yeah, we work hard for the money we make. We believe in Capitalism, and want to work hard to earn our pay. We believe in actually working for money, not handouts that some here believe in.

I mean really...

Says the guy who would lie about curing cancer for money.

where in this forum have I EVER said that?

you miss the point. You and Emperor Stranger have indicated (and correct me if I'm wrong) that you would sell out your principles if the paycheck was high enough, that you would make statements in favor of things you believed to be false in exchange for cash.

That's not working hard, that's just having no scruples.

So I am in poverty IRl. Not everyone can say that $1 million/year is nothing.



Everyone has their price. Everyone. I am sure that you would sell out anything you believed in for a few billion dollars. (Unless, of course, you are Bill Gates kind of rich, where it really wouldn't matter.)

I personally would rather be poor than sell my "soul" (don't take the soul part literally.. please please please please PLEASE) for a few billion dollars.

Ever heard of martyrs? Yeah, they gave up their lives rather than recant their respective beliefs. Looks like your "everyone has a price" theory is wrong.

I would rather not have to work the rest of my life than be this poor.. I literally have $0.03 to my name!

Martyr assumes the person died for their beliefs. Being bribed and having a gun to your head are two different matters. (Personally, I would rather have a gun to my head. I know where I am going when I die, and it's a hell of a lot better than this place.)

I don't care that much about money, to be honest. Other than having enough to not be hungry and to keep my house and my wife in a reasonable standard of living, it doesn't mean that much to me. I'm the guy who goes back to the counter and tells them when he was undercharged, because he values being honest more than the error nobody caught.

I wouldn't sell out what I hold to be true for money, and I think it's quite horrible that you would.

Uhhh...no. Letting yourself die is not a high price relative to what can be done. Good lord, it's not even CLOSE to a high price.

I wouldn't be so quick to judge on something like that Lam. There are legitimate circumstances when selling out is the right thing to do. Kind of like stealing to feed your family isn't anywhere near as bad as robbing a bank.

Well, thats a good virtue

I think that's why he prefaced it with "Other than having enough to not be hungry and to keep my house and my wife in a reasonable standard of living", and also why he supports a system where people don't have to make the choice of stealing to feed a family.

But anyways, it's kind of irritating that people can so consistently and willfully misinterpret not only data, but the very nature and purpose of science.

Christ, I would rather go broke than die, to be honest.

So would most people. Dying is hardly the worst thing that can happen to you, though.

What if you died and stopped existing?

As long as you live, and as long as you are able, you can come back from being poor.

If I died and stopped existing, then I probably wouldn't care if I were alive or dead, no?

And no, the hypothetical doesn't work like that. You either die or you are poor. The poor very rarely come out of poverty.

For me death is the worst I can think of because it is final. If I'm tortured to my wits end, there's still a hope of me recovering. With death, everything is set in stone. I'd like to have fulfilled my potential before I die.

This man would disagree.

"A slave if he reigneth", indeed.

I have to be honest, I have no clue what you are talking about.

I think we have gone a little too far off topic anyways..

You haven't read the Bible? For shame.

I thought the whole driving force of American conservatism was that if you work hard enough for long enough you'll become rich. It's why people making $20k a year are meant to think of tax rises for people making $500k a year as an abomination.

Well I know plenty of people who've worked hard and only barely scrape by.

Did I just destroy conservatism?

You thought wrong. The driving force behind conservative ideology is that if you work hard, make smart decisions, take personal responsibility for all your decisions, then government should get out of the way of you having opportunities to succeed in a free and open marketplace. If conservatives who are making $20k a year think tax hikes for people making $500k a year are an abomination, it's not because of some ridiculous fantasy that they'll be right there with them any day, but rather because of a set of morals that go beyond personal self-interest which say it's wrong to punish someone for earning success in order to subsidize apathy and sloth.



I know plenty of people who've worked hard and became multi-millionaires.

Did I just destroy liberalism?

how many people do you personally know who became multi-millionaires? I'm genuinely interested.

Essentially, then, if I were to possess a button that instantaneously eradicated all of mankind, it wouldn't be bad to press it because they wouldn't exist to care afterwards.

Is this about alright?


I bet they come out of poverty more often than dead people do.


I know plenty of people who've been bitten by radioactive spiders and become superheroes.

Did I just destroy telling the truth? Because I think you might be stretching it a bit.

Off the top of my head? At least three. One started working as a teenager in a small business. She bought it when she was in her 30s and grew it tremendously. Her net worth (last I checked) was probably at least 2 - 3 million bucks. Two others from a .com that didn't fizzle because it actually had tangible, marketable product from day one. The first created it from scratch and built it into a hugely successful business. He then sold it to the second guy. The one was worth about 7 or 8 million before the latest recession hit stocks and the other is in the same general area.

I'm somewhat familiar with a couple others (a couple doctors), but I don't know them very well personally (ie I wouldn't expect to get invited out for a beer with them). I worked directly under the first when I was younger (her family was friends with mine and you'd never guess they had money by their attitude and work ethic) and I met the other two through work.

In the first case, it was decades of hard work and saving that led to the point where shrewd business sense took over (after buying out the place she'd worked most of her life). In the case of the second guy, he started the thing with two employees on two computers out of his house and worked himself half to death for a few years before handing it off to someone else to do the same (for a Hell of a profit). The other guy took it and works even harder (20+ hr days most days). Again, hard work and a shrewd business sense is what got them to where they are.

Seems to me that "shrewd business sense" can't really be a quality that is attainable for everyone. I can't imagine a functioning society in which everyone had such a quality. Furthermore, what is good business sense? It seems like almost circular reasoning to say that it's the kind of sense that makes you money. Of course, I may be misinterpreting your argument.

Who said anything about it being attainable for everyone? Not everyone has the right combination of work ethic, intelligence, common sense, and business sense to make it that big. That said, simply working hard will do you well too. A very good friend of mine started working at a company about 25 years ago making around $25k a year. He's now making $95k a year with full benefits, etc. He's not even management. He didn't need shrewd business sense; just a solid, consistent work ethic whereby he's made himself important to the company enough that they pay him a lot to stay with them. He does good work, has for a long time, and he's rewarded as a result.

It isn't about everyone getting rich. It's about everyone having the opportunity to try, free of interference. And if you do well because you're working hard, made good decisions, got lucky, or whatever, there's no reason you should be punished. Punishing people for succeeding only discourages people from trying to succeed. That's especially true when you subsidize and support failure, apathy, and lethargy.

Whether it's home buyers, CEOs, major financial institutions, or the crackhead down the street, rewarding them or protecting them from consequences when they fail by stealing money from those working hard and making smart decisions is completely and utterly wrong. Let people succeed. Let people fail. That's conservatism for you.

I love how a thread about global warming has been side-tracked into a discussion like this.

He has a great point, though. (And it's a lot better than what it became earlier.)

This topic has been split from Global Warming. Some posts about Al Gore's wealth specifically have not been moved here because they relate more to the topic of global warming.

Posts in this thread do not need to relate to global warming. The discussion about the government's role in wealth, selling out your morals for wealth, or wealth accumulation in general can continue in this thread.

there's one big part you missed out from your combination there, Loki. Work ethic, intelligence, common sense, and business sense are great, but they also need luck. They need nothing uncontrollable to go wrong. They need the market not to unexpectedly collapse. They need their health not to become a huge issue after they get his by a car.

I'm a believer in safety nets, because I think that while you can't stop someone being lazy or not being sensible, you can shield them from effects that are not their doing. Some people work incredibly hard, are very smart, and make all the right moves, and still fail because of something they have no control over. I think an ideal society should have a responsibility to help these people try again. Penalizing people for being unlucky is not something I'm fond of.

Well, keep in mind I never said we should penalize the unlucky, but you're correct that there's always going to be a certain factor of luck for any success. A tornado, earthquake, or meteor strike can easily put an end to a rock-solid business plan in a hurry. But when you work hard and make smart decisions, the amount of luck you need to succeed goes down a lot. When you don't work at all and blow what cash you have on lotto tickets, you need lots of luck to succeed. So by working hard and making good decisions, you drastically enhance your chances for success.

Now, I'm not at all against some safety nets in place to soften the fall for those who find themselves in a tough spot through no fault of their own. My problem, specifically, is with that net being used as a permanent hammock by people who are too lazy or uncaring to do anything for themselves. Here I'm talking about welfare queens, agricultural subsidies, financial company bail-outs, auto company bail-outs, blanket forclosure prevention assistance, most foreign aid (specifically aid to Africa), etc. The worst part of all those things is that the money to finance them comes from the pockets of people who are working hard, are acting responsibly, are making the right decisions, and who are taking responsibility for themselves. They do everything right and have money ripped from their hard-working hands to support those who do everything wrong.

So our lines of thinking aren't completely opposed on this, though I'm sure there's a lot of disagreement on who's deserving of what.

Some of those things they can't control include laws and taxes designed to be safety nets. Go figure.

Taxes are an expected thing. you can take taxes into account in your business model. It's tougher to take unexpectedly getting bone cancer or your wife being hit by a bus into account.

There's an (albeit it terrible looking) movie coming out with Cameron Diaz where her and her husband are given a box with a button. If they push the button, they will receive $1 Million, however one random person in the world will die.

Given that opportunity, would you push the button? Why or why not?

If you work hard, and you go everyday to work with an attitude of how you can do better than what is expected of you, you can become rich very fast.




I know 3, 2 were successful doctors, and one just retired from the Army as a Colonel. They all WORKED hard to get where they are today. How many Marxists become millionaires I ask?

I believe it's about $300 to even get a business permit in Florida. My mother who technically owns a small business pays in excess of $2,000 a year in small business taxes. (She makes $25k/year when she's lucky, and she's her only employee.) It's honestly becoming impossible to run a small business anymore. The tax on getting a small business permit was originally started to help filter out those who would seriously run a business and those who wouldn't. What is it doing? Making it near impossible for the average, hard working businessperson to have a chance at running their own successful business, which in turn hurts the economy.

Every Marxist that comes into power, duh.

i wonder if they like to "spread the wealth".

NANCY, GET OFF YOUR 757 AND HOW BOUT' YOU STOP BEING THE EVIL RICH PEOPLE!!

Technically speaking, a congressperson gets paid just under what the government considers 'wealthy'.

... what they get from the government in check-form usually isn't their only income source.

Most Marxists are probably disgusted by the concept of being a millionaire because it condones the type of market they detest, that is, one which promotes vastly separated classes.

True. But how many of them filed their taxes properly?

So why was your conjoined twin arguing so hard that it was almost impossible to stop being poor?



I'm not sure what that has to do with anything. I know at least one marxist millionaire, but as most marxists aren't primarily motivated by money I'm not sure why you want to know how many are millionaires

Almost impossible =/= impossible. Most poor will remain poor. Most. Not every single poor person. (EX: Oprah.) It's rare to see a poor person become 'wealthy', but it does happen sometimes.

So what, are all those people doing something wrong or am I missing something here?