Do left-wingers have a hatred of the rich?

[Morvan]

Not a strawman when Orostan literally said that the bourgeoisie is your enemy if you are poor.

You misrepresent their argument. Then you attack them by mocking them. That's a strawman

[Proctopeo]

Quite obviously, I'm using a concept of class that reflects a broader view of reality.

What is this broader view of reality? A wealthy man dependent on a poor man for their wealth is still dependent for their wealth. The rigid placement of class based on location and income doesn't reflect social positions in the same way that the Marxist concept does.

The Marxist concept doesn't reflect that a member of the "bourgeois" may be much poorer than a member of the "proletariat", as it only concerns itself with relationship to the means of production.
By taking income and cost of living into account instead, you get a better picture of who is and isn't rich.

[Jebslund]

We all know they do, which I find is stupid, why are the rich, rich? It’s because they’ve done something that’s revolutionised the world and they deserve the fortune brought to them. The moment you bring communistic ideals to the world innovation stops, why do something great when you could just do a worse job that pays the same? This is one of the reasons I’m right-wing.

Except the ones who inherited that wealth, and the ones who won the lottery and had enough sense not to blow it all in five minutes, and the ones who did something fairly ordinary, then paid their employees as little as they could get away with in order to subsidise their desire to run a business, and the ones who didn't create the company they work for and merely run it, and the ones who were fired with a golden parachute, and the ones who made that money through crime, and the ones who made that money voting themselves pay raises at every opportunity while doing little of note, and the ones who got that money by playing sports, and the ones who made the money by dodging taxes...

The people with the attitude of, "Why do this if I don't make more money than I would putting forth less effort?" are not the ones making all the innovations. Most of the people looking for cures (and the people doing the work are almost never the ones making the money there, anyway.), or working to make life easier, or doing the truly revolutionary things aren't in it purely for the money, or they wouldn't have the drive to do it. That's a fallacy proposed by people who are driven only by self-interest and lazy at heart as a means to justify making money off of the efforts of others.

That all said, I don't hate the wealthy, per se. As you said, the ones who put in the effort and do the things that change the world do, in fact, deserve to be wealthy (we just differ on who those people are). Then again, I don't identify as leftist, either. I just happen to believe that hard work should be rewarded regardless of what the job you're doing is (IE: An honest day's work should beget a livable, honest day's wage, regardless of the age or job title of the person earning the wage. Hard work, not 'worthiness' or society's perception of need, should determine pay.).

[Great Minarchistan]

Not a strawman when Orostan literally said that the bourgeoisie is your enemy if you are poor.

You misrepresent their argument. Then you attack them by mocking them. That's a strawman

>Misrepresent their argument
>I literally replicated what Orostan said
Don't let your personal hatred get in front of the facts.
>Attacking them by mocking them
>"Hnnng exclamation points are an attack"
Really looking to disagree with someone today, huh?

[Oil exporting People]

Again, still not the only form of tax.

I think it says a lot when the only argument you can summon is the fact the Poor might pay more on Alcohol excise taxes, while ignoring that said tax is completely voluntary.

[Ifreann]

That's quite the strawman there

Not a strawman when Orostan literally said that the bourgeoisie is your enemy if you are poor.

...Assuming you work for a wage and do not own private property, the bourgeois are 100% your class enemy.

Working for a living means you're poor?

[Great Minarchistan]

Not a strawman when Orostan literally said that the bourgeoisie is your enemy if you are poor.

...Assuming you work for a wage and do not own private property, the bourgeois are 100% your class enemy.

Working for a living means you're poor?

Not owning private property means you're poor tbh.

[Purgatio]

Many left-wingers do (I assume you mean economically left-wing), its shocking to me how some (not all) who are economically left-wing speak of "the rich" as some kind of homogenous blob of persons, without intra-group diversity. "The rich" control the economy, "the rich" buy off politicians, "the rich" control the media, it is deeply-reductive, an unrealistic portrayal of how human beings actually operate (like "the rich" are some kind of hive mind coordinating their behaviour and in a deep conspiracy together to do things), and if I'm being honest, very reminiscent of the kind of 'otherising' language used when people talk about "the gay agenda" or "immigrants destroying society". It all boils down to an intellectually-stunted inability to view people as individual, unique human beings, rather than a cog within a homogenous blob for you to project your stereotypes and assumptions onto the whole.

[Ifreann]

Working for a living means you're poor?

Not owning private property means you're poor tbh.

I never did earn my degree in cultural Marxism, but I believe that private property, in the parlance of the godless communist, is distinct from personal property, e.g. your toothbrush.

[Great Minarchistan]

Not owning private property means you're poor tbh.

I never did earn my degree in cultural Marxism, but I believe that private property, in the parlance of the godless communist, is distinct from personal property, e.g. your toothbrush.

I mean, if we're doing to define everything that you constantly use as personal property, then many "bourgies" (typically referring to small business owners or self-employed) don't have private property as well, since they depend of their invested fixed capital to make a living.

[Uxupox]

I never did earn my degree in cultural Marxism, but I believe that private property, in the parlance of the godless communist, is distinct from personal property, e.g. your toothbrush.

I mean, if we're doing to define everything that you constantly use as personal property, then many "bourgies" (typically referring to small business owners or self-employed) don't have private property as well, since they depend of their invested fixed capital to make a living.

i mean they are the damn same thing in retrospective.

[Ifreann]

I never did earn my degree in cultural Marxism, but I believe that private property, in the parlance of the godless communist, is distinct from personal property, e.g. your toothbrush.

I mean, if we're doing to define everything that you constantly use as personal property, then many "bourgies" (typically referring to small business owners or self-employed) don't have private property as well, since they depend of their invested fixed capital to make a living.

You'll have to ask Orostan exactly what they meant by "private property", but the point remains that you did not ">literally [replicate] what Orostan said".

[Dogmeat]

What? No.

I just think that income inequality is higher then it ought to be.

[Great Minarchistan]

I mean, if we're doing to define everything that you constantly use as personal property, then many "bourgies" (typically referring to small business owners or self-employed) don't have private property as well, since they depend of their invested fixed capital to make a living.

You'll have to ask Orostan exactly what they meant by "private property", but the point remains that you did not ">literally [replicate] what Orostan said".

hnnnng I did

[Oil exporting People]

What? No.

I just think that income inequality is higher then it ought to be.

Why is that necessarily a bad thing? Let's say the poverty line is $20k and you have five people. Four make $60k a year while one makes $10 Million a year. Yes, this is a large amount of inequality but this doesn't mean the other four are worse off. I'd think the Left would be better off focusing on stagnant wages then inequality.

[Trumptonium1]

Working for a living means you're poor?

Not owning private property means you're poor tbh.

85% of society being poor is a pretty big claim.

[Claorica]

Working for a living means you're poor?

Not owning private property means you're poor tbh.

the problem with using "ownership of property" as a class system ignores the fact that many people that own vast property don't necessarily make millions every year.

I guarantee my family probably owns more tangible property than most CEOs, yet most of the households in my family would barely break the "1%" in actual earnings, because our wealth is not liquid, and our income goes directly into better production.

[Dogmeat]

What? No.

I just think that income inequality is higher then it ought to be.

Why is that necessarily a bad thing? Let's say the poverty line is $20k and you have five people. Four make $60k a year while one makes $10 Million a year. Yes, this is a large amount of inequality but this doesn't mean the other four are worse off. I'd think the Left would be better off focusing on stagnant wages then inequality.

Why not both?

A democratic society ought to more closely resemble a sphere then a pyramid. With the highest concentrations of wealth and population being concentrated at the center rather then the top and bottom (respectively.) This produces a healthier dynamic.

[Genivaria]

There is a difference between noticing some support policies that help their sort, but hurt others, and actively hating those people and denying their empathy.

Many left-wingers don't. Some right-wingers do hate the poor and rail against their supposed failings in both morality and economic decision-making. This can be based both in interest - nothing needs doing to "fix" it if you can convincingly blame the individual - and out of ignorance - because they can't fully understand the situation of a person who hasn't had everything handed to them on a plate or who hasn't had the particular combination of fortunate circumstance that made it possible for them to use their skills to ascend to the top.

You're creating a false dichotomy. Some right-wingers hate the poor. Some left-wingers hate the rich. Neither is an essential quality.

We have an entire theological doctrine in the US called Prosperity Theology that tells people that there is a direct correlation between a person's wealth and a person's morality.
So I can easily believe that there's a more 'hate the poor' vibe then the other way around.

[Claorica]

Many left-wingers don't. Some right-wingers do hate the poor and rail against their supposed failings in both morality and economic decision-making. This can be based both in interest - nothing needs doing to "fix" it if you can convincingly blame the individual - and out of ignorance - because they can't fully understand the situation of a person who hasn't had everything handed to them on a plate or who hasn't had the particular combination of fortunate circumstance that made it possible for them to use their skills to ascend to the top.

You're creating a false dichotomy. Some right-wingers hate the poor. Some left-wingers hate the rich. Neither is an essential quality.

We have an entire theological doctrine in the US called Prosperity Theology that tells people that there is a direct correlation between a person's wealth and a person's morality.
So I can easily believe that there's a more 'hate the poor' vibe then the other way around.

A theology that the vast majority of right-wingers, and especially the religious right, consider to be heretical at best, apostasy at worst.

[Sovaal]

Depends on the leftist. Not all are the same, just like not every rightist is a racist homophobe.

[Xadufell]

Byeah

A decent percentage.

[The Flutterlands]

I don't hate rich people per say, but I hate how authoritarian the big corporations have become turning our government into oligarchy to rob from the poor...

[Genivaria]

We have an entire theological doctrine in the US called Prosperity Theology that tells people that there is a direct correlation between a person's wealth and a person's morality.
So I can easily believe that there's a more 'hate the poor' vibe then the other way around.

A theology that the vast majority of right-wingers, and especially the religious right, consider to be heretical at best, apostasy at worst.

Is that why the Christian right in the US overwhelmingly support the previously mentioned laissez-faire economics?
Christian Democracy outside the US is pretty much the opposite when it comes to economics.

[Caracasus]

While I'm sure there are the occasional folks who do hate rich people as a weird amorphous mass, most of us are more up for dismantling a system that leads to the inevitable coagulation of wealth and power in the hands of a very few people.

Even if the top 100 richest folks in the world were to give away everything they own tomorrow, the system that allowed them to accumulate such vast amounts of wealth and power would still be there. That tends to be what left-wingers take issue with.

I mean, there are plenty of examples where it's kind of hard not to hate a particular rich person because they go and do something unbelievably shitty. I'm not going to shed that many tears if the guy who buys out patents for cancer medications so he can jack up the prices gets hit by a bus tomorrow.

And that's kind of the point. Rich people do unbelievably shitty things, as do poor people. It's just that the unbelievably shitty things rich people do tend to have a significantly worse effect on the world because the economic and social power they wield is so great.

I'm not even going to touch the conflation of disliking the rich (in itself a strawman argument) with Nazi propaganda. It's one of those statements that is so ill informed it manages to not even be wrong.