[ExI] The Great Gatsby Curve

[William Flynn Wallace]

I don't resent the rich either, but I do wonder where their money is.  Is
it invested and helping the economy, or just sitting collecting interest?
I assume the former, so the rich are not just enjoying the economy, they
are stimulating it, if I am correct.

bill w

On Fri, Mar 1, 2019 at 12:33 PM <spike at rainier66.com> wrote:

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> *From:* extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> *On Behalf
> Of *John Clark
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> *>…*The only reason there hasn't already been blood in the streets is
> probably because the poor are unrealistically optimistic about getting
> rich… John K Clark
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> “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not
> as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”
> ― *Ronald Wright, **A Short History of Progress*
> <https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/321797>
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> Damn that optimism!  Sal Khan and his ilk are contributing to it.  The
> poor have the opportunity to get way ahead of their richer but less
> motivated peers academically, so the path upward is clearly visible.
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> Another take on it is this.  In America, it doesn’t hurt all that much to
> be poor.  There are plenty of ways poor people can still have adequate
> food, shelter and clothing.  It isn’t top shelf, but it is generally
> available to the non-stoned poor.  Then they have free time to play on the
> internet (free bandwidth is available if you can tolerate that most porno
> is blocked) or play video games on the Nintendo.
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> Another take on it is this.  We have local billionehhhs, plenty of them in
> Palo Alto, Cupertino, Los Altos Hills, Saratoga, a few up the hill from
> here.  But the super rich billionehhhs can’t really have that different a
> life from the ordinary Joe Millionehhhs.  Beyond a certain point, their
> lifestyles aren’t all that different.  Another order of magnitude doesn’t
> make that much difference.
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> John where you and I diverge wildly is that I just don’t see the
> resentment of the super rich.  I certainly don’t feel it.  I can see the
> homes of the super rich from down here: their places and big spawling
> mansions up on the hill up there.  OK no worries, I don’t resent that a
> bit.  More power to them.  I look out my window and see a big place built
> by a rapper, MC Hammer.  He has (or had) a pile of money, well OK, fine
> with me.  He built that, now the value of that property brings in a pile of
> real estate tax into this community.  I don’t feel a bit of envy for that
> place up there or any of the others: they are nice houses, but it would be
> too inconvenient to get down off that hill every time you would go
> anywhere.  Rap on, Mr. Hammer!
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> spike
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