shelter or clothes anyhow; and if he can’t do either of those just shut up and deal with it.

I like your style Hypocrisy.
So, if we have this problem, where do we go with it all??

The wealthyiest 1% in America owned 25% of everything here back when Ronald Reagan took office and slashed the top tax rate from 70% to 28%. Reagan tripled the National Debt and started us down the road to massive deficits his party is now trying to blame totally on their opposition. Today the wealthiest 1% of Americans, thanks to their influence on the government, own 50% of everything here, and the remaining 99% of us are left to divvy up the other half. Yet amazingly, that’s not enough for the rich. They want mpre of everything. They now want a flat tax so that the Oligarchy can be established a fgeneration sooner.

I don’t think the poor hate the rich. But they are growing aware that the rich have bought the government, and that more and more, it works for them and not for the common man.

@airowDee I do not feel raped by the rich. How am I getting raped by the rich? And if I am getting raped by the rich would that make me getting snowed by the poor, leaving me screwed in the middle?

There’s a very easy answer to all this, HC. Let’s start with the basics.

If you got cancer, do you have enough money to support your medical treatments when your insurance company cuts you off, which they do? I hope you have at least a hundred thousand in the bank. You’re going to need it.

Do you have enough money to support your family while you’re busy paying for that treatment? Will they have housing? A vehicle? Medical, dental, hearing and vision insurance, to meet THIER basic needs? Remember, they don’t benefit from your illness until you’re dead. Better not let that life insurance policy lapse.

How’s your creativity? One way to get rich is to invent something that pricks the ears of investors. Are you creative enough to invent something unique?

I’ve never heard you discuss your real estate empire, so I can only assume you don’t have one.

Yeah…..you ARE screwed, but not by the poor. You have to have money to screw somebody. What are the poor able to do to screw you – barter you to death? They have no leverage.

You’re so screwed that you believe the snow job you’ve been handed because you truly believe that if you work hard enough, you will get ahead. Have you not worked your ass off already, in your life? Where are you now? Has it paid off? Exactly how long do you suppose you will have to work hard before you will see the real benefit of it?

You are precisely one disaster away from total annihilationof everything you have worked for to date, or that you will ever have. If that doesn’t put things into perspective for you, then please give me a friendly wave when you become a senior citizen Walmart greeter.

@phillis You know I adore you greatly no bull, but here is where we agree to disagree. If I had to say where I am or where I have not gotten to is because the rich, I have to include the poor too. If I could not afford treatment for a chronic or major injury or disease because it is too expensive I would have to say as much as the insurance companies are involved it is the poor who received care at the hospital and could not pay, so they are spreading the cost to other people me for one .

I tell most people I know that most of America is 30 to 90 days away from bankruptcy should a major upheaval happen to their income. Because I don’t have enough cash to weather a storm like that is not the fault of the rich, if I had to fault them I have to fault the poor on the government dole that causes a larger amount of my check which I sweated for to get consumed in tax. I could make those women who have baby after baby with no education or a chance for a decent job as part of the problem if I am going to sling blame around.

All those people who were not rich and played the lotto, when they actually won I did not hear of any rejecting the money or giving 80% of it away. They kept it to become one of the rich who they say was screwing them.

@Hypocrisy_Central In your first response, you never answered the question of why John Q Citizen doesn’t want to pay more for “widget A.” You make it seem as if it was a choice, but more likely than not, it isn’t. If you pay more for one thing, it is that much less money you have to buy food, clothes or shelter with.

Like yourself, my family was on welfare since I was a kid. I also grew up accustomed to not having things. The difference between us, I suppose, is that I grew with relatives that had money, in a community of people that had a lot of money. While I was busting my ass off to get straight A’s in high school and then running off to my part-time job at McDonald’s for the weekend, the other kids were slacking off and having fun, knowing that no matter what grades they got, they would have a place in their father’s company/business once they graduated. You can’t deny what a sweet deal it is for those that grow with money; they can get away with much less work and be more successful than you, no matter how hard you work.

I also saw first-hand what can happen to those people once their family aid disappears. I know of one guy who slacked off his entire life because he was waiting to take over his father’s business. His father decided to sell it off and left his son in the lurch. This guy was aimless for years and still hasn’t made much of his life. I know of another guy who did nothing his entire life, also in anticipation of joining the family business, until the FBI investigated his father’s business practices and shut it down.

It’s stories like ones above that keep me from being bitter, because I know I’m 10x more capable and self-reliant than most of these rich kids. But they definitely had a step up in life that I didn’t have.

I won’t deny that many people abuse the system, but many people are genuinely helped by the system, my family being a great example. I attended an Ivy League university and will be moving on to law school soon. One of my younger brothers is in a prestigious medical school, while the other two brothers are applying to medical schools. 5–10 years from now, all of four of us will be pouring money back into the system that supported us once. My view is colored by my own experiences, but I feel the benefits of welfare outweigh the negatives.

Oh, and speaking of lottery winners: 70% of lottery winners spend all of their money in the first few years after winning; ⅓ go bankrupt. And 90% of the time, when new wealth is introduced into a family, the wealth is gone by the 3rd generation. Why does this happen? Because rich people know how to retain money, but when a poor person is suddenly blessed with a windfall, they don’t know how to manage it. This is not a case of rich people screwing poor people, but it is an example of how rich people (or better yet, rich families) have better access to education and information that will keep them rich. Believe it or not, our society perpetuates a system that gives advantages to those with great wealth, especially in helping them keep that great wealth. And if there’s less to go around, the more the little people will be fighting over the scraps.

@Hypocrisy_Central Point taken. I DO understand where you’re coming from. You’re saying that we all played our part in th is situation. I get that.

It isn’t the greed of the poor that has kept you from achieving your pinnacle of success in your chosen field. We’re all burger flippers who are basically paid a minimal salary due to the cost of living. I can agree to disagree on this. It sure isn’t worth losing a friendship (how retarded would that be?).

You don’t make money by giving a shit about single mothers and their starving children, that’s for sure.

On the other hand, the only people who say that money can’t bring happiness are the ones who don’t have any.

With that said, fuck other people, I do what I can, and I’ll bitch when I can afford to.

@Hypocrisy_Central – I enjoy your style, young man: I’m right behind you – certainly some good lateral thinking on your part there. ;)
It usually takes quite some faith in some system to fight off all comers like that on its behalf – no wonder you got that Delicious g/f of yours 120%LOL!!!
Keep up a good work!

@drdoombot There it is there, you nearly made the point I have been saying. Where you end up has a lot of how bad you want to get there. Growing up on state aid some would peg you to be in an orange jumpsuit or on the corner slinging contraband before they see you in a court of law in a 3-piece suit. When you become that lawyer and I pray a good one, I may one day need your service people are going to point their finger at you and call you a greedy m*********** because you will make 300+ dollars an hour. They won’t be thinking that you know a language that they don’t, one that will keep them from wearing an orange jumpsuit because the feds are investigating their company maybe off something their underlings did. They will think you should safe their heiney for free. They see all those law books and they think they grow on trees when some could cost several hundreds of dollars in their own right. I sure do not know of the Lawyer Fairy that gives out Sheppard’s cross-directories.

John Q do not need an MP3 player, a flat LCD TV of any size a toaster, or anything like thing like that. Those are all “creature comforts”, I know we take for granted that they are more “needed” than wanted. Truth be told you can still live without them, millions do the world over.

However, of John Q feels he has to have that 19in LCD TV in the kitchen so he don’t miss his news over breakfast or his morning coffee and paper he has more than one place to buy it unless he is too stupid to shop he can go look at Walmart. They don’t have the model he is looking for he can go to Best Buy, they are too expensive, he can go check out K-Mart, or Target. If he finds it but the price isn’t to his liking, he can go check out Fry’s. He even has tons of online stores if he has a computer another thing he can get by without, but it is convenient to own. And chances are when he finds that lesser priced TV it was because it was foreign made, had it been American made he would not be able to afford it. If the person making that TV, that cell phone, that computer was getting $12 bucks and hour minimum with benefits and often more instead of $15 a day it would cost him 6 times more or worse.

And those who get a windfall and go bust a couple of years later do so because they start off thinking like consumers, I want the yacht, the mansion, the jetaway trips to Europe etc, and not like a capitalist. They want all the toys and trinkets they seen the rich have but hardly think that of the money it takes to support those things. Gassing up a yacht is not like the car or the trailerable bass boat. To have all those toys and no money coming in to upkeep it, like a tub of water all the money eventually goes down the drain. And when you have money like that, you hire some bright talent to help you manage it if you can get off from living large to impress those people you hardly know and scarcely care.

Interesting discussion so far!

@phillis You’ll probably need more than $100,000 in the bank to cover you if your health insurance company cuts you off. That’s the price of two years of new biotech therapies.

@Hypocrisy_Central I disagree when you say, “If I could not afford treatment for a chronic or major injury or disease because it is too expensive… as much as the insurance companies are involved it is the poor who received care at the hospital and could not pay, so they are spreading the cost to other people.” The insurance companies don’t bear the burden of uncompensated care. It would be nice if they did have some skin in that game; they might be more helpful in addressing the issue of uninsurance. Yet, insurance companies are cutting doctor and hospital reimbursements and consumer benefits right and left. The poor don’t enter into the game, at least not in this part of it.

Under the circumstances I thought it would be best to offer a conservative figure. Good to see you!

You, too! Happy New Year!

@Dr_Dredd What I mainly was saying of that is that hospitals, treatment centers etc, pad the cost of care to cover those with out insurance much the way stores pad the price of the items to cover shoplifters, and other slight of hand shoppers. Happy New Year! @phillis HNY to you as well!!!!

@Hypocrisy_Central – Happy New Year to you and your Lovely g/f
AND to all other Flutherers on here – espec ex-ABer’s
... Poor things ;)

Happy New Year to you too, HC! And to everyone else. 2009 is almost over!

@Hypocrisy_Central Once upon a time, the very strong and well endowed took whatever they wanted from those less fortunate thna them. We called that system rape-and-pillage barbarism. It seems so much more ethical, doesn’t it, when the oligarchy and the intellectually well endowed take whatever they want from those less fortunate, doesn’t it.

A good system strikes some balance between being able to reap the rewards of creativity, intelligence, hard work and fortunate birth; and the ability of those less fortunate to raise kids who may someday be able to get the education and breaks needed to grace the world with their own creativity, intelligence, hard work and fortunate birth.

The right-wing agenda seems to be all about “I;ve got mine! Screw you.” And the far left wants to take all creativity and industriousness and funnel its rewards to those who won’t work. Neither orks to better the common good. Both end up hurting society, just in different ways.

@ETpro I can ro;ll with that. I never said that one group or the other was to blame for every ounce of misery. There are good rich people like Ludicrous, Will Smith, and Paul Newman who give behind the scenes away from the camera. Then there are the Maddof types. But if jobs are going over seas it is not all the rich, wanting something so cheap to hold onto as much of the pay check as possible might be cutting the paycheck of another worker somewhere. Happy New Year, and @denidowi you as well.

@Hypocrisy_Central Absolutely. I’d add Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates to that list, and they are as rich as people in America get right now. THey have done enormous good with their wealth. I am in no way against trying to better oneself. I own a small business and am doing my best to join the ranks of the rich some day.

@ETpro – that is VERY well put: I think we’ll vote you for “President”!!LOL ;)
All you need now is the money of a Wozza Buffet Car to run your Campaign!!

I’m afraid, though Being Australian myself, I can’t really help you make the US Billboards! ;)

You and @Hypocrisy_Central would make a formidable pairLOL!

@denidowi Don’t you dare draft me. Way too many skeletons in my closet. :-)

Happy New Year.

Well, @ETpro – If I were ever to “draft” you, as you say, it would be for Australian electionsLOL!!! ... and you could get away with as many “skeletons” as you wish, and they would be none-the-wiser!!LOL ;)

It is incredibly hard to go from being poor to rich, hell even to go from poor to middle class, and this is coming from someone who grew up poor and is still poor, maybe lower middle class now, depending on how you define that. But to say that its flat out impossible to go from poor to rich through hard work and a LOT of luck, is retarded and nonsensical.

@syzygy2600 I agree with you. It is logically more harder for the poor to get out of poverty by the sheer understanding that they don’t have the resources, network, and funding options that the rich have at their disposal, but to suggest they can not do it if they work hard enough in the right business or job and maybe get some breaks is rather addle minded. People dip their feet into the pool of free enterprise every year; they are not all going to swim, many will sink. For those who sunk instead of swam most did so or didn’t do so not because the rich conspired against them but because they chose the wrong business for the wrong market at the wrong time. Take Krispy Creams, they did not last here because they were into decadent pastries and donuts in an area that was going to health low fat foods. Wrong product to the wrong people at the wrong time.

Both of you have some good thinking there in my experience.
But I’ll tell you what: no matter how intelligent you think you may be, it is an Extremely difficult thing to move from lower to rich or even strong middle class – an extremely difficult thing. In nearly all those few rags to riches cases, there has been some highly unusual “Break” that has come into someone’s life: you cannot do it alone on your own merits.
As you say, ‘HCentral’, the network, contacts, surroundings, etc are just not there.
Also, often the other part of the heart is not in it either – because the moment you see your advantage building over others around you, you want to start spreading your ‘good fortune’ around.

That’s what leaves me shaking my head about these small business enterprises. Long before a little shop is opened for business, there were proposals and business plans sitting on a banker’s desk. I know precisely how to write a business plan, and believe me…..they are VERY detailed. Even the name someone decides to call thier business can cause it to fold. So, how in the hell could someone approve a donut shop in a health-conscious neighborhood? I see idiot business open all the time, and they always tank.

maybe true, phillis, adn I did Business courses myself..
But those ‘Business plans’ with projected incomes and projected takings and this that and the other were the most Absurd Q to ask… especially if it was a new business just openingLOL!!
They were entirely a waste of time, I reckon.

@phillis and @denidowi At the very best, a business plan is just a well written SWAG (Scientific Wild-Assed Guess). Most fall somewhat short of that lofty standard, managing only to reach the WAG level or at worst case, simply documenting some dreamer’s delusional thinking.

Wow, you guys. We had to do an in-depth study of the area, including cross sections of demographics up to 2 miles out! We had to compartmentalize everything, even the annoying little details. Of course, we were taught by a banker who did this for a living, so perhaps he saw that as an opportunity to teach us details he would LIKE to see, rather than sticking to the original plan. I really can’t say. It was the only class I ever took, so I have nothing to compare it to.

@phillis @ETpro – Yes; more accurately, both of the training centres that took our groups through any such thing, they were genuinely, WAG, I believe, Pro!! NO… Infact, by your standards, they were more like “Delusional Dreams”!!!LOL
Let’s put it this way, in the first course I did, I wanted to market an absolutely Fresh New Discovery I made!!!
‘Oh, NO!!”, says, Pro… not the Book snake discovery again… or not something else like that??!!!”
“No”, says Deni.

No; I have made an extraordinary wide range of discoveries in my time: this one was being able to Calligraphically [fortunately, among many other things, I have been a professional engraver] lay down metallic foil.
It is really a very simple process but requires engraving skills.
Until recently, most modern engravers used spinning dentist drills to engrave. To create enough heat to release the gold or coloured foil ‘permanently’ onto a surface, all one had to do was put the simple drill bit into the dentist drill ‘chuck’ backwardsLOL!!! ... so that you use the spinning back end directly to the foil lying, or taped, down on the article you want with gold/coloured letters, pics on it!
Very simple really.
Well, I wanted to market my services… but NO ONE WORLDWIDE OR anywhere, for that matter, knew such a thing existed.

Anyhow, this course, wanted me to projest annual costs for 3 years, and annual takings for 3 yearsLOLOL!!!

I mean, WHAT A LAUGH AND PURE TIME WASTE!!
Do I write down a Million??
Do I put in $10 LOL!!???

this was 15 yrs ago!!

Wow, fascinating story, Deni! Were you just applying for a micro loan (less than 5k) or wanting to open a store?

Well, as I recall, I don’t think I was particularly applying for any specific amount of Money, Phillis. I think a little may have been available for certain proven businesses, but my product was as unproven as myslfLOL!! Ha Ha Ha!!
We DID have to have some interview before accpetance, so that others with something more viable would not miss out, but i somehow got through that. After that, it was just a course that gave us a piece of paper [you know, the usual useless nonsense!!] that said we’d done a ‘Certificate in Business Planning’! I added that to the many other useless quals I had in various fields – incl unfinished Grad Diplomas in about 4 other different fields!! ;)

Over the years, my jobs or quals have included Locksmithing, cobblery, engraving, sharpening, cleaning, orderly, clerical work – olden day by hand, teaching in schools, these days, private tutoring in maths and Eng, building chapels from foundation through completion for 2 years, door knocking, painting, gardening, glazing, children’s sports coaching, authored books in economics and sociology, and 3 yrs ago, using Kinesiology and psychological principles, a book discovering the opposition between snakes and man.
But in a way, these are only the surface… mainly commercial matters.
Studies were also in accounting, recreation, animal lab work, but all incomplete in those

Oh, I see now. Did you seek a patent?

Just as well I didn’t Phillis. They cost thousands!
I think I made a total of about $300 with this discovery – no geuine means of marketing really… and you could not risk costly shop overheads with a completely unknown product like that! I may have lost 10,000’s trying that!!

The Best sale I made was about $220 from Australia’s Richest doctorLOL!! ... and Crookest doctor too HaHa!! ... the infamous, Dr Edelstein [he’s on the NetLOL!]
He actually turned up at our humble abode: at the time, he owned Carlton Football team, which is the biggest sport we have over here.
My 9 yr old son was playing all the big piano repertoire when he entered the lounge room, but this guy was one only obsessed with his own brilliance and flamboyance, and took no notice of the geniusLOL!

Certainly, this product I was offering fitted his flamboyance!!
He would have been the only student in OZ history to send in his Master’s thesis with the cover covered in this foil artLOL!

Sounds like quite a character. People blinded by thier own brilliance get on my last nerve.

Say, do you know how to shrink your letters down when you go off topic? If you don’t, I can show you. It’ll keep your comments from getting modded.

did you teach your students to shout “LOL” every few minutes when you were learning them some of that there Eng.?

@denidowi I have spoke to a clerk at the patent office (be it the US patent office) he told me right to the point (guess he gets that question all the time) that a patent cost only $1,500 (this was a couple of years ago). It was $500 when you submitted it, and he said the rest would not be asked for unless the patent actually passed muster and was going to be granted. All that extra that people believe a patent cost goes to other non-government people, lawyers, focus groups, business consultants, the people making the prototype etc.

In ‘MY’ day, here in Australia, when I was working on another completely diff invention, namely, what I called, the MagnaCraft or MagnaCopter, which used quite a different mechanism for achieving flight and air pressure differences needed than those others going today, when I inquired at the Australian patent’s office here, just a national patent alone cost AUD$3000LOL! [Er… sorry @pdworkin !!! ;)] ... about USD$2500
I think a worldwide patent cost about 10 to $14,000 at the time.
But I wouldn’t patent a thing like that [Foil art] because you would have to make your money entirely from selling your own produce, which in turn would be based entirely on your own marketing capacity. You’d have to be a top one-man-band!!LOL [sorry @pdworkin ] ... and I can only play the piano ;)
Patenting would force you to cash in merely via your own work; or set up some ‘factory’, if you could really call it that considering this finer skill.
By not patenting, the option is open for you to make money teaching others, but the machine would have cost nearly $1000 each at the time.

BTW, the MagnaCraft uses the Magnus effect: it is used in ball sports, etc all the time.
Golf-drivers achieves distance by ball dimpling, which magnifies the magnus effect.
Soccer players produce the curved ball via imparting spin; it is used in nearly every shot in modern tennis – most noticeably, top spin!

Holy crap! Deni’s an alien! I KNEW there was something different about you, Deni! LOL!!

And that’s why I want to change my Username on this site… so I keep moving and am not discovered as being “alien”!!!LOL

So phillis, can you help this alien change his Username… it is time for a change, as my family knows this name; it relates to my email, and I don’t want them to see just what an alien their dad was some day…
Can you help me phillis??

Thank you.
I managed to change it on ‘Inquire’, but even then, I had to chase things around to work it out, but I haven’t worked out this site at all, and I spend more time on here.

I think part of it is of course because we don’t have as much as the rich have so jealousy plays a part. My personal opinion is that a lot of rich people are selfish and greedy. Example, my uncle has a very rich brother who won’t help him out not one bit even though my uncle struggles a lot. He is his brother, he should be more helpful

It’s simple.
We live in a material world, and to get those “material” things in exchange, we need a thing called: Money. Rich people always have more money than the poors, and hence, can attain much more material things, and the poors often have to struggle so much even just to get that BASIC material needs/things.

This,..and added with many posts above that said how, unfortunately and sickeningly, the majority of wealthy/rich people (not saying all, but most) are just some selfish greedy bastards not caring about their other fellow human beings. Sure sure, people would easily point out & said “well, it’s a ‘tribal’ nature…what can we do about it?” , but no, we should EVOLVE into a better civilization and work together, hand in hand, to create a good justice in this world. It is not impossible, in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, an interesting example of this “heaven-like” city is Roseto in Pennsylvania. just google it up.

I think America, as being the superpower country, has fucked up so much generally, that it ironically just creating more gaps between the poors and richs. Damn capitalism.
Until SOMETHING is really done about it, I think life would just get more & more difficult for the poors.

It is sad, and even though I am admitedly from a middle-income family background, I also often ‘struggle’ a lot, HUGELY, with this sad sad situation of how our modern society has turned into greedy animals, especially the rich/wealthy people.
That is why I can somewhat understand & emphatize of why the poors hate the richs, heck, even I hate ‘em too sometimes, especially seeing those arrogant super spoiled rich brats that kept whining & complaining yet spending their rich parents’ money frivolously, instead of helping the poors, contributing something with their money, & doing good, while they’re still breathing.

Humans (humanity) need to EVOLVE,
or else, the ‘end of the world’ would come much more quickly due to human’s fucked up ‘tribal’ & greedy & selfish nature.
sometimes, these rich people need some kind of pains or tragedy, in order to ‘slap’ them hard in face, and start viewing money differently, and start to emphatize more with the poors.
My hope still lies in future generations to realize of our fucked-up capitalism, and work together to fix the fucked-up system.

@phillis, I live in the outskirts of one of the suburbs in a medium sized city. We have a plant close to us that manufactures things like concrete and tile. Accross the street is a warehouse for a large clothing retailer, next to an auto-body shop. Not exactly where the average person looking to go shopping for clothes is likely to go. However, recently a boutique for upscale clothing opened. Don’t get me wrong, I do wish them the best, but I just cannot understand why they looked at that area and settled on it.
Another thing I do have a problem with is the homogenization of American (the entire western world?) society. Many people are eager to do away with the smaller, unique parts of their environments to get the familiar, the known parts of society. (McDonald’s, anyone?) Sometimes that is for the best due to health issues, but doing away with smaller, unique parts of society means just that. We are partially responsible for the problem ourselves, and unfortunately we are just adding to the problem instead of working for a solution.

@niki This,..and added with many posts above that said how, unfortunately and sickeningly, the majority of wealthy/rich people (not saying all, but most) are just some selfish greedy bastards not caring about their other fellow human beings. Thinking of that which you said, I wondered how many of those who posted before would see some of the poor as being just as selfish? Especially those who can work (officially labeled with a disability or not); but who choose not to work, but live off the government dole or charity. Even worse, theft from those who do have. I could say they were ”selfish, greedy, shiftless, lazy bastards”