Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis for January 03, 2012

Rat and Pig have the right idea!

Amazing accomplishment with all the bottom feeders. Stephan- you need a Catfish, Leech and Pidgeon to move in and start sucking the life out of Pig,Rat and Goat.

I don’t want to get into a big politcal discussion about a comic, but 1/3 of my hard earned income goes to support a wasteful government.

Probably 1/2 of that goes to support a bunch of lazy drunks, druggies, breeders, gang members and cardboard sign toting beggars.

I help people in my sphere of influence when I see needs- clothes, food, jobs. I have no sympathy for bottom feeders. There is a difference.

I’m willing to give a hand up but not a handout.

Pig is, as usual, overly emotional, but Rat is right! Don’t “get even”; get rich! Be smart!

If I sign up for that class, do I get the billion dollars right away or is there like a test or something?

Susan, I take it your job doesn’t require reading comprehension

It’s sad that this comic is turning into, yet another, politically one-sided strip. I used to enjoy the exploits f the Crocs, Guard Duck, and Pig, but I sat through the seventies and eighties with Doonesbury and I swore, ‘Never again!’ You’re ruining a perfectly funny strip, Stephan, with your one-sided leans. What a waste!

Well, I’d say Rat, along with Dogbert and a few others, has, with a little better follow-through, just about the right personality traits to actually become a billionaire.

Oh, no! Societal commentary?! How dare he!Come on people. He is allowed to have opinions, and if you don’t like them, you can go find a more conservative or more liberal comic to read. I promise, the effort won’t hurt that much.

GP — My comment wasn’t even (necessarily) political.

Texan says 1/3 of his income goes to support the government, and “Probably 1/2 of that goes to support a bunch of lazy drunks, druggies, breeders, gang members and cardboard sign toting beggars.” LOL

OK….. 16% of the whole Federal Budget goes to support “mandated” programs including welfare AND unemployment, which is partially paid for by worker contributions.

But Texan apparently calculates that 1/6 of his total income (half of a third) goes to support the colorful crowd he mentions (whom I can only presume he doesn’t care for.)

Love to know what you’re “comprehending” that makes that arithmetic work, even if you somehow believe that 100% of welfare recipients fall into his categories.

OK, it’s 3am….. g’night all….

Boo, Stephan, Boo…. :-(

I think it’s Goat who’s missing the point! Don’t strive to punish those who succeed; Strive to make yourself succeed!

Texan at heartNo 1/2 goes to big tobacco, big sugar, big business etc. it’s like 1/12 that goes to bottom feeding low life. I’m just saying.

im with pig on this one

bwa ha ha ha…: D

@SusanSunshine, what part of TexanAtHeart’s arithmetic isn’t right? If he’s in the top 50%, he’s probably paying a little more than 1/3 in all. If you’re in the bottom 50%, you may be paying more like 7%.

That’s the “beauty” of a progressive system: the 51% paying almost nothing have no idea what it’s like to be in the 49% paying a lot.

aww, poor baby! to cheer you up , go read Mallard Fillmore.there. feel better? poor old downtrodden righties are just deluged by those mean ol’ lefties. Life just isn’t fair , is it?

Goat is intelligent, so he should be familiar with this quote from Lincoln “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. You cannot build character and courage by taking away people’s initiative and independence. You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves.”

This is the second time my favorite comic strip has dissappointed me with political garabage. I was hoping to read something funny and light hearted.

The whole gospel of Karl Marx can be summed up in a single sentence: Hate the man who is better off than you are. Never under any circumstances admit that his success may be due to his own efforts, to the productive contribution he has made to the whole community. Always attribute his success to the exploitation, the cheating, the more or less open robbery of others.

@Ken RossThat quote did not sound like Lincoln. I looked it up on Snopes, which attributed the quote to the Rev. William John Henry Boetcker. See http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln/prosperity.asp

The issue is not the “number of billionaires” (and I’m not sure where Pastis got that number).The issue is the CONCENTRATION of wealth at the top.The top 10% percent controls more than 66% of the nation’s total net worth.This situation is primarily due to two tax cuts in 2001 and 2002 that greatly benefited the upper classes, combined with the collapse of the housing market, which seriously harmed the middle class.

I miss “Far Side”.Stephan is headed the way that MASH did. Great show until they decided the only way to continue to make money was to become overtly political. Those quotes need to be handed out at all the “Occupy” sites to all the “occupiers” and to obama, pelosi, reid.

You’re right, Jean Shultz should have all her money confiscated by the government in order to create ‘fairness.’ After all, she only inherited the money, and Charles Schultz earned it off the backs of the working man.

Tell me, Stephan, did you give 100% of your earnings from the latest Peanuts special you wrote over to the government, in order to create ‘fairness?’

Hypocrites are bad enough, but hypocrites with platforms are the worst.

I can’t point to a single Peanuts strip that even mildly hinted at politics, much less took a socialist stance.

Shame on you.

That’s in part because a billion is worth a lot less now than it was in 1985. In terms of purchasing power, the proportion of the super-rich is probably about the same now as then.

Key FALSE assumption by Pastis: That the 1000+ billionaires did not become/maintain “super rich” status, in large part, by “owning” federal and state legislators via campaign contributions and employing million-dollar-per-year lobbyists who write the legislators’ bills for them. According to Pastis, they merely “thrived” their way into this fascistic state, an economic impossibility.

“I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty”

_MARX

Look at poor Goat!

He’s at his wits end.

LOL xxx

I’m sure Goat is intelligent and literate enough to know Lincoln never said anything remotely resembling the “quote” attributed to him. One problem with the rich, besides whining about taxes they don’t really pay, is that they refuse to admit the effect of chance on who is rich and who is not. Hard work will NOT make you rich by itself. You have to get breaks. See The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. And no hard work is involved in living off huge investment income, particularly if inherited. Generally speaking the poor work much harder than the rich. That’s why they are poor.

I’m still with Pig. Alone and rich. Sounds like heaven to me.

The poor stay poor because they don’t work hard enough for the rich. The “super rich” are rich because they worked harder than the poor. Exhibit A: Paris Hilton.

Where did we lose the vision that America is one of the few places in not only the world but also history, that anyone can BECOME one of the rich?

@Stephen Carbone – well said.Pastis – I quit reading “Over The Hedge” because it became overtly political. I enjoy your strip (this one excepted), and I’d hate to quit reading it too. Save your political opinions for the editorial page.

i suppose u already have enough $$?

I have to disagree with all the people who say that this strip shouldn’t mention controversial realities; I read PB4S for both its humor and its intelligence. All those who prefer meaningless fluff could simply go read “Baby Blues.”As for the subject of this strip: If one body part, such as one’s big toe, started to drain all the blood and nutrients away from the rest of the body without giving any back, the body wouldn’t become healthier as a result; it would die, toe and all. Think about that.

Good GRIEF, people! Lighten UP, will ya?

It’s a comment on human nature, isn’t it, that if you make a serious statement you’re derided for not “lightening up”, but if you make a light statement you’re derided for being a dumdum airhead.

@doublepaw..When all is said and done

and the history is recorded even ‘you’ will see that

it was Obama’s fault…

Smart AND funny, that’s the ticket. That’s Steph’s job, and ours too in commenting. Susan is exactly right. I enjoy her light touch.

Seems to me TAH initiated the political argument, not Steph. Steph simply noted that there are increasing numbers of super rich and joked about wanting to join them. He didn’t blame anyone. But protecting the reputation of the extremely wealthy seems to be the focus of some people, who even imagine they all got that way by “working,” compared to the rest of us, who are lazy bums.

 “Much truth is spoken in jest.” — old proverb

Sorry Stephan, that’s only for Jim Davis & Garfield.

Rat, sadly, is the one with the right attitude; the one that men like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Tony Stark, et al. set out with. If Goat is right, that means there’s at least one new billionaire EVERY MONTH, and yet all the comments here are just automatically dismissing the possibility.

Then again, if they’re all that bad at basic arithmetic, they’re probably not in tax brackets that have to figure out how much of a check to WRITE.

WOW! You really whacked the hornet’s nest with this strip, Stephen! Lotta raw nerves out there!

100TH COMMENT! O YEAH!!!!!

1/3 × 1/2 = 1/6$60K x 1/6 = $10,000 hypothetically speaking.

I agree. PBS is much more subtle than doonesbury. pastis throws an idea out into the arena but doesn’t quite come down on one side or the other. plausible deniability

“The occupier’s chant: “IT’S THEIR MONEY AND I WANT IT NOW”!!!!!” Ever heard of feudalism? Or “the company store”? Or “wage slavery”? Or, for that matter, slavery itself as a principle of radical libertarianism? No? I didn’t think so.

“But most people are where they are in life because of all their past decisions.”

Yes, like picking parents who were not rich or connected.

yeah it is too bad that only 5% use to get straight A’s in school – so we fixed that. we made the tests easier and shared the wealth – now 16% get straight A’s and we need to just give everybody an A for effort and let them have a college degree and let them work when they want to and if they want to sit in a park, crap in the gutter and carry a sign we should hand them all a million dollars – run out of money? no way!!!!! the fed can always print more and we can all go immediately into the future world of 1970 Russia – government dictates everything – from what shorts you wear to what you wipe your butt with to what job you are trained for from childhood. let us all live the American dream by making America like Europe and Africa and other countries – let me do what i want when i want how i want and then give me donald trumps money because he actually did something – oh sorry not politically correct i guess :)

To me this is not politically charged. It’s just funny.

“What could [the 1000+ billionaires] steal, since the poor don’t have anything?" The 1000+ billionaires enjoy “super rich” status, in large part, by “owning” federal and state legislators via campaign contributions and employing million-dollar-per-year lobbyists who write the legislators’ bills for them. They did not “thrive” their way into this state of fascism.* That would be an economic impossibility. *Fascism: In Nazi Germany (as well as in Mussolini’s Italy) fascism involved an incestuous relationship between the government and Germany’s military-indistrial-financial complex (MIFC). The government (i.e., der führer Hitler personally) controlled the MIFC. In America today the reverse is true, though the relationship is still one of fascism: the MIFC controls the government via the method described above.

“… the poor don’t have anything.” They don’t have their labor (45 years’ worth (age 20 to age 65)? But this discussion involves more than just “the poor”. It involves the middle class. The rich stole also from the middle class. How? One example: By deceiving them via “fine print”, etc., into purchasing dwellings with “sliding interest rates”. When those sliding interest rates slid upward and through the roof, those middle-class home owners went under water. Is the fascistic government bailing them out as it did the failing financial institutions? Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!

“Oh, no, the rich have ‘things’? You mean with a billion dollars they . . . . .” Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz . . . .

One-sided? heck, I’ll take that class. If you offered me the choice of my grade in a class, I always picked “A”. If it’s the same with wealth, gimme. How much is a ton of gold worth, anyway? Anybody know how much a hundred pounds of hundred dollar bills is? Go on: ask.

Sunshine: You illuminate. BTW: Texan At Heart appears to be TINO (Texan in name only). I spent the first 7 years of my life in Texas (Jefferson, McAllen, & San Antonio), though I was born in Wichita, Kansas. (My mother traveled by rail to Wichita to give me birth in 1940.)  My point: I don’t CALL myself a Texan, though I love the State. And there are plenty of Texans who think the way I do. And apparently you do as well.

“Mormons knocked on my door and told me l’d go to hell because l hadn’t been baptized.” Come on, #6, I respect your agnosticism, but give the LDS a break. They don’t knock on my door because I live in a gated apartment complex which allows no solicitation of any kind. But I have a number of friends who say that nowadays the Mormons school their upcoming young men (though still not women, apparently) to be much more polite and tolerant when going door-to-door. Do you have any recent experience to the contrary? 

haha funny

So, (on the lines of JonnyDiego’s comment above) what % of the population made up the billionaires in 1985, and what number of people make up that same % today? Based on what I’ve read, I suspect it’s increased today, but I don’t believe it’s anywhere near the 1000/13 ratio implied by this comic. But, I love Pearls, and 99% of Stephan’s creations!

Yes, there are now 1000 billionaires in the US, what’s the problem with that, median income is now twice what my entry-level wages as an electrical engineer were when I got out of college in 1982, which at the time was one of the higher paying entry-level college graduate job classes.

i see the internet is being used to put forth ideas that most people either don’t care about or don’t think about. I wonder what the reasoning behind talking about it is?Could it be that someone out there actually thinks that being inflammatory, competitive, or straight up rude will actually change something? Naw. Of course not.

Bragging or complaining?

just a quick observation. u really are dehumanizing people by referring to them as statistics. Rich and poor alike. Lets add some conotation to those numbers btw. The poverty line (poor) in the US is set at about 22,000 (rounded) and the average international income is at 7,000. So poor in the US is kinda wealthy from a global perspective. However, at the same time that perspective isn’t really legitimate for a local persons perspective because it also costs much more to live in the United States……what was my point again…..Oh right.. Even though wealth of people has increased by much overall. I’d say that the average standard of living for ALL social classes has also increased. The reason lies in technology. Blah Blah….totally contradicted my last post by getting opinionated….Crud….==…Heck ill post it anway

“… you can moan or you can work and join the next 1,000 billionaires.” Oh goody, can we go from M billionaires to MM billionaires? All riding on the backs of the CCC million Americans who have to work harder and harder for a declining standard of living?

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/02/income-inequality-in-america-chart-graph

The rich don’t opress the poor… governments do. No one but the politicians will see any improvement in living conditions if we give politicians the right to steal from private citizens.

Rat sees clearly.

Agreed, Stephen Carbone. I love this strip and Get Fuzzy as well, but both cartoonists are falling prey to thinking that politically leaning comedy won’t drive off their viewers because it’s “comedy”. Doonesbury learned different, and I hope the current batch learns sooner.

While that statistic may seem alarming, and it is, don’t forget about inflation which caused many millionaires to become billionaires.

Another thing I want to add is that it can also be skewed to show improvement, since more people are now billionaires than before.

Until humanity as a whole decides that it’s more important to help others before themselves, there will always be poor people.

Yes, communism is the ideal situation; however, as soon as you add humans to the equation, corruption is guaranteed. Is it fair that some people have more money? In some cases, yes, and in others, no.

Humanity is so dynamic yet flawed, there’s almost no single cause nor cure to inequality. Realistically, all we can do is make sure that no one has room to complain about us.

I pay taxes. I have a job and attend school. I also spent an hour looking at people bicker about this. I laughed at this, and not the comic.

The best part? I’m a teenager. I’m no hippie, I just try to look at things realistically. Many of you have good points. Just accept that not everyone else is wrong and move on with your life. I mean, how is arguing on a comic website going to help anything?

.[quote] Mormons knocked on my door and told me l’d go to hell because l hadn’t been baptised. Lovely.

I’m not normally a violent man but…[/quote]..Number 6, you are entitled to your belief system and I certainly don’t hold you in any sort of contempt for it, but (and I know I’m pretty much just asking for it here) I sure hope that this was just your personal misinterpretation of what was said and not what you were actually told. If that is what you were actually told, you were told a lie, and I’d like to apologize to you for you being insulted like that. That is not and never has been LDS doctrine. You don’t go to hell just because you were/are not baptized. There is a WHOLE LOT more involved in being sent to “hell” and it requires DOING things and not just NOT doing things. This topic, however, is not well-suited to this time and place, so I’m not going to go into it any further than that...Also, DylanThomas3.14159, the LDS church DOES send out female missionaries (called Sister missionaries) and has for a VERY long time now. I know that for sure since I was one of them (1994-96) and I had aunts that served in the 1950’s and 60’s as well.

It’s funny how people miss the point of this strip…instead of whining about those who may or may not have “exploited” anyone to become rich, get busy and become a successful person. So I’m wondering, how does 13 billionaires become over 1000? Are they like Tribbles? Amoebas? What? Wait, these are people who WORKED to get where they’re at.

There are very few if any instances where one can argue that an employee is forced to be “exploited” in order for his employer to become rich. You allow yourselves to be used, it’s a barter system folks. You don’t like the arrangement, move on.

That’s the beauty of “free trade”, I trade my skills for money.

Although, I doubt Rat has any intention of letting himself be used in that way.

there’s way more people who live in utter poverty.

there’s always going to be someone who has it better than you, enjoy what you have.

So the numbers of “super rich” have grown by 7,592% Good news. That is such good news. Our chances are so much greater.

its funny yesterday’s strip gets more buzz than todays b/c someones toes got stepped on. Either way. Its always the objective and impersonal argument tat wins.

Doesn’t the comic show that America is great. After all it shows that in the last 25 years we’ve had 40X the number of Billionaires. Doesn’t that show that America is doing something right?

We should all join that group!

By stealing the rich peoples money and giving it to the unmotivated, lazy, unemployed all their life 40 year olds leeching off their parents, living in basement forcing their hard working motivated parents to support their son 20 years longer than mom and dad were planning? Very smart goat, very smart

A lot of those people worked to get there. I know some people don’t have as much opportunities, but that doesn’t mean those rich people don’t deserve it.