Yeah, people more or less lied to you about that by conflating the capital gains tax with the the income tax.

Some rich people tend to invest more, therefore make more of their income off of capital gains which are lower.

However, the percentage of rich people like that are actually pretty small.  So they were argueing that a few hedgefund managers making less then an average person by their income being basically nothing but capital gans that every rich persons taxes should be raised higher even though the rest pay more then anyone else.

The Capital gains tax while lower is still progressive mind you.

So someone who makes a middle class income on capital gains is still paying a smaller percentage in taxes then a rich person.

It's just that middle class people don't make all their income on capital gains because stocks are risky as hell.

I read one of his Op Eds a year ago. Overall he's a moron, but he has a valid point on this. Getting rich without inheriting a fortune or winning the lottery will never happen if you don't put the work in.

EDIT: And Godfather's Pizza sucks.

I said rules, and not laws, for a reason.  The are rules they follow, which benefit them, and which average people don't follow.  On the Law front, the tax code is structured to benefit the rich.  If you incorporate, you take out your expenses before being taxed.  The average joe has taxes out and their expenses are ignored.  There are deductions, but they are fewer.  Special interests and other groups with money, also write in tax breaks, get subsidies, and other advantages.  And when the financial system broke down, it wasn't the average joe that got bailed out, it was banks, and other corpoprations, that got bailed out, like the auto industry.  The average joe is used as a meat shield, to scare politicians that they might just get offed unless they get bailed out.

Also, take the case where top executives get contracts that pay them money if they are kicked out.  They get millions of dollars.  The average joe doesn't get those.  They get downsized, and little if any money involved at all towards them.  They also don't often get sign-on bonuses either.  People on top get these.

Let's not forget that a capitalist system depends for its success on 2 things: maintaining a steady unemployment rate of 4-5%. Keeping factory floor wages as low as possible. In those conditions you cannot say in any sort of absolute terms that not being rich is the fault of the individual. Because the economic system itself requires that there be materially poor people.

If the lowest paid worker in the country was paid $100/hr inflation would soon see that $100 devalue to the point that a person on $100/hr can't live on their income.

You simply cannot have a country where everyone is rich (by some fairly broad definition of rich). Ergo it cannot be the case that it is all the individual's fault that they are poor.

Sure Herman Cain was raised by parent who taught him to be in control of his own life. But he was also blesed with great intelligence, which was none of his doing. You are deluding yourself if you think that every poor person out there has the inherent intellect to get a masters in mathematics if they only got off their lazy arses and tried.

There are people of natural (genetic) high potential, medium potential and low potential. And like just about every natrual variation it follows a bell curve distribution. Telling people in the lower quartile it's their fault that they are not rich is as ignorant as telling a blind person it's their fault they can't see.

Now given I'm in the upper quartile of intelligence (probably in the top 15%) then the fact I'm not super rich certainly is my fault and I accept that entirely, and I don't care because I don't want to have to do what it takes to be mega rich (which ALWAYs involves shitting on other people either directly or indirectly). I don't blame Wall street for my not being wealthy (though relative to the world's population I'd be in the top 10% so by some definitions I am rich, though I don't feel rich), but i do blame Wall Street greed (and govt regulation, or lack thereof) for the macroeconomic situation that perpetuates grinding poverty as bad as almost any 3rd world country in the richest nation in the world.

Well said!

To be honest, I agree with him to an extent. If I did more work then it would make sense that I'd end up richer. I don't think it's worth the trade off though, to be honest

First off, on not everyone can be "rich" is generally true because rich and poor are relative measures of wealth and there will always be some disparity but I don't think that tells the whole story ...

The standard of living that can be obtained by every individual within a society is only bounded by the productivity of people within that society. The fact that we’ve improved productivity so dramatically over the last century is also the reason why the poorest people today have a better standard of living than the vast majority of people a century ago.

Hypothetically speaking, if we had a society where the vast majority of people were working in productive fields and were as productive as is (realistically) possible at this point in time the standard of living of people would be far higher today; and probably higher than most people in the middle class today. The fact that we have far too many people going far into debt for useless educations, an entire class of people who take part in rent-seeking fields rather than productive fields, and organizations (typically unions and special interest groups) who oppose productive technology in order to protect "jobs" is what is really holding people down ...

Now, with that said, why does wealth have to come from screwing people over?

If I discovered an inexpesive cure for cancer tomorrow, charged people a fair rate for the treatment, and made billions of dollars as a result how would I have screwed anyone over?

How many individuals incorporate exactly?

I mean, we were talking about the rich here right?

The Wallstreet movement has mostly been complaining about the individual rich.

Now your comparing companies with individuals.  Which seems like a strange thing to do.

Aside from which, the average joe CAN buy into these companies... any average joe that did hold stock did get bailed out, no?  It just seems to support my "more people should be in the stock market" theory.

Additionally, there were plenty of average joes who got bailed out when the auto industry got bailed out.   

With the banks, yeah, the banks should of been left to rot... which would of in a way hopefully created some debt forgiveness and ended up with the huge banks being replaced by smaller banks that were already rising to the occasion.  

Except, the problem here is... the banks almost didn't get bailed out... If the banks bought washington they sure did a crappy job of it, since it took the stockmarket dropping over 700 points to barely get the vote through.

Aside from which... the protestors at Wallstreet should really check the voting roll call to see which party really is the party of corporate welfare.  It was Democrats, 140-95 for.  While Republicans voted 65-133.

Which is largely the problem with the wallstreet movement.  General ignorance, the path to more government.  Even demanding that more government creates more fairness, will in fact lead only to more cronyism.

Sure there is plenty of cronyism in the system but it isn't "Rich vs Poor".   It's "This group vs that group."    With every bailout of a corproation there were plenty of average joes who benefited.  Even with the banks, hell think of how many more bank employees would of been out of a job.

I mean heck, the Auto Industry bailout saved my Uncle's job, and my Dad's pension.  (Though thankfully, unlike most of my Dad's coworkers he saved and invseted a lot of the money he got not relying on just the pension and social security.)

I wonder if they really support getting the money out of politics like first reported though.  I mean, they're now joining forces with the AFL CIO one of the largest lobbyists out there.

It'd be like the Tea Party teaming up with FDR.

haha, this article sounds just like one of my dads 'pearls of wisdom' growing up

He says 'its not some peoples fault if they are rich' (sic) but it normally is an embarrassment to be when you have people like this guy making comments & getting publicity like they do, he probably goes to bed each night cuddling his ayn rand books & 1st edition copy of Adam Smiths wealth of nations (all of which I too was sadly forced to read growing up). Very insensitive & something the rest of us try and very much differentiate ourselves from, this is unfortunately just a vocal minority of the 'well off folk' (commonly from the previous two generations) from my experience. But then I don't live in the U.S so I am speaking from experience of the 'upper classes' of my home country (Australia) only.

He made that comment to the Occupy Wall Street kids so it makes perfect sense. If you are "protesting" without a cause and getting arrested for no good reason, as the OWS crowd are, instead of looking for a job or trying to start up a business then you will go nowhere in life. Those kids are waiting for Obama to take money from others by government force and give it to them rather than working to make themselves better.