Subject:
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Re: How many things need to stack up before we throw this jerk out?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 16 Jul 2003 18:04:36 GMT
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Viewed:
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596 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Richard Marchetti wrote:
> [We Have Met the Wealthy, and They Are Us]
>
> <http://www.spectator.org/util/print.asp?art_id=2002_12_9_23_38_17> • *snip*
> Second thing: While the most common route to wealth involves owning and
> developing your own business, regular wage earners can get rich, too, by
> following the example of the millionaires next door. The two most important
> factors in getting rich are (1) living cheap and (2) investing 15 percent or
> more of your net income. A cop and a nurse can do it. Starting with nothing,
> saving $1,000 a month, presuming an average yearly return of 8 percent and
> inflation at 2 percent, that policeman and nurse will be millionaires in 26
> years. In reality, given raises and the ability to invest more as the years
> go by, they'll reach their goal a lot quicker.
>
> My problem with my source is that the link between what the Democrats or
> liberals define as the "wealthy" is never actually made, it is merely assumed
> -- somewhat blithely, I might add. There's no quote, no source, no nuthin!
Most sharply-biased (in either direction) media sources hope that the audience
never makes the connection that you point out, and all too often thats exactly
what happens.
It's interesting that a common conservative tactic is to mock so-called
"limousine Liberals," and it goes something like this: "Michael Moore condemns
wealthy white men as evil, but he's a wealthy white man." Obviously that's a
worthless argument on a number of levels (straw man, false double standard,
false dilemma, non-representative sample, etc...), but it seems to appeal to a
wide audience of conservatives.
Let's pose a hypothetical example as a counterpoint (admittedly anecdotal, but
no Conservative argument has ever turned away a good anecdote) to the second
part of your citation above. I'm going to fabricate dollar figures to make my
point, so they're not my real situation, but the point is made nonetheless:
My hypothetical monthly net income is just a shade over $1600. My wife is
currently unemployed (because of corporate downsizing), so I'm supporting both
of us. Our monthly student loan payments are $600, our car payment is $190, car
insurance is $85, and rent (a typical rate for a tiny Pittsburgh apartment) is
$450. For those expenses alone, we're shelling out $1325 each month, leaving a
whopping $275 to cover food, utilities, and emergency costs(not to mention my
clone addiction).
So here's my problem with the Spectator article. How the heck am
(hypothetical) I supposed to save $1000 a month when my optimum net income (due
to currently-unavoidable monthly expenses) is a little more than $200? The
sickening assumption made in such articles (and by Bush-style economic planning)
is that people choose to be lazy and that they therefore must *want* to be
impoverished. I search for better jobs daily, but nothing exists in my region.
We cannot afford to move to a new area, because that would require time off from
work and a likely total expenditure of somewhere over $1500 that we just don't
have. And we're both in good health, and we have no children. How much worse
is it for a single mother-of-two working a low-wage job in the inner city?
Barring some astronomically unlikely event (like a lottery win), there is
literally no way for her to break out of her situation, yet conservative pundits
pretend that she willingly chooses to suckle at the government teat. That's
Compassionate Conservatism at its best!
The most common route to sizable wealth may indeed be to have one's own
business, but I'd speculate that in most successful cases, such businesses are
gifts, hand-me-downs from wealthy relatives, or existing companies taken over,
rather than home-grown business ventures from the ground up. The Horatio Alger
illusion is exactly that.
Further, I'd say that the best guarantee of wealth is to have wealthy,
privileged parents, as in Dubya's case.
Dave!
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