Submitted by Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
If you thought you had seen it all when it comes to sob stories of the “super rich” following the comparison of the criticisms of banker bonuses to the lynching of black people in the south by AIG’s CEO in September, think again. The latest groveling, inane defense of the “super rich” comes from none other than the gatekeeper of the largest oligarch whorehouse on planet earth. The Mayor of London, Mr. Boris Johnson.
Now I warn you, do not read the following Op-Ed on a full stomach. The vapid, nonsensical, Onion-like prose may very well induce fits of nausea and uncontrolled regurgitation. This is quite frankly one of the worst things I have ever read in my life. It echoes like a sort of grandiose ass-kissing ritual one would have encountered in a Middle Age court from an aspiring manservant of the realm, desperately trying to rapidly advance a coupe of notches up the social strata of some decadent feudal kingdom. Simply put, Boris Johnson should be ashamed to show his face in public after writing such disingenuous garbage.
Now for some excerpts from the UK Telegraph:
The great thing about being Mayor of London is you get to meet all sorts. It is my duty to stick up for every put-upon minority in the city – from the homeless to Irish travellers to ex-gang members to disgraced former MPs. After five years of slog, I have a fair idea where everyone is coming from.
But there is one minority that I still behold with a benign bewilderment, and that is the very, very rich. I mean people who have so much money they can fly by private jet, and who have gin palaces moored in Puerto Banus, and who give their kids McLaren supercars for their 18th birthdays and scour the pages of the FT’s “How to Spend It” magazine for jewel-encrusted Cartier collars for their dogs.
I suspect that the answer, as Solon pointed out to Croesus, is not really, frankly; or no happier than the man with just enough to live on. If that is the case, and it really is true that having stupendous sums of money is very far from the same as being happy, then surely we should stop bashing the rich.
So he starts off right away with complete idiocy. Sure, I genuinely agree that having that much money is more of a curse than a blessing, but that doesn’t mean we should stop bashing oligarchs. Not all (but most) oligarch wealth has been created or maintained and coddled via Central Bank policies that favor their class, bailouts and crony capitalist deals. That’s why the rest of us aren’t benefiting from this phantom “economic recovery.” Perhaps he forgot the saying by Honore de Balzac:
“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.”
Now back to bumbling Boris.
On the contrary, the latest data suggest that we should be offering them humble and hearty thanks. It is through their restless concupiscent energy and sheer wealth-creating dynamism that we pay for an ever-growing proportion of public services. The top one per cent of earners now pay 29.8 per cent of all the income tax and National Insurance received by the Treasury. In 1979 – when Labour had a top marginal rate of 83 per cent tax after Denis Healey had earlier vowed to squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked – the top one per cent paid only 11 per cent of income tax. Now, the top 0.1 per cent – about 29,000 people – pay an amazing 14.1 per cent of all taxes.
Of course they pay the most in taxes. Just like JP Morgan pays the most in fines. It’s a cost of business and a small price to pay to make sure the serfs don’t get too uppity. Seriously, what planet does this guy live on?
Nor, of course, is that the end of their contribution to the wider good. These types of people are always the first target of the charity fund-raisers, whether they are looking for a new church roof or a children’s cancer ward. These are the people who put bread on the tables of families who – if the rich didn’t invest in supercars and employ eau de cologne-dabbers – might otherwise find themselves without a breadwinner. And yet they are brow-beaten and bullied and threatened with new taxes, by everyone from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Nick Clegg.
So according to Boris, we couldn’t survive with oligarchs. Why not just bring back royalty? Oh wait…
The rich are resented, not so much for being rich, but for getting ever richer than the middle classes – and the trouble is that the gap is growing the whole time, and especially has done over the past 20 years. It is hard to say exactly why this is, but I will hazard a guess. Of all the self-made super-rich tycoons I have met, most belong to the following three fairly exclusive categories of human being:
It’s not hard to say exactly why the gap has widened. I’ve basically been writing about it for years. His conclusion; however, exposes his embarrassing bias.
(1) They tend to be well above average, if not outstanding, in their powers of mathematical, scientific or at least logical reasoning. (2) They have a great deal of energy, confidence, risk-taking instinct and a desire to make money. (3) They have had the good fortune – by luck or birth – to be able to exploit these talents.
I know a lot of people that demonstrate the above qualities. Many, many people, and none of them are oligarchs. So please give it a rest.
We should be helping all those who can to join the ranks of the super-rich, and we should stop any bashing or moaning or preaching or bitching and simply give thanks for the prodigious sums of money that they are contributing to the tax revenues of this country, and that enable us to look after our sick and our elderly and to build roads, railways and schools.
Now he’s totally off the deep end. I hear the Onion is looking for writers…
Indeed, it is possible, as the American economist Art Laffer pointed out, that they might contribute even more if we cut their rates of tax; but it is time we recognised the heroic contribution they already make. In fact, we should stop publishing rich lists in favour of an annual list of the top 100 Tax Heroes, with automatic knighthoods for the top 10.
Knighthoods. Makes a lot of sense actually since there generally seems to be a strong negative correlation between folks being knighted and being decent human beings.
If this was your attempt at continuing to inflate a oligarch housing bubble in London, congrats Mr. Johnson. Well done. Perhaps some day, you’ll receive your precious knighthood.
Full article here.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/gyThQgioBOs/story01.htm Tyler Durden