I would have never considered that!  

You want to keep that shit.

 

Matt is this your entry for the 2014 SPOTY?

You feel even more strongly about the subject. Conversely, poor people love to blame the rich for all of their problems, and are more likely to support 'wealth redistribution" So who are really the greedy ones, the people who want to keep what they have earned, or the people who want to share in wealth they had no part in earning?

and I agree with Vern, looks like a SPOTY entry to me, but with WhiteTrash having entered the contest, it's a race for second place, no one else is even close.

I think of a child with 2 teddy bears, that won't share with a friend and says "mine" and has them both held tight.  But on a deeper level, I think greed is caused by an insecurity and feeling of lack.

I saw a movie once, Wall Street Money Never Sleeps.  Michael Douglas says Greed is good.  When asked what was his magic number that he would feel satisfied, he winks and says "More".  I think he loved the game.

The more wealth one has directly affects(lowers) their level of empathy for others. And when the unemployed are constantly being painted as lazy and shiftless along with a VERY marginal percentage who quantifiably ARE it further perpetuates "class warfare".

  The unemployment rate is more like 20% than 7%. And for the over 45 sector it's like 25-30% But those employed and watching their alphabet network news see only the buffered statistics given by the government. And guess how an over 50, longtime unemployed person is supposed to get a job? They're supposed to go back to school on an expensive "Grant" putting them into, or sizably increasing their debt and indentured servitude to the banks. And the banks just keep telling the government and media to stir the dissent and widen gap between the classes even further.

   Talk to near any micro/small business owner over 40 and they'll tell you that in todays job market they would be unemployable if their business closed tomorrow.  So what become all the former micro-business owners or their employees whose business/job DID close?  
 

it is especially not fair when you know they can pull up too!  I think you are one of those people that you could throw in a pile of dog shit and you would climb back out and up again.  I get that, I am one of those.  Some people are never going to take any chances in life, or totally miss every opportunity sent their way.  But I think most people could not just sit around their house and do nothing.  Could you?  I know a truly disabled man, all his dreams are crushed, he is clinically depressed.  Somebody that didn't know him, might call his sucking off the government.  When actually he tore his body up working his ass off for years.

In other words, how fast does a person's political views change when they've gone from being wealthy to poor. Of course, that may be difficult given all those who jumped out windows at the beginning of the great depression. But seriously, I think it would be interesting. In no way do I believe it would be any different.

every time I have hit rock bottom, i have always believed I would make it back again, and believed that if through hard work and struggle that I were to end up back on top again that I would want to reap the benefits of my hard work, without having to give most of it to the stupid and the lazy. OTOH, how many lottery winners think that they will go broke and want to be sure that society extended them a safety net if due to their own stupidity they lost it all?

Actually my political views didn't change when I got "rich" they changed a couple of years after I started taking responsibility for my own actions, and started earning my own keep, and realized that "checking out" and blaming "The Man" was a cheap cop out. I guess I was about 17-18 when my views started changing. I would still consider myself a lib until about 1979, after watching Jimmy Carter make a complete mess of things

Not empirical evidence. Though, you may be right. I would still like to see if there's a study that measures peoples change in political allegiances and philosophy when they lose a fortune. I do suspect that it would change less that the other way around, but like you pointed out, a factor to measure would be if each person believed they could regain their wealth. To me the interesting part was not about who changed their views, but how rapidly they changed their belief systems, and the rationalizations that they used. I just think it's human nature to do so, so there is no reason to accept the arguments from the more or less fortunate at face value, but to learn from history and good research, what would be the best approaches to dealing with our problems, as a nation.