Peter Thiel is a billionaire. He’s libertarian.
“It doesn’t apply to the OP”
If that argument is absurd, then so is the OP. If it’s not, then Austrian millionaires are also hypocrites.
I disagree.
Socialists are opposed to inequalities of wealth, they are not opposed to wealth per se (according to them).
If you eat food at the concentration camps and disapprove of your present situation, you’re a hypocrite!
Maybe not, but if you eat double portions and your rhetoric is that double portions should not be eaten…
Then millionaire leftists/socialists must be opposed to their own wealth, unless everyone is a millionaire like they are.
correct as far as it goes
But maybe some of them are actually opposed to the poor not being millionaires like they are. Those people probably have solutions like concentration camps, gulags, depopulation, etc. Equality by killing off the inferior. Those people would be the national socialists.
Help me out, are we still talking about Krugman, Stiglitz, and Moore?
Certainly: Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Doug Casey, Peter Schiff, and Ron Paul.
And perhaps: Burt Blumert (RIP) from his gold business; the guys with the gold pinkie rings at the Mises Circles; Jesus Huerta de Soto through his family business.
Eventually if not yet: Bob Murphy from consulting and books; Tom Woods from books and speaking.
Who else?
EDIT: After reading the other posts, I can’t believe I forgot about Peter Schiff.
Marx was a richie to. It’s kind of a fallacy to say “he is x, so his argument is wrong.” (can’t remember the name… appeal to ridicule?)
And it’s not even really about wealth inequalities per se, Nir. I won’t deny many socialists/communists (the latter more likely) who will say that. But any cursory glance at Marxist literature will show you “to each according to his contribution.” This was the first transitional stage, where there would be labor vouchers, etc and you would get back what you put in, without some greedy capitalist expropriating the excess value of your labor.
The problem Marxists have with capitalism is that the workers are treated as a commodity and not given the full value of their labor. So not only are workers only paid there exchange value (as opposed to utility value). But that excess value, and any profits made go to a capitlaist who lives off the fruit of another’s labor.
I have some obvious problems with this analysis, but, there it is.
It’s the same problem the secular left has always had… look at Al Gore preaching the Green Gospel while maintaining a massive carbon footprint (offset or otherwise). The Roman Catholics and other major religions figured this out a long, long time ago… you had better put on a convincing act that you practice what you preach. If you don’t, you won’t last long in the grand scheme of power politics. The next guy who preaches what you do but puts on a better act of actually practicing it will drive you out of the market into oblivion.
Clayton -
Did I call them hypocrites?
Did I call them greedy?
I know you mean well, but let’s not put words in each other’s mouths.
Krugman and Chomsky are proud believers of a concept called Class Warfare. They believe firstly that there is a thing such as class. As many of us know, a man could be hand-to-mouth a few years ago, quite rich now, and not nearly as rich tommorow. People keep shifting between top 20% to the mid 20% from an year-to-year basis. That Krugman and Chomsky know they are truly otherwise ordinary folks who are like the rest of us in many ways should have been reflected in their understanding that in practical terms, there is no such thing as a permanent rich or poor.
They secondly believe that the rich conspire against everyone else. Krugman recently made a slip of tongue in his New York Times article, when he wrote, “The rich are not like you and me.” Actually, the rich are like him, because Krugman is the rich, and is very much in the top-most earning 3 million Americans. Krugman added in the article that the rich want the poor to pay the price for everything and not them. He himself is a rich man, and doesn’t believe that. So why should he think that six-figure earners, who earn a fraction of what he earns, are supposedly anti-poor class warriors? Chomsky makes similar claims about a “class-conscious” elite in America that “sees itself at war with the working classes”, but how did he divine such ideas? He himself is among the rich, is he not.
I don’t think these people are dishonest or lying. I think they need to put it all in perspective. I am outraged in a certain way that they make a living where they get $100,000 speaking fees (Krugman’s minimum) condemning “rich” folks for not paying their fairer share, but I believe their intentions are pure. It’s just that you have to know where you stand before telling others where they stand.
And Mark Cuban.
Don’t forget the Koch brothers. They’re far richer than all of these people put together.
Actually he was quite poor for a large portion of his life. I think it was Engels that mostly subsidised him.
Marc Emery is rich.
Engels paid him 40x the average income during his writing years and 4x during his retirement.
I think they are. Because lying is why they are rich. They are just actors that write their own screenplay.
How do you know that?