Fuck Those Guys

From karoli at C&L: http://crooksandliars.com/karoli/pity-millionaires-wall-streeters-cry-over-b.

Oh, and then there's this poor guy:

Wall Street headhunter Daniel Arbeeny said his “income has gone down tremendously.” On a recent Sunday, he drove to Fairway Market in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn to buy discounted salmon for $5.99 a pound.

I'll bet that cut-rate salmon tastes just as good as the stuff that cost $20 per pound, even without the pedigree.

Executive-search veterans who work with hedge funds and banks make about $500,000 in good years, said Arbeeny, managing principal at New York-based CMF Partners LLC, declining to discuss specifics about his own income. He said he no longer goes on annual ski trips to Whistler (WB), Tahoe or Aspen.

He reads other supermarket circulars to find good prices for his favorite cereal, Wheat Chex.

Day-um. No ski trips? Coupons for Wheat Chex? Someone please, please spare me this. Say it must not be so! Alas, it must.

Here's what I want to tell these guys who are bemoaning the stalled gravy train. For years they made great money, far more than they deserved for doing less than they should have. Unlike the majority in this country who are lucky enough to have a job at all, they made enough to actually save for a rainy day. Why should we pity them if they didn't? After all, they're the financial gurus, the guys in the big office building telling other people how to manage their money, and yet it seems they didn't take their own advice.

So excuse me if I don't shed a tear for their dilemma. Perhaps they'll begin to understand what it feels like to have to cut back until there's nothing left to cut back on in order to make the mortgage payment. While these guys whine about not taking the high-end vacations, other families are struggling to feed their families at all. They'll survive, even if it means selling their expensive cars and taking the train to work. They might even find out they like it. I'm far more worried about the 99 percent than I am these guys.

Seriously. What kind of a narcissistic piece of shit do you have to be to bemoan the fact that you can't afford to go to Whistler and that you have to go to the other market to buy your fancy fucking fish? Assholes

Rich dude speaks sense

This guy is not talking like a Galtian asshole: Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators.

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN)

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

Great googly-moogly! It's as if the Randian poison is not the ultra-contagious virus we thought it might be!

Rich assholes save more than you and I make

From ThinkProgress: The Average Bush Tax Cut For The 1 Percent This Year Will Be Greater Than The Average Income Of The Other 99 Percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

Looks like I'm in the bottom half of the 99%. NOt surprising, because I'm still quite young. Hopefully the 1% will keep taking a disproportionate share of US income, and you and I can get poorer together and then everything will be fine.

Some are oblivious to reality

If you actually can't see the correlation between what Occupy Wall Street is doing and the easily identifiable inequalities inherent in our system pictured above, I officially abandon hope for you. Cripes, its not that hard to stay informed. Look at a graph