Someone help me understand the thought process of the 1%

[Txbluedog]

Them being the 1% means there is a 99%. They want to gut the social safety and want people working for peanuts. I understand that, they run massive corporations and want cheap labor. However, do they understand that if people have no disposable income they are not going to be in a position to buy all of the goods and services that their massive corporations produce? This in turn will mean that they cannot sell the product that they paid to have produced and they will incur massive losses and eventually join the 99%. I am being totally naive in think that this is basic economics?

[SHRED]

1. They want austerity come hell or high water

They want to privatize.
Big profits to be made stealing our tax dollars.

[Turbineguy]

2. What's wrong with you?

You got something against living in a republican paradise?

[BlueCaliDem]

3. They know what most Americans don't: trickle-down economics will destroy the American economy

but put billions in their coffers. By the time the economy collapses under Republicans' watch, and they've taken as much as they can take, they'll support another Democrat in the White House and Democrats in Congress to clean up the catastrophe...and the vicious cycle continues as we're played as pawns on their giant chessboard.

It's all about getting theirs now until there's nothing left to get, then turn power over to Dems for a couple of years to institute laws to fix their gaping holes, and then push for Republicans to win elections again and take back power. Didn't notice that during 2009-2010?

[sarcasmo]

4. Greed is a disease and greed is all the one percent know.

[VMA131Marine]

5. You're not really talking about the top 1%

That group includes paupers making under $1M per year. You're really talking about the top 0.001%. And most of them don't run companies that make anything. Trump's real estate ventures are targeted at the super wealthy so he doesn't care if the masses can't afford his condos, hotels, and golf courses.

[Girard442]

9. Quite right about that.

The very rich do want more money, but what they want far more than that is to maintain their position on the top of the heap. A vibrant, burgeoning, confident middle class is a threat to their world order. They want the whole world to look like Haiti: an handful of elites in a decadent opulent existence ruling over a populace crushed into submission by grinding poverty.

[world wide wally]

6. Americans are geocentric about this concept.

The big corps don't care if Americans can afford to buy their products when there are 2 billion plus Chinese that will. All they want from us is cheap labor.

[KittyWampus]

8. Oligarchs exist world wide. They don't see themselves as belonging to any nation-state.

[KittyWampus]

7. They have a spiritual void inside themselves they try to fill with material things.

It doesn't work. And the more it doesn't work, the emptier they feel and the more physical stuff they try to cram into that metaphysical void that can only be filled with empathy and introspection and connectedness.

[Yavin4]

10. Their goal is to extract wealth from you to the point that you are indebted to them for life.

They want you on your knees and in debt to them so that you will be compliant. Social spending gets in their way. They see it as theft from them and re-distributed to you.

In the end, what they really want is for you to pay them for the privilege of working for them.

[unblock]

11. there are suckers in other countries to get profits from.

plus, poor people don't by airplanes, so what does the ceo of a company like boeing care?
also, anyone with a job needs gas no matter what, so what does the ceo of a company like exxonmobil care?

the walton family might care, but all things considered they don't see the logic in taking more money from *them* just so poor people can shop at wal-mart and give it right back to them. they'd rather just keep the money in the first place.


the companies that benefit the most from aid to poor people are smaller businesses, not the billionaires.

[moondust]

12. Henry Ford knew that.

He knew he'd have to pay his employees enough so that they could buy the cars they were making. I mean, who else was going to buy them if they couldn't? But back then most all his customers were in the U.S. The market was limited by geography and shipping costs.

Globalization changed all that. Today shareholders demand that the bosses maximize profits to boost the stock price even if that means shutting down the factory and moving it to China where there are billions of hungry people who need jobs. The bosses may figure they'll find a market someplace on the planet as long as shipping doesn't cost too much.

[brush]

13. You'd think they'd get the simple concept of "disposable income" and follow Henry Ford's, ...

(I know, not a good man), but a good business man.

He knew to pay his workers well so they could buy his cars. Many one percenters seem to have missed that lesson in economics, what with the off-shoring of jobs, resistance to even raising the minimum wage, or following the Walmart model of underpaying but encouraging it's workers to apply for food stamps (in other words, the government subsidizes its business model so money that should go towards paying a living wage to workers instead goes into Walton pockets).

Whatever it is with these people, none of those methods lead to a sustainable, thriving economy. The well will eventually run dry, and we're seeing that, which is also being exacerbated by the foolishness of trickle-down economics which has never worked and never will work because one percenters aren't trickling anything down but crumbs and never will when they can buy another yacht or house or Ferrari. Brownback's Kansas, a literal trickle-down laboratory that has failed myserably, should be the end of that theory, yet we still see repugs pushing it because it is nothing but a scam that they hope lasts long enough so that they and their clients can get theirs.

IMO, global corporate owners are so greed-driven that America's economy isn't foremost in their minds anymore. India and China have much bigger middle class than the US, with more and more disposable income who will buy their products so we don't matter that much anymore. Or so they think.

[TransitJohn]

14. Have some sympathy!

You can't possibly expect Biff and Buffy to launch a last model year yacht at the regatta. They need a new one every year, or they'll be scandalized! Can't you feel for them???