HI Doug,
I sincerely hope that I do not cause you any offence. Clearly we see things somewhat differently. My ranting bores me sometimes!
Doug, I have been poor enough to once smoke tea leaves when the tobacco ran out! I have as many frivolous habits as the next man/woman. I do have compassion and awareness that others have less than I.
I am not really refering to how one man treats another. I like to think I have helped many people less fortunate over time.
I particulary have issues with a 'national' belief that it is the sole responsibility of the wealthy to cover the costs of the not so wealthy. It is a fundamentaly flawed concept to govern a country out of financial crisis by over-taxing the very people that make the economy work. Face it, if the industrialised world taxed as hard in the 18th century as it does in the 21st, no-one would ever have built the rail-roads across your great country and Stevenson would have stayed at home rather than pressing home the idea of building an engine.
You do have a tendency in your writing Doug, to group all successful people in the same 'don't give a sh*t' catagory. Or am I reading oyu wrongly. Bill Gates isn't the first or only sucessful man to give wealth away. And he's a greedy B*start anyway. If you only kenw how many times I have to pay that man for bloody licences to use the damn software I paid for you'd be horrified! Everytime I update my darn server, there goes another bloody fortune in end user licences to Bill Bloody Gates! What a giver!
Personally I gave up trying to build my company into an empire, when I reached a level that is enough for me. What does that make me? Clever, foolish, lazy, misguided? I don't know. All I do know, is that when more than 60% of what I work hard to earn is taken away at source and then I am taxed at 20% on everything I spend, I tend to get pretty p*ssed off being considered 'Lucky'! I am in negotiations to sell some land right now. Guess who gets 40% of that sale.... you guessed it, the bloody Government! Whatever I am left with when I cash in my chips will also be taxed agin under death duty and my offspring will cop for inheritance tax at 40% also.
I can feel people as I drive by thinking, "There goes the fat tw*t in his Aston Martin"! "Greedy bast*rd"!
I am not greedy. I am not un-caring nor callous. It is not however my duty to rectify the sh*t that successive liberal govermental ideas have gotten us all into.
I'll tell you a story. True. I recently moved house. My DB9 was away for service whilst I had a new garage built. So all we had to drive at the time was my girlfiends' V8 Vantage. Imagine my horror! Poor me!! Only one car on the drive!!! Even us "rich folk" have our crosses to bear you know
Anyway, I digress.
Some time later, my DB9 is returned and they take away the V8 for its service. When they finally deliver that back, a neighbour boldly walks up my driveway while I'm watering the panzies and announces how disgusted he is that I clearly have two Aston Martins! He was apparently quite cross when he thought I had traded up from a V8 to the DB9, but he simply couldn't contain his anger when he realised I owned both!
I simply smiled at him and walked away. He clearly thinks he knows me, based upon the cars I drive. Good luck to him.
You say above, "I cringe at the thought that there are those who really feel that indignation against the greed and glutony displayed by the fat-cat cronies is any form of jealousy". The sentence itself has a ring of jealousy to it. Why keep calling successful people fat cat cronies. Everyone of them greedy and glutonous.
You say, "Why can't the wealthy recognize when enough is enough". Well why can't the same be said about the not so wealthy?
You talk as though all successful people are the same. I am mildly sucessful and I don't go around calling less succesful people lazy scum-bags.
I did try to enter the US and my application was denied on the grounds that I didn't have any "unique" or sought-after qualifications. So I went to Toronto instead! I have many friends in the US. I love the place. I suppose they would let me in now, I have some dough!