“Social reform aims to improve the condition of the poor by worsening the condition of the rich.”

Damn the rich. They ruin everything.

That is a face of some reform. Me thinks Ebon is joking or he protesteth to much ;-)

Abundance is what is promised to all, luxury is the abundance of all, gathered under the control of those who want it all short of what is needed to keep their slaves producing. This is also the division between selfishness for what one has honestly worked for and greed for those who take what they haven't worked for, for their illicit gain even if accomplished under color of law, or simply put, legalized plunder.

When the poor do well everbody does well. When the rich do well they buy bigger homes and bigger Rolls Royces.

The rich are not materially affected by this as the truly rich are so insulated and have so many resources as to not even notice the drain on their resources... whereas the poor are literially living hand to mouth.

The way i see it, the New England rich liberals want to help the poor at the expence of the middle class. Understand why now the middle class is shrinking and the gap between the rich and working class is getting wider.

Let's not generalize folks...to someone who has no ambition and chooses to live as a government dependant..."everyone" else looks rich. If by the rich we mean those who have made fortunes by governmental rent seeking, then the system that allows them to do so is corrupt. If we mean those who got up early and made better lives for themselves through ambition and innovation, then we are talking about those who hold American values dear. We can not sweep both under the same rug as there is a huge difference in what it is that makes them "rich". Stealing from the latter makes no one any richer...

Hooray for the rich. I wish I was one. The rich form businesses that hire others, give huge sums to charity, build libraries, and do a multitude of other good works that the poor could never do.

Then there are the rich that do bad stuff, like George Soros, for example.

Never forget that the wealth the rich have comes from the spending of the "poor".

There you go generalizing Waffler. Who "exactly" are you calling the "rich"? And who "exactly" are the "poor"? And where do middle class (hard working) Americans fit into this generaization?

At least that is what the social reformers say... There will always be some with wealth and some with nothing. Neither is automatically right or wrong. The issue is is WHY they are rich or poor that matters -- it is the means by which the poor have become rich and the rich have become poor. Social reformers are not interested in being accountable for one's actions -- in their eyes, we all should be wards of the state -- with THEM running things.

It is not a generalization that money flows up from consumers to investors. It is also a fact that real wealth and money making comes from figuring out a way to use people to your advantage. A worker is obviously paid less than he is worth thus the employer makes a profit on using this labor. Now I did not say that it is a bad thing that the money flows up or that profit is made on a mans labor but just that it is a fact.

I see you've been reading Karl Marx again, Waffler.

Actually Waffler you generalized again and completely avoided the question. But that's what Liberal progressives do isn't it?

Who is rich and who is poor is a relative thing. Every one in America is rich in comparison to some folk in the third world.