re: #405 Gus

True. But there was a certain civic pride in the old industrialist types. Those old magnates loved their industry and the products that came from those factories. They weren’t pure moneyed people. Many of them were inventors and creators of new patents. Some were almost scientists. Now we have the pure money people that have little knowledge of the industries they operate. Nor do they care about the communities they’re based in other than the usual stereotypical charities they contribute to which amounts to a cop-out for their overall unjust way of operating.

The original titans of industry were actually, you know, titans of industry. They actually did things. They made things, and then made better ways of making those things, until they climbed to the top.

None of the 1% are those people anymore. They’re gone, if not dead and gone. In their places now are their descendants, who never had to work a day in their lives.

Keep in mind, once you have a million dollars in the bank, your days of having to legitimately work for a living are over. Invested at a moderate ROI of 5% annually, a million will produce $50,000 per year of income. That’s already more than the average American income. It just goes up from there; 2 million banked/invested gives you a six-figure income which puts you even further up the ladder.

If the US government defines ‘wealthy’, for purposes of policy, to be an annual income of $250,000 or more, than all it takes is 5 million invested at 5% to meet the criteria for ‘wealthy’ on your interest income alone, without doing any work whatsoever.

Then keep in mind that most big-type moguls are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions.