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Reasons I Love the 1%

October 27, 2011, 9:42 am

The 1% make many beautiful things possible in the world which the rest of us could not afford.  Yes we could celebrate the ballet and the opera and the symphony, none of which would likely thrive without the 1%, but today lets celebrate something a bit more material.  I will never own anything like this.  In fact, I would feel like a sucker if I paid the asking price for one.  But I still enjoy the fact that they exist and I can admire their beauty.

Category: Other
  • Ted Rado

    I see nothing wrong with getting rich. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and many others have brought many benefits to mankind. They deserve their riches. Bettering oneself and providing a better life for one's family are incentives to go out and do things. Government handouts encourage the opposite: indolence and irresponsible behavior. We all need the carrot and the stick. The Soviets found that giving a worker a "Hero of the Soviet Union" medal was no substitute for monetary rewards.

    There is a question in my mind re inherited wealth. On the one hand, passing an inheritance (a business,farm, nestegg) on to one'e kids is a nice idea. On the other hand, we have a whole army of rich who did nothing to create the wealth who are nuisances (Kennedy clan for example) and seem to contribute nothing commensurate with their income.

  • eddie

    Toyota could make a car that performed as well as that one and was just as visually striking and attractive. They could sell it for the price of a Camry. But if they did, no one would ever write about "admiring its beauty" because at that price it could not function as a status symbol.

    You've been deceived into admiring a price tag in the shape of a car.

  • Chris

    I thought you were going in a different direction: many of the things we, the 99%, consume today are available to us because the rich bought them when they were new.
    The PC, now as common as the TV, first appeared in the households of the rich.
    The in-dash navigational system was first available only in your luxury car.

    The 1% are the early adopters of so many goods that we now take for granted, and will continue to be the early adopters of goods the rest of us 99% will see sometime in the future. Without the early adopters, new technologies are not financially viable. God bless the early adopters, who no doubt are majority 1%'ers.

  • CMJDad

    Eddie, not in 1974 they couldn't.

  • me

    It's probably worth excluding the 5% of the 1% who derived substantial parts of their 1%-ness from managing to burrow their way into great ways to divert substantial amounts of taxes paid by the clueless 99% into their pockets, or resorted to more outright methods of theft. I'd wager that if there was more scrutinity and accountability in that area, today's slogans and outrage would be nonexistent.

  • caseyboy

    me, it sounds like you may be describing the Solyndra investors with ties to this White House? Then again, maybe you are describing Albert "Big Dog" Gore whose investment decisions have uncannily preceded favorable government policy or targeted stimulus funds. He almost scored mega-bucks with his carbon credit exchange.

  • Dan

    Oh yes, Caseyboy. Only liberals ever got rich through illicit means.

    By the way, the Countach is my favorite exotic car ever, and these are great photos. As a high school kid in the 1980s, I was once very surprised to see one of these parallel parked right along busy Clark Street in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. I think the spoiler only came up to my chin. I was amazed the owner would take a chance parking it where it could get dented.

  • MJ

    It’s probably worth excluding the 5% of the 1% who derived substantial parts of their 1%-ness from managing to burrow their way into great ways to divert substantial amounts of taxes paid by the clueless 99% into their pockets, or resorted to more outright methods of theft. I’d wager that if there was more scrutiny and accountability in that area, today’s slogans and outrage would be nonexistent.

    That's true, but it doesn't fit very well on a t-shirt or a placard. Thus, it will be roundly ignored. The folks behind the slogans and outrage are not interested in nuance.

  • me

    Thank you Dan for answering Caseyboy in exactly the manner that I would have :)

    My POV is that both the American left and right political organizations are for all practical purpose identical: they are organizations succeeding in establishing unlimited power for their clientele (if you're in the 50M net worth category, both will help you gladly) and eroding the rights and security of anyone in the < 1M bucket. They succeed wildly, and most of the American populace believes that given that there are two parties, one of them must be for them while the other is against. I am sure some folks are having a good chuckle at that successful deception at a Whistler fireplace every once in a while.

    Note that I don't care if someone is left of right. These are pretty much meaningless labels hereabouts.

    The point I was trying to make was that the 1% would do well to impress upon their political cronies that the 99% have become sufficiently discontent at the very obvious power imbalance and hypocritical behavior of a subset of the 1% that it might actually be in everybody's best interest to reign that small subset of the 1% in, throw a few to the wolves and let the .95% deserved 1% continue enjoying the fruits of their labor rather than risk a few decades of a bloody civil war.

  • Smock Puppet, Piloting The Economic Seas Betwixt Scilla and Charybdis

    >>> The PC, now as common as the TV, first appeared in the households of the rich.

    Not really. The first adopters of this were hackers. Rich people had no reason to want a box that cost US$1000 and could control model trains REAL well...

    You have to realize, in 1978, 8k of RAM cost $500. Yes, "k". Yes. "$500". US $. With gold at WAY less than $100 an ounce.

    You certainly had to be reasonably well off, but, no, you weren't among the rich. The rich wouldn't have the patience to deal with an 8k computer that you had to store programs onto a cassette tape (notoriously unreliable) and use a TV with a 24x40, or 16x63, screen to use... or, even worse, an old, used teletype.

  • Smock Puppet, Piloting The Economic Seas Betwixt Scilla and Charybdis

    >> Oh yes, Caseyboy. Only liberals ever got rich through illicit means.

    No, but the difference is, the right actually feels guilty when caught. The left just waffles, since it all depends on what "no" means, right?

    >> My POV is that both the American left and right political organizations are for all practical purpose identical...

    Yeah, this might be accurate, but there is a distinction -- the Right does it at a much slower pace. The Left does it as quickly as they are allowed to.

    >>> a few decades of a bloody civil war.

    Yeah, like the whiners and complainers of OWS are going to be able to function in a war.
    1) Where are they going to get the guns?
    2) Those bastards are the same ones whining about the deaths in Iraq, a count where an entire WAR cost fewer lives than a typical large-scale BATTLE in any major war since the US Civil War. Ah-huh. They're going to have someone shoot at them, realize they just got shot at, and run like the whiny-ass chicken-sh** F**Ks they are. "Sorry, war's over!" I give them two weeks to surrender unconditionally.

  • Noumenon

    Although it was the 99% who provided the market for Grand Theft Auto, which allowed people to actually drive this thing at the speed it appears capable of. You can also see how awesome the car looks while you're driving it, unlike the real version where all you can see is the steering wheel and the hood.

  • richard

    Warren,

    Hold on: A car? Really?

    You've got kids? Make a picture of them and put it next to the car. Which one do you want to spend your money on?

    And -more seriously- if the government was to give you some money, do you want that to be for the car or for your kids?

  • damaged justice

    I am the 0.0000000002%.

    And so are you.

  • el coronado

    Y'know, being male, I *want* to like the Countach, but....even if you make your eyes all squinchy, it still just looks like a Pantera on steroids. Like a roided-out bodybuilder freak standing next to a (male) gymnast, say. And Panteras, God bless 'em, are now around 40 years old. (!) Anyway, take a close look at the interior shot. Just like Ferrari, there's jack squat leg room, and the brake/clutch/gas pedal are so close to each other, a man with a normal size foot - say, 14EEEE - it'll just lead to trouble. Having to drive barefoot really screws up the rich guy/pro athlete/gigolo vibe the Countach shoots for, I think. Even if you're wearing a $900 blazer and an ascot, driving barefoot still screams "hillbilly". Women pick up on that stuff.

    Worse, the babe magnet aspect of Italian cars is somewhat overrated. I once had a pompous, squat little jerkwad boss, who hoped to solve his lady problems by buying a Ferrari. (And a Ferrari watch, jacket, special solid-gold logo keychain, driving gloves [*sigh*]....) Much to his distress, it didn't work, except on crack ho's. Now, nice *boats*.....babes flock to boats, & they *start off* scantily-dressed; with inhibitions lessening exponentially the farther you get from shore, and the champagne/recreational drug of choice intake does their magic.

    Moral of the story: If you're gonna spend big bucks on transportation, buy an Avalon - more leg room than Mercedes *and* 30 MPG - and a boat. (Not a canoe, ok? Nobody likes a cheap SOB.) The kids can buy their own damn wheels.

  • Dan

    Only the right feels guilty when caught? Talk about a sweeping generalization. Do you actually think you can back this up?

  • coyote little sis

    Cars and high price tags, maybe.
    The real head scratchers are the fluff purchases like this treasure...
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005MR3IVO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=weknowawesome-20
    I am not buying it but how you can you not admire, as a thing of beauty, a 55 gallon vat of lube? Really for the man who has everything and room enough to store it too.

  • me

    Woah - second time this monring, coyote... where do you *find* these things? It's a big funny internet out there...

  • Judge Fredd

    Coyote lil sis: I have one thing to say.

    o_0

  • me

    @SP

    I don't even see a difference between the left and right on that front, but maybe that's just me being cynical.

    What I can point out is that several of the most vocal (and most together and rational) critics of what's going on in the states right now I've ever met were veterans. They've had quite a bit of training, time to see the world at its nasties, have been sworn to defend the constitution and come back to the shenanigans we have back here. And some of them are mightily pissed off.

  • Nick

    eddie, Toyota makes the Lexus LF-A, which is also in the "Supercar" genre (and quite nice). However, I assure you it costs much, much more than a Camry.

  • IGotBupkis, Unicorn Fart Entrepreneur

    >>>You’ve got kids? Make a picture of them and put it next to the car. Which one do you want to spend your money on?

    I'm sure Warren is speaking of a "fair" world where we were all rich as Croesus and nothing was denied us for financial reasons.

    You know, the universe of the OWPs and Star Trek.

  • IGotBupkis, Unicorn Fart Entrepreneur

    >>> Only the right feels guilty when caught? Talk about a sweeping generalization. Do you actually think you can back this up?

    That there are exceptions does not disprove the rule. Clinton and his "It depends on what you mean by 'no'" BS is a prime example. The man felt not the least bit of shame, he only regretted getting caught.

    THE POLITICAL LEFT AND THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF NARCISSISM - Part I
    -- Dr. Sanity --
    Also parts 2 & 3
    She's retired from blogging for the time being, but she's got her MD in Psychiatry and she was the mission psychologist on the Challenger mission. So I think she can make a case for her imputations.

    This is also of substantial relevance, as it explains the love affair between the Left and Islam:
    SHAME, THE ARAB PSYCHE, AND ISLAM
    If you read it carefully, there is a remarkable similarity between the behavior of The Left in all too many cases and the behavior of both Islam and "Shame Cultures" -- Their efforts to suppress shameful incidents by ignoring them and looking the other way in general, and so forth... as though not acknowledging them makes them "untrue".

    etc.

  • Exotic Owner

    Lamborghini: doors go up, panties come down.

  • tehag

    I, too, am glad the 1% tax everyone to subsidize ballet, and orchestras, performance art, and other artistic endeavors that the 99% see no value in. What would the world be like if the 1% had to pay for these items on their own? That's why they're the 1%--they take other people's money to fund arts the other people don't want to see. Ah, freedom.