Page 1 of 7 [ 106 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ... 7  Next

JNathanK
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 Oct 2010
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,177

18 Sep 2012, 12:22 pm

There's those people who think the world owes them something. ...that the earths resources, human labor pool, the rivers, all the land, all the forests, all the oceans, and even the contents of mountains belong to them and that they have the right to use all of this however they want to advance their selves. I'm of course talking about the extremely rich.



Hopper
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,920
Location: The outskirts

18 Sep 2012, 12:37 pm

Yup.

Our dear Prime Minister, David Cameron, is a millionaire. He had a son who sadly died a few years back. The boy was ill, and disabled. So Mr Cameron claimed Disability Living Allowance, a non-means tested benefit for the disabled (hence millionaires can claim if they fit the criteria), to help with extra costs they may face in life. At most this would pay about £150 per week.

Mr Cameron gets into government, and does away with DLA.

And he says those who are angry about this and other government cuts - by and large, the poorest in society - have a 'sense of entitlement'.

I really don't like him.



Tim_Tex
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 Jul 2004
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 45,472
Location: Houston, Texas

18 Sep 2012, 12:43 pm

Here in the U.S., there are certain ethnic groups who feel they are "entitled" to certain things.


_________________
Who’s better at math than a robot? They’re made of math!

Now proficient in ChatGPT!


Hopper
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 22 Aug 2012
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,920
Location: The outskirts

18 Sep 2012, 12:57 pm

That'd be the wealthy white folk.

Oscar Wilde wrote:
The virtues of the poor may be readily admitted, and are much to be regretted. We are often told that the poor are grateful for charity. Some of them are, no doubt, but the best amongst the poor are never grateful. They are ungrateful, discontented, disobedient, and rebellious. They are quite right to be so. Charity they feel to be a ridiculously inadequate mode of partial restitution, or a sentimental dole, usually accompanied by some impertinent attempt on the part of the sentimentalist to tyrannise over their private lives. Why should they be grateful for the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table? They should be seated at the board, and are beginning to know it. As for being discontented, a man who would not be discontented with such surroundings and such a low mode of life would be a perfect brute. Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man’s original virtue. It is through disobedience that progress has been made, through disobedience and through rebellion.

Sometimes the poor are praised for being thrifty. But to recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less. For a town or country labourer to practise thrift would be absolutely immoral. Man should not be ready to show that he can live like a badly-fed animal. He should decline to live like that, and should either steal or go on the rates, which is considered by many to be a form of stealing. As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg. No: a poor man who is ungrateful, unthrifty, discontented, and rebellious, is probably a real personality, and has much in him. He is at any rate a healthy protest. As for the virtuous poor, one can pity them, of course, but one cannot possibly admire them. They have made private terms with the enemy, and sold their birthright for very bad pottage. They must also be extraordinarily stupid. I can quite understand a man accepting laws that protect private property, and admit of its accumulation, as long as he himself is able under those conditions to realise some form of beautiful and intellectual life. But it is almost incredible to me how a man whose life is marred and made hideous by such laws can possibly acquiesce in their continuance.


Damn right.



Sweetleaf
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Jan 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Female
Posts: 34,439
Location: Somewhere in Colorado

18 Sep 2012, 1:39 pm

I guess eventually they will learn the hard way that the world doesn't owe them crap.


_________________
We won't go back.


thewhitrbbit
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 30 May 2012
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,124

18 Sep 2012, 1:43 pm

I see entitlement in two groups. The rich and the poor.

The middle class, not so much.



Pileo
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Age: 34
Gender: Male
Posts: 523

18 Sep 2012, 3:58 pm

I find entitlement has nothing to do with class, nor does it have anything with what your skin color. It has more to do with personality and character. I know poor who feel entitled, I know poor people who don't. I know middle class folks who feel entitled and those who don't. I've met (don't hang around much rich folk, but I'm related to a few) rich people who feel entitled and I've met those who don't. I know black people who feel entitled and know some that don't. I know hispanic people who feel entitled and I know those who don't.

Those who feel entitled are loud and obnoxious. They want the world to know how much they "deserve" things. It creates an illusion of the group appearing larger than what it really is. It's the same with extremists.

Quote:
Mr Cameron gets into government, and does away with DLA.


Some people just want to watch the world burn. A lot of Republican (if you can even call that that. It's an insult to the Republicans of the past) politicians do the same things. They spout messages like how evil welfare is, but then the only way to keep their businesses afloat is to give them welfare!



ruveyn
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 21 Sep 2008
Age: 87
Gender: Male
Posts: 31,502
Location: New Jersey

18 Sep 2012, 5:09 pm

JNathanK wrote:
There's those people who think the world owes them something. ...that the earths resources, human labor pool, the rivers, all the land, all the forests, all the oceans, and even the contents of mountains belong to them and that they have the right to use all of this however they want to advance their selves. I'm of course talking about the extremely rich.


The bounty of nature belongs to those who have the will and the means to partake thereof. The alternative would be this: in order to pick one apple from a wild apple tree, one would have to ask the permission of every human on earth. That is clearly not feasible, so the apple go to the one who can reach it.

ruveyn



SpiritBlooms
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Nov 2009
Age: 67
Gender: Female
Posts: 1,024

18 Sep 2012, 5:13 pm

JNathanK wrote:
There's those people who think the world owes them something. ...that the earths resources, human labor pool, the rivers, all the land, all the forests, all the oceans, and even the contents of mountains belong to them and that they have the right to use all of this however they want to advance their selves. I'm of course talking about the extremely rich.

Exactly. Well said.



nominalist
Supporting Member
Supporting Member

User avatar

Joined: 28 Jun 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,740
Location: Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas (born in NYC)

18 Sep 2012, 5:40 pm

JNathanK wrote:
There's those people who think the world owes them something. ...that the earths resources, human labor pool, the rivers, all the land, all the forests, all the oceans, and even the contents of mountains belong to them and that they have the right to use all of this however they want to advance their selves. I'm of course talking about the extremely rich.


Workers are owed the fruit of their labor. That "fruit" is stolen by capitalists.


_________________
Mark A. Foster, Ph.D. (retired tenured sociology professor)
36 domains/24 books: http://www.markfoster.net
Emancipated Autism: http://www.neurelitism.com
Institute for Dialectical metaRealism: http://dmr.institute


thomas81
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 May 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: County Down, Northern Ireland

18 Sep 2012, 5:47 pm

Entitlement laid bare its full grotesque glory.

@ the whitrabbit, the second platform from bottom, there is your middle class, the ones who 'have no entitlement'. If anything they just have front row seats to the exploitation.

Image



thomas81
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 May 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: County Down, Northern Ireland

18 Sep 2012, 5:56 pm

ruveyn wrote:
JNathanK wrote:
There's those people who think the world owes them something. ...that the earths resources, human labor pool, the rivers, all the land, all the forests, all the oceans, and even the contents of mountains belong to them and that they have the right to use all of this however they want to advance their selves. I'm of course talking about the extremely rich.


The bounty of nature belongs to those who have the will and the means to partake thereof. The alternative would be this: in order to pick one apple from a wild apple tree, one would have to ask the permission of every human on earth. That is clearly not feasible, so the apple go to the one who can reach it.

ruveyn


Collectively speaking, the dispossesed have the means to take it from the elite of your heirarchy of 'means to partake' so it is a circular argument. Moreover its a flawed analogy in the first instance because there is nothing natural about this heirarchy, it a flimsy system based on human created constructs that have little or no commonality with the rest of the animal kingdom or even many human societies.

The bounty of nature belongs to no given individual. The bounty of nature as you put it, just is.



thomas81
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 2 May 2012
Age: 42
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,147
Location: County Down, Northern Ireland

18 Sep 2012, 5:59 pm

Hopper wrote:
Yup.

Our dear Prime Minister, David Cameron, is a millionaire. He had a son who sadly died a few years back. The boy was ill, and disabled. So Mr Cameron claimed Disability Living Allowance, a non-means tested benefit for the disabled (hence millionaires can claim if they fit the criteria), to help with extra costs they may face in life. At most this would pay about £150 per week.

Mr Cameron gets into government, and does away with DLA.

And he says those who are angry about this and other government cuts - by and large, the poorest in society - have a 'sense of entitlement'.

I really don't like him.


Hear hear.

I never thought I'd say this. but I wish Labour was in charge again. Thats after they abolished free university education and lumbered me with a five figure debt.



AceOfSpades
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 11 Feb 2006
Gender: Male
Posts: 3,754
Location: Sean Penn, Cambodia

18 Sep 2012, 6:01 pm

Pileo wrote:
I find entitlement has nothing to do with class, nor does it have anything with what your skin color. It has more to do with personality and character. I know poor who feel entitled, I know poor people who don't. I know middle class folks who feel entitled and those who don't. I've met (don't hang around much rich folk, but I'm related to a few) rich people who feel entitled and I've met those who don't. I know black people who feel entitled and know some that don't. I know hispanic people who feel entitled and I know those who don't.

Those who feel entitled are loud and obnoxious. They want the world to know how much they "deserve" things. It creates an illusion of the group appearing larger than what it really is. It's the same with extremists.
:wtg:



18 Sep 2012, 6:02 pm

ruveyn wrote:
JNathanK wrote:
There's those people who think the world owes them something. ...that the earths resources, human labor pool, the rivers, all the land, all the forests, all the oceans, and even the contents of mountains belong to them and that they have the right to use all of this however they want to advance their selves. I'm of course talking about the extremely rich.


The bounty of nature belongs to those who have the will and the means to partake thereof. The alternative would be this: in order to pick one apple from a wild apple tree, one would have to ask the permission of every human on earth. That is clearly not feasible, so the apple go to the one who can reach it.

ruveyn




Translation: Might makes right.


In that case why do we need laws? And why is it when a stronger person takes from a weaker person it is the stronger one who is presumed to have a 'sense of entitlement'.....



marshall
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 14 Apr 2007
Gender: Male
Posts: 10,752
Location: Turkey

18 Sep 2012, 6:23 pm

thewhitrbbit wrote:
I see entitlement in two groups. The rich and the poor.

The middle class, not so much.


It appears the American middle class is quite entitled. They think they are entitled to live inefficiently, living in McMansions and driving gas guzzling behemoth vehicles, until the end of time. Don't seem to realize that if everyone on earth lived the way they did there simply would not be enough energy. It's simply not going to last forever