[ExI] anti-capitalist propaganda, was: retrainability of plebeians

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/5/11 spike <spike66 at att.net>:

> Stathis, the reason I didn't vote for Obama (and McCain either) is that they
> didn't have the critical experience in their youth of working their asses
> off for low pay and associating with others doing the same.  Both of those
> guys they missed a critical lesson in life, one that must be learned early
> and reinforced.  I don't know what the heck McCain was doing back then, but
> Obama describes in his book snorting cocaine, which no one with a minimum
> wage job will do, because it costs a ton of money.  Why doesn't the press
> ever ask where the money came from?  Then later he was suing businesses.  I
> see nothing in that formative background which would make him realize that
> money is hard earned stuff, it's the lifeblood of the working class.  We
> don't want government taking it from those who work hard and using it to
> bail out huge businesses that are too big to fail, but are going to fail
> eventually anyway.  The US constitution doesn't give the government the
> authority to do that.

I know a lot of people with minimal funds who blow them on drugs; both
habitually irresponsible people and people who work/study and
generally behave responsibly except for their irregular binges.
Usually they grow out of it when they are older and, ironically, have
more money.

However, the more interesting point you make is that Obama did not
work hard for his money. I am surprised that as a supporter of
capitalism you would hold this against him. As I said in a previous
post, a definition of capitalist success could be making more and more
money while doing less and less work. If you decide, after a moment's
reflection, that XYZ shares are going to go up, and then make a huge
profit on them, the fact that you didn't do much work or even risk
much capital only makes the achievement more impressive. This is
essentially what Warren Buffett did, except that he didn't always get
it right and had to invest substantial sums. Had he made the same
fortune even faster, doing less work and risking less money, he would
have been hailed as an even greater genius.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou