Rich Is The New Gay

It’s ok to hate them for who they are. It’s ok to vandalize their property, taunt them, seize their assets, deny them government benefits, make them register and buy a license to practice their alternative lifestyle.

You can hound them at their workplace, you can bully them in schools, you can picket their homes, you can send them death threats with impunity, and you can occupy public buildings for months on end chanting bad things about them.

Rich is the new gay.

It is no longer permissible in our civil society to hate based on skin color, gender, ethnicity, religion, disability, or sexual preference. But wealth – that’s a free-fire zone. Wealth is evil. Capitalism is sodomy. Free enterprise is lewd and lascivious conduct. Wall Street is the new Castro Street, only it’s ok to light it on fire. Even Tiffany Newt feels free to tee off on Mitt Romney for being (gasp) too rich – think Ellen reefing on Elton John to win George Michael’s vote.

You can say the most hateful things imaginable about rich people - even the President does it, cheered on by a wealth-o-phobic media. Imagine how the fur would fly if a President blamed all his failures on homosexuals, or if he expressed support for violent mobs rioting in the streets if it were the 3.6% instead of the 1% whose heads are demanded on a pole.

The left/right paradigms for wealth and sexual preference are pretty much the same: liberals insist that material preference is assigned at birth; conservatives believe it is a choice. Closet richos like Michael Moore or the Obamas possess the same self-loathing false piety as Ted Haggert or Larry Craig. Their response to being outed is loud, angry denial; wide stance or baseball cap, the disguise doesn’t fool anyone.

The rich even have their transgendered equivalents – trans-wealthered, I suppose - who have crossed over from the poor side to the rich side. I don’t think the abuse hurled against Herman Cain was because he was black; it was because he is black and refused to stay poor. To the haters, that is one sick puppy. Tim Tebow is even worse – openly rich, openly humble, and openly Christian. Unforgivable.

I can’t explain the liberals’ reflexive hatred of wealthy people. Perhaps they are guilty about the way their own leaders have enriched themselves – Obama, Corzine, Soros, Pelosi, Kennedy, Gore, Trumka, Jackson, Hillary the pork belly whisperer. If all you know is swindling and influence peddling, then maybe that’s all you can imagine.

Whenever I say something nice about rich people in a column, I can count on a deluge of angry comments and personal attacks. The number of things haters guess wrong about me reveals a prejudice so deep-seated that it can’t be tempered by reason. The last acceptable negative stereotype is the rich white guy – presumptively unethical, presumptively privileged, presumptively unaccomplished and undeserving.

People who hate rich people don’t like it when I credit rich businesspeople for improving our living standards. They say that the only reason that rich people ever improve products, workplace rules, and the environment is because unions or government force them. Rich people are inherently evil and greedy and left to their own devices would poison us and starve us to death – they can’t help themselves.

But let’s think about that. The government only forces them to pay their workers a wage of $7.25 per hour, and yet private employers pay a median wage of $21.10 per hour. Why? Who makes them do that? Not unions - only 7% of private sector employees choose to be represented by unions. How is it possible that rich people would voluntarily pay poorer people triple what the law requires? Hmmm.

And government does not force any employer to provide benefits, either; yet the average private sector employee receives $17,000 worth from his evil rich employer. Health insurance, holidays, and how about vacation days - nobody forces rich people to pay you to take time off with your family, but they do. How un-greedy is that?

Want more? Tuition reimbursement, retirement savings matches, private loans, contributions to charities, service on community boards, partnering with schools and government agencies, funding recreation, the arts, museums – show me the law that was passed by the progressives that makes rich people do any of that.

Or tell me what union went out on strike until the employer agreed to build a soccer field for inner city kids or fund scholarships for girls in non-traditional careers? Which one traded a wage increase for increased funding of Boys and Girls clubs or Junior Achievement? That’s what owners do all the time, into the billions.

Some employers’ subsidized cafeterias are the only decent meals their employees will eat during the week. Nobody made them do that; and they want to starve the poor, remember? Poison their water, take away their health care, shut down schools for their kids, hate women – stuff like that. Not offer free mammograms.

Do you think that executives must sit on civic boards under some court-ordered community service sentence? Is it like the Huber law – we get a pass to get out of work to do it? Why would rich people give so much of their time and money to the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged if they really hated them as much as liberals say we do?

Most of the rich people I know used to be a lot poorer than most of the people I know calling them names. Now that I think about it, most people I know calling them names have never been poor a day in their life – not really poor, not like the poverty I have seen.

The average American worker earns 29 times as much as the average worker in the world’s bottom quintile – that is a lot bigger guilt-gap than between our worker and his CEO. What does that prove – that the American workers are even more greedy and selfish than the dreaded CEO? No, it proves we are very productive top to bottom in the working class, and yes, business owners work their tails off.

Rich is the new gay, so go ahead and hate if you must. But remember this: gay people can’t make you gay, but rich people can make you rich. That is, if you quit screaming at them long enough to ask them how they did it. That is how most of us trans-wealthered people started our rise on the updraft.; we shut up and listened.

I bet you Romney’s $10,000 that any one of them would be glad to tell you if you asked nicely. Try it.

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D. Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment.

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Comment by Elizabeth Shea on January 28, 2012 at 7:59pm: A very fine article, Tim!

I used to laugh at Ted Kennedy when speaking on TV -- how he would say loudly and with great enthusiasm, "We have to raise taxes on the rich!"

The Kennedy family keeps their family fortune in a bank in the Fiji Islands, and Ted probably paid very little in U.S. taxes in his lifetime.

Comment by Ronald Sorrells on January 27, 2012 at 5:22pm: I do not hate Romney but G0D Does. GOD Hates Arrogance & Pride and Romney and Obama are full of them!

This is a challenge to the PoWer of GOD.

Ron

Comment by Eileen Guthrie on January 27, 2012 at 12:30pm: Great article. I'd like to add, the liberal wealthy elites also hide their millions in off shore accounts, tax shelter, hedge funds (they pay less taxes) and anything else they can use to pay less in taxes; while they all scream the wealthy need to pay more in taxes. Just think if they paid their fair share in taxes, including their back taxes, maybe just maybe the economy will recover quicker. I've been doing a lot of research on the Elite Liberals and what or how they hide their own wealth. Michael "tub of lard" Moore is worth $200 million that money was earned from his crappy film. He made a large amount of investments, yet he condemns Wall Street and Capitalism. I’m sure his next project will be on the OWS crowd where he will proclaims these people are hero and what America is all about. The Liberals ll claim and whine about the Wall Street wealthy, but I don't see anyone doing profiles on the Clinton's (they launder money through the Clinton Library and the Clinton Charity Foundation (who knew the “Charity” was them?)... It was what I thought and got confirmations from two sources Business Week and Bloomberg Report websites)

What about John Corzine losing “other people’s” millions or billions? However, the OWS don’t seem to know where he lives. What a perplexing problem? Why aren’t they picketing him and screaming profanities at this liberal scumbag? I'm just getting started. What about the two faces of evil Nancy “Bella” Pelosi and her husband and children? It would take a book to uncover her double standard and her knowledge of insider trading deals she and her fellow liberal and moderate colleagues do. Her deception and lying have hit a new low, even for her. In addition, it's all legal for them to do. They make the laws for us but they are "exempt" themselves.

These people make me sick and they all need to be removed. My anger and disgust is with both Parties. If I ever had an opportunity to talk or ask the Republican candidates, a few question, you can bet I will ask the following questions. Stop allowing themselves from profiting from the knowledge they learned while on the job, no Office holder and/or members of their families should not be allowed to invest in a company or markets, not just in the US but worldwide. Would you support the Bill and sign it into law. Will you support a Bill and sign it into law that stops the use of insider trading through the political office? Would you support terms limits, since we have one for the President, shouldn’t there be something for the House and Senate as well? Real change will never come if we continue to reelect the same people who caused the problem to begin with.

Comment by hunter60 on January 27, 2012 at 4:51am: Awesome article! It is an excellent accounting of the poisoning of our society by leftist thought. Class envy, class hatred? The left feeds these negatives to achieve the goal of all leftists everywhere: the ultimate reduction of humankind to managed property and the right to dispose of humans as they see fit. The worlds past and present totalitarian regimes have the body count to prove it. Leftist ideology is the worlds largest mass murder cult.

Comment by Doug Nicholson on January 27, 2012 at 1:04am: "The last acceptable negative stereotype is the rich white guy." Unless, of course, the rich white guy is gay or liberal.

Comment by Doug Nicholson on January 27, 2012 at 1:03am: God, I wish I could write that well! You, sir, are awesome!

Comment by Jack Kemp on January 26, 2012 at 10:21pm: This is the most profound political-psychological article I've seen since reading chapters in Shelby Steele's book on White Guilt. Bravo.

Comment by Shavager on January 26, 2012 at 8:09pm: Progressives in both parties (RATS and the RINO's) are raping the wealthy and middle class to reward those who are not as successfull as part of "social justice". They think nothing of "SEIZING" income from some to reward the "less fortunate" or successful--right out of Karl Marx's communist handbook: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." It's straight out of the 1755 "Code of Nature" written by French COMMUNIST Morelly who spoke the real communist soul: "Nothing in society will belong to anyone, either as a personal possession or as capital goods, except the things for which the person has immediate use for, either his needs, his pleasures or his daily work." Those behind the curtain of socialism in America want to collapse American economy through collapse of our dollar thru DEBT, 50% increase in National DEBT in last 3 YEARS is a clear indicator of Owebumbler's agenda. George Soros has openly advocated for devaluing our dollar--he wants a ONE WORLD CURRENCY--the collapse of our dollar under the mounting DEBT being piled on will bring about his goal---paper dollars are NOT money--they are NOTES of CREDIT issued by Federal Reserve Board in exchange for the wealth and interest they have stripped out of American financial, banking system under their complete control.

Comment by Ronald Sorrells on January 26, 2012 at 6:04pm: John:

All I know about the economics that have prevailed by direction of Washington, D.C. and Corporate Board Rooms "Has collapsed the Value of THE DOLLAR BILL". NOW, WE CAN FIND A WAY "TO RETURN THE VALUE OF THE PAPER DOLLAR OR WE CAN CHANGE LANES TO ANOTHER FORM "OF OUR PROPERTY" BUT TO SAY THAT YOU HAVE LOST YOUR SAVINGS, RETIREMENT AND PROPERTY DUE TO A BUNCH OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL "SHISTERS" ....'WILL NOT LET THAT DOG HUNT IN ALABAMA" !

Ron

Comment by USARogue on January 26, 2012 at 5:07pm: This new "hate" is not about class-warfare, it's about class-envy.

I ask my "liberal" friends why they hate the rich so much. Their usual response, after boiling out all the classic indoctrinated talking points, is simply because they are rich. Even the "tax-the-rich" argument has nothing to do with raising the tax brackets. When it comes right down to it, the liberals are just plain angry that when the rich pay their taxes they STILL have more left over than the average person has. According to the liberal mind regardless how much you make, after taxes, we should all have the same amount of money left. This is the delusion that occupies the "Occupiers" and the liberal’s world.

A similar convolution occurs with the new "fairness" preoccupation. Just ask the liberal pundits what they mean when they say "it should be fair"? What is a "fair share"? What qualifies as a "level playing field"? They can't give a logical answer. Should a fair tax rate for wage earners over $200,000 be 40%? 50%? 75%? No clue. They just want it to be some mythical "fair" amount that will make them feel better. For liberals, it’s all about feelings. Then ask them who is the most honest, unbiased, benevolent, arbiter of what is "fair"? Obama? Me? You? Oprah? The Pope? Once again, no solution.

Liberals believe that the rich are just lucky, inherited their fortune, created it in some sinister fashion or happened to be sitting in the right place when millions of dollars just fell in their laps from the heavens. No one works for it. No one sacrifices anything like their time, effort or personal savings to make their dream business come true. They don't realize that 80% of millionaires are first generation.

We’ve all heard that 9 out of 10 new businesses fail. That is alarming, but when you look at the actual statistics it is much worse than that. Out of every 1000 new businesses, 40% fail within the first year, and 80% would fail within 5 years. Don’t celebrate yet because even if you have made it to 5 years, 80% of those businesses fail before they make it to 10 years. That leaves us with 4% of new businesses still around after 10 years. But of course the liberals don't comprehend that, they just see the end-product, a rich person.

I don't know about you, but when I and my friends were growing up we never dreamt of being middle-class or poor, I hope no one did. We all grow up dreaming we will be rich. You don't see many "Get Middle-Class Quick" books, but you sure do see many "Get Rich Quick" books.

You're right Tim when you say,

That is, if you quit screaming at them long enough to ask them how they did it.

The problem for liberals is they will have to go through the whole wealth creation endeavor. They would rather you, I or anyone else does it and then they can just demonize us and demand we give them our hard earned wealth. A “fair share” of it, of course.

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