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Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.

Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.......
Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere........

kalm wrote:c-Grad, BDK, Ivy...you're gonna love this guy?

Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.

Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The
“community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.......
Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere........

If I don't see a spirited defense of the author's ideas here - especially community vs. the individual I'm gonna be very disappointed.

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:c-Grad, BDK, Ivy...you're gonna love this guy?



If I don't see a spirited defense of the author's ideas here - especially community vs. the individual I'm gonna be very disappointed.

Give us a link, you coward. I smell a very weak effort at satire here.

Ivytalk wrote:No thank you, kalm.

Oh, THAT Harry Binswanger! "Vampire squid," indeed! I'll have to keep that one in mind next April 15.

I still say it's a pseudonym for your hero Glenn Greenwald, in a rare puckish mood.

kalm wrote:c-Grad, BDK, Ivy...you're gonna love this guy?

Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.

Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.......
Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere........

If I don't see a spirited defense of the author's ideas here - especially community vs. the individual I'm gonna be very disappointed.

houndawg wrote:

kalm wrote:c-Grad, BDK, Ivy...you're gonna love this guy?



If I don't see a spirited defense of the author's ideas here - especially community vs. the individual I'm gonna be very disappointed.

citgrad will be about a buck thirty before he stops jacking his meat....

BDKHD will probably need to take O2 while he's choking the pope or he'll expire right there on the crapper like Elvis...find him lying in a pool of seminal fluid clutching a smeared and sticky copy of this article in one hand, finger and thumb of the other hand clutching his wee friend..

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:No thank you, kalm.

Oh, THAT Harry Binswanger! "Vampire squid," indeed! I'll have to keep that one in mind next April 15.

I still say it's a pseudonym for your hero Glenn Greenwald, in a rare puckish mood.

Actually Taibbi coined the phrase and it was mean, hurtful, and unfair to Lloyd "Mother Theresa" Blankfein. Try and keep up...

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
Actually Taibbi coined the phrase and it was mean, hurtful, and unfair to Lloyd "Mother Theresa" Blankfein. Try and keep up...

Glad to see your love triangle of kalm, Taibbi and Greenwald is alive and throbbing.

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote: Glad to see your love triangle of kalm, Taibbi and Greenwald is alive and throbbing.

Keep swinging IT! You know it takes a big man to admit when he's wrong...

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:


Keep swinging IT! You know it takes a big man to admit when he's wrong...

Lookie here, Trotsky (and I have it on good authority that you look like him, specs and all, but worse facial hair), when you post something profound of your own, without clinging to Goofy Glenn's or Mad Matt's apron strings, I'll be happy to respond. And Blankfein did rise from very humble beginnings to his current position as head of the most powerful investment bank in America. I knew him when he wore torn jeans and sneakers. I'm sure he'd be happy to own an extra golf course or two. Full disclosure: I've never done business with him, and I haven't seen him since 1975.

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote: Lookie here, Trotsky (and I have it on good authority that you look like him, specs and all, but worse facial hair), when you post something profound of your own, without clinging to Goofy Glenn's or Mad Matt's apron strings, I'll be happy to respond. And Blankfein did rise from very humble beginnings to his current position as head of the most powerful investment bank in America. I knew him when he wore torn jeans and sneakers. I'm sure he'd be happy to own an extra golf course or two. Full disclosure: I've never done business with him, and I haven't seen him since 1975.

I merely posted a think piece I thought you'd enjoy and be happy to defend. You respond with personal attacks about my Norwegian struggles to grow a thicker beard. Sad IT...just sad.

Baldy wrote:

Lloyd Blankfein is as Donk as they come.

Ivytalk wrote:

kalm wrote:
I merely posted a think piece I thought you'd enjoy and be happy to defend. You respond with personal attacks about my Norwegian struggles to grow a thicker beard. Sad IT...just sad.

Truth be told, Sven-the-relatively-hairless, that "think piece" was so bad that, until you posted the link, I thought it was someone's idea of satire. Ayn Rand worshipers do exist. Who knew? As for my own hair, it's white, but I have lots more than Blankfein!

kalm wrote:

Ivytalk wrote:
Truth be told, Sven-the-relatively-hairless, that "think piece" was so bad that, until you posted the link, I thought it was someone's idea of satire. Ayn Rand worshipers do exist. Who knew? As for my own hair, it's white, but I have lots more than Blankfein!

Oh I agree completely, and I don't blame anyone for running like hell from objectivism. That being said, all these meme's of parasites, government intervention, unregulated free markets, rational self
interest, and "producers" came from somewhere and they have been dominating the speech of the right for quite some time now (in case you haven't noticed.)

It was a bit unfair of me to call you out on this thread, but you might be under-estimating Rand's influence a bit.

kalm wrote:

Baldy wrote:

Lloyd Blankfein is as Donk as they come.

Really? That's awesome! I had no clue what his politics were but if that's true, an Ayn Rand acolyte lionizing a donk banker for his "free market" acumen makes the story that much richer!

Baldy wrote:

kalm wrote:
Really? That's awesome! I had no clue what his politics were but if that's true, an Ayn Rand acolyte lionizing a donk banker for his "free market" acumen makes the story that much richer!

Maybe in your mind. Then again I don't know why some people eat boogers or why monkeys play with their poop, either.

Ivytalk wrote:

houndawg wrote:
citgrad will be about a buck thirty before he stops jacking his meat....

BDKHD will probably need to take O2 while he's choking the pope or he'll expire right there on the crapper like Elvis...find him lying in a pool of seminal fluid clutching a smeared and sticky copy of this article in one hand, finger and thumb of the other hand clutching his wee friend..

Brilliant, poundpup. You're nasty as well as stupid. Well played.

kalm wrote:

Baldy wrote: Maybe in your mind. Then again I don't know why some people eat boogers or why monkeys play with their poop, either.

So much for a spirited debate regarding your ideology, Baldy.

If I don't see a spirited defense of the author's ideas here - especially community vs. the individual I'm gonna be very disappointed.

JohnStOnge wrote:

If I don't see a spirited defense of the author's ideas here - especially community vs. the individual I'm gonna be very disappointed.

I don't think he needs defending. He pretty much nailed it. I might put it slightly differently. I'd say that the idea that "the rich" should be gouged in taxes because "the community" gave them what they needed to become rich is absurd. "The community" is just the background. MOST people who end up having money end up having it because their own ability was a factor. Chance may have been a factor as well. The ability of others in their ancestry may have been as well. But everybody in "the community" lives in "the community." They don't owe "the community" anything. And, like the author said, chances are they're already an asset to "the community" by virtue of what they did and are doing to gain financially. Like Henry Ford. Like Bill Gates. Like a Medical Doctor. Like an Engineer.

I'll leave Lawyers out even though my son is going to be one.