Tom Toles for November 24, 2011

How about a rice dish? Condeleeza?

Now wait for Mr. Creosote to explode, and to get the check …

I am eating squires from my yard. I really hate the rich!

90% of them were born without a penny. It was only when they turned twenty-one that they came into their millions of dollars their grandfathers made! And this is how hard work in rewarded.

That makes no difference, pal. So WHAT if they started out at the bottom? So did most of the robber barons of the gilded age…and did that make any of them saints? Not hardly, first thing they did after making their money was try to pull the ladder up behind themselves, so that no one else could do what they did ..and thus give them a little unwanted competition. ( John D. Rockefeller for example. )

The idea that someone who works his way up the ladder becomes a gerenrous soul who never forgets his roots is ludicrous. A lot of the time, they buy into the concept of social Darwinism and/or Calvinism, ( I got where I am coz I’m a superior specimen.. and/or because God favored me. )

As any waiter at an upscale restaurant or concierge at a five-star hotel…the most genreous guests are always the people from old money. It’s the self made millionaires who want first class service for nothing,,,and are always the first to complain and make threats when they don’t get it.

Yes, of course you would shoot the messenger.

If 90% of today’s 1% came up to it from below, wouldn’t simple math require that a large majority of yesterday’s 1% (not 90%, because of an overall increase in population) would have to have dropped out of it? Does that seem likely? Does it seem accurate?

Sure, the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches story is possible, and it happens just often enough that the wealthy can dangle the possibility like a carrot on a stick to the working classes (and naturally those few who reach the carrot against the odds end up pretty high-profile), but the truth is that the vast majority end up pretty close to where their parents were; if you were born into wealth, you will likely remain there. If you were born into poverty, you will likely remain there. What mobility there is is mostly of small degree, one way or another, moving from solidly Middle Class into Upper Middle Class, or from Lower Middle Class into Working Poor, or from Upper Class to Upper Middle, and the like. But the overall trend these days is downwards. The next generation is expected to have an overall lower standard of living than the present generation. The exception is at the top; the rich are getting richer at a faster and faster rate.

Yeah, that’s how you become a farmer these days, too—inherit one and see if you can keep it:)

Yeah, right mdavis, Koch, Walton, poor little babies fighting their way out of the “trenches”, right.

the evil elephant and the evil fat cats love each other!

Oh! A pun and a Python sketch in one! Made my morning.

“It’s wahfer thin”