Tuesday, May 08, 2012

capitalist aren't greedy, they just have closed minds

Edward Conard, Mitt Romney's ex-partner in Bain Capital, is not merely a member of the 1 percent but member of the 0.1 percent, justifies his wealth and proudly defends Wall St. He presents the capitalist case that it was the poor people, and not the finance industry, who were responsible for the financial crisis and subsequent recession. That the ultra-wealthy are wealthy because they are smarter and work harder than everybody else, and that they are resented for their success. That the ultra-wealthy are being victimised by prejudice by the envious and jealous who want to impose more regulation and  higher taxes upon the hard-done-by capitalist.

Some capitalists try to argue that an individual's greed turns free-market capitalism into prosperity for all. The successful businessman is the hero, while the rest of us lesser mortals are deadbeat leeches, living parasitically from their superior drive, brains and skills and talents that lead to innovation. Profits are the reward for risk-taking. (hmmm...and follow the herd investment mentality is taking a risk). In fact we should all be very grateful to the mega-wealthy

But they are wrong. The rich are not more hardworking than the masses. They are not any smarter. Nor do people whose  business of extracting royalties and copyright fees or interest by moving rich people’s money around are in any way “job creators.”

When  Facebook goes public, Mark Zuckerberg he will be worth more than $17 billion. If Zuckerberg had never been born, would no one else have come up with the idea of Facebook? (oh, somone else did and thats why he had to pay compensation, wasn't it?)

Why do people try to maximise their incomes? The poor person wants more money in order to eat, a better house or a new washing machine. Even a comfortably well-off person may want an even better house or a servant to cook and clean . But what more does a really, really rich person — worth hundreds of millions — want that money can buy? What motivates him or her to go to work every morning - simply trying to accumulate even more. But, to be sure, it is not personal greed. It is simply the rationale of accepting an economic system that demands such a constant process of reproduction of capital and being unwilling to break with it.

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