“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith,” said Alexis de Tocqueville, who also noted Americans’ particular respect for money and those who possess it.
What would the most famous non-American commentator on America have to say about today’s rich behaving badly, from Wall Street banksters voting themselves fabulous bonuses while running too-big-to-fail banks into the ground to the Koch Brothers buying governor’s mansions and statehouses nationwide?
If he were still around, I’ll bet de Tocqueville would commission an artist to do up a graphic like the one below, “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems.” It shows that rich people really are nastier drivers, bigger tax cheats and worse mortgage deadbeats. Maybe you suspected it already? Now you know for sure.
Re-posted from AccountingDegreeOnline.net.
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Conspicuous consumption is bad. Many of these rich people embrace conspicuous consumption.
In general, being rich is bad. But rich people are not inherently bad, but only a very few seem to want to do the right thing. Good rich people are a good thing, but bad rich people seem far more common.
It seems to be a case of the scum rises to the top. And powerful scum are in a position to do really bad things – e.g. the Kochs.
There are numerous examples of bad and antisocial behaviour among the rich.
The rich wield power out of all proportion to their one vote. They buy politicians to weight legislation to their benefit, which often means to the detriment of the Public and natural environment.
By exporting jobs, and closing companies they damage the economy in search for personal profit.
By exploiting tax laws via their expensive lawyers they do not pay their fair share.
It’s hard not to conclude that Mitt Romney is one of the filthy rich.
I will try to keep this concise.
de Tocqueville was wrong. Morality is determined by nature in the form of survival. True morality can ONLY be determined WITHOUT faith. To question every action, to know how nature works; only then can one understand what morality actually is, and how we can contribute (be useful) to the future of everything, not just humanistic selfishness of the marketed trademark called “God”.
An action or thing is “good” when it contributes more to the future than it consumes in resources.
An action or thing is “bad” when it causes fewer resources to be available for future generations of living things.
Evil is any action taken based on unquestioned belief.
The only natural right of living things is the right to Try to Live.
Everything else is statutorily invented. If we are to be a moral species, then our “rights” would include the rights of future generations of all species (and people outside our socio-industrial enclave), not just present living humans (with money) and their fickle desires for more “stuff” that they wouldn’t even want if they weren’t told to want it.
The rich are richer and more immoral because we PAY THEM TO BE THAT WAY!! Every day, billions of people go to stores and buy stuff. Prior to civilization, they would instead have had to make what they needed or wanted, or know someone who could, and trade fairly for it.
Every type of law which is passed to “improve the economy” is a law against nature. Our economy represents our rate of destruction of our own future. If the economy is increasing, we are destroying things faster.
The rich people are just the lucky ones who fill in the openings that are created by our desires for easy, cheap living. We have lauded them for being “efficient” or increasing “profits” and making decisions based only on numbers on a piece of paper or a computer screen.
The hated rich are an extension of ourselves, regardless of how we vote come elections; we vote early and often when the stores open each day. One dollar, one vote: that’s our democracy. The “representative republic” only represents cash, and actual thoughtful representation is nonexistent and irrelevant as far as our media are concerned.
Being rich is unfathomably selfish because it entails the notion that one is entitled to buy 6 mansions or hoard $5 million in the bank instead of saving hundreds of lives with that money. I am 99.99% sure that in God’s eyes, nobody deserves to be rich while millions are starving and suffering or dying of preventable causes. For this reason, I’m willing to bet that almost all rich people (if not ALL) are undeserving of their wealth in God’s eyes, because they only “earned” it due to being born into privilege and/or simply getting lucky, at the expense of the less fortunate. There is enough food to feed the world but people still starve because of the greedy capitalist system. Furthermore, nobody works thousands of times harder than the average person, such that they should deserve thousands or millions times more money than the average person; it is simply exploitation due to fortuitous circumstances. If you had to bet your life that God disagrees with what I am saying, would you feel comfortable, or would you change your stance from the one in your post?
BTW, am I guilty of the same sin as rich people because I have more money than I need and I spend on frivolous things instead of helping the poor? ABSOLUTELY. But just because I do it (and almost everyone else does it) DOES NOT MAKE IT RIGHT.