Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for September 23, 2010

It’s gettin’ hard to please ‘em you start to feel the rub You know it isn’t easy well, welcome to the club Come on and join us in the club -Joe Walsh

Talking about holding a grudge!

“Money, get back I’m all right Jack Keep your hands off my stack Money, it’s a hit Don’t give me that Do goody good bull…”

Money Pink Floyd

The people who say “money isn’t everything” don’t have enough money.

Have to respect Trudeau’s gift for finding last-panel laugh lines to cap the bigger points.

It doesn’t occur to this guy that his ex-team mates might be more impressed to hear he’s made his billion and is big enough to give half of it away. ‘Hey, Jim’s done well and he turns out to be a nice guy too - who’d have thought?’

Living well is the best revenge.

Money cant buy happiness.. SNERK But if you’re a billionaire, you can rent it

I agree, Grimma. Joining Buffett’s team means telling all of the former Little Leaguers at once.

@Sheik: If that were truly the case, Michael Jackson would still be alive, black, and have a human nose. No one would know who Lindsey Lohan and/or her father were, and Leona Helmsley’s kids would have more than her dog.

Thanks, probably, to her/his European background, Grimma is able to point out the social failure of capitalist success. A career based on possessive individualism leaves very little room for self-sacrifice.

In our (historically) still young and robust America, self-sacrifice or devotion to any cause other than making money is considered impractical, if not unworldly. Your self-restraint will be judged foolish unless it improves your bottom line, whereas if you break a few rules, you’ll actually be admired—-so long as you succeed.

Perhaps because they’ve long been humbled by fortune, Europeans are tolerant of those who fail to make money. They know that financial success depends more on luck than on one’s character and will. For them, an act of self-discipline—-such as giving away one’s wealth—-is more heroic and aristocratic than plotting how to keep it and make it grow.

Self-restraint and self-sacrifice are traits of someone in control of their fate. Such devotion and self-discipline are despised and feared by those who whine about any restraints on their efforts to get rich. What the possessive individualists can’t see is that anyone who fails to regulate themself has to be restrained by the society s/he ignores.

(Note to any grammar police who may stumble onto this forum: “they” and “them” have come into use as gender-neutral, singular pronouns.)

Ps. @ Lewreader (below)

Envy and covetousness are both ignoble sins, and envy (hatred, especially class hatred) can be deadly. Bill Gates is to be admired not for having been lucky in fighting his way up from poverty, but for giving his wealth away to the needy. GETTING wealth is not fully in our control. Giving it away IS.

It’s typical of small (ignoble) minds to justify their success by saying they broke no laws and were always frugal. Lady Fortune laughs at these fools whom she likes to crush with a turn of her wheel—-not out of envy, but for the sheer fun of seeing them stripped of their boasted wealth. The possessive individual has no character apart from their possessions.

(In the strip, Warren Buffett is telling Andrews how to acquire character by giving away his wealth.)

I personally find the Billionaire Club to be very noble. Many (ie Gates) have fought their way up from dirt poor. They have no legal nor financial reason to share their hard work with their detractors. They are given 5 times the amount suggested by the major religion of this country. They are giving twice as much as the government takes to enrich the rulers. They are giving a larger percent of their personal fortunes than most would even consider. This is bad?

If you had two sons or daughters, which would you give away? 50% Which car would you give. Which half of your house. 50% of your 401K. Your dog or your cat?

Thanks Lewreader, but I would point out that Bill Gates did not fight his way up from dirt poor. He fought his way up from merely wealthy to mega-wealthy.

Also, Christians are exhorted to tithe 10% of their income, not 10% of their worth. Islam, on the other hand asks for 2.5% of a persons total wealth. I wonder which usually works out to more.

Neither of these facts negate the excellent point you made, however, I wouldn’t compare giving away children to giving away wealth.

Envy follows Greed and Avarice

@Lewreader

Envy would fall under the 10th commandment, “do not covet.”

Lew made a good point? Chances are Jim missed it, so he can join that club too.

good thing that this billionaire is a cheeseburger away from the Reaper’s visit.

The best things in life are indeed free – but you need money to enjoy them.

In other words, money can not buy happiness, but it can buy security; without security you are not going to be happy.

palin, an interesting perspective, but I disagree with the crux of your biscuit. I believe the American ideal to be self-determination, not making money, and as an aside I believe that self-detemination is also what drives some individuals to give to charity, billionaires club or otherwise, not altruism. If making money happens to be one’s path to freedom, so be it, but most of the 99.9% of Americans who will never be billionaires still wish to run their own lives according to their own personal ideals, not merely according to those prescribed (and sometimes enforced) by the state. In my opinion, this is the reason why the Bill of Rights is often cited as being the most sacred law of the land, as it sets limitations upon the government - the people as a necessary collective - to prescribe to the individual – the person as a necessary solitary entity that a democratic republic needs to function. By protecting the individual, the government protects itself - trample the individual and the government falls into anarchy or despotism. This philosophy embedded in the Constitution has been the primary cultural separation between the colonies and the Olde World, whose historical background has required the more nationalistic framework necessitated by having neighbors who have been plotting to kill you off for centuries. The joke that the French plant trees along their roadways because Germans like to march in the shade has its basis in fact, as European boundries are drawn in blood that has not completely dried yet.

I am not European, but I have travelled extensively there to visit relatives and I find it difficult to make generalizations about the people and their perspectives. There are many Europeans who do not trust to luck, but trust to lineage, with varying degrees as to how they deal with accepting or overcoming it. Plenty of Irish, for example, still have very large chips on their shoulders about their role in British history, and will say so with their voices and in how they live their lives. Italians, on the other hand, seem generally content if they have enough money to enjoy life the next day and don’t pay much attention to the past except as a colorful background to their present.. Some Europeans support the European Union concepts, but others worry that their comfortable family-style societies are being transformed into a multinational melting pot beehive, a concept that Americans have embraced for decades but that many Europeans are still wary of and are handling with varying degrees of success.

The comments about possessive individualism and the need for society to restrain such individuals I find scary. I prefer to think of it from the perspective of rights, and the Constitution does an admirable job of spelling out what those rights are. IMNSHO, the enforcement of rights is the only real function of a government, and society’s role is to determine what they are, provided that others’ rights are not violated in the process. If one’s behaviors impose upon my prescribed rights, then society has an obligation to enforce them for me. However, if someone has legally amassed a fortune and chooses to spend it as they wish, I am unclear as to what rights of mine they have violated. I do not incur a right to their money by simply feeling self-righteous about the fact that they have it and I do not.

Happiness is a warm shekel. Greed is good, greed is old.

“Anything above $75,000 is excess.” Are you talking net or gross? With more than $75,000 in debt, I’m not being greedy by wanting more than that net, I’m just being realistic.

A long time ago I figured out how much money (income) I needed. But I added a proviso - every year it should go up by the cost of living + 10%. At the time that seemed exceedingly ok. But now I’m wondering whether 10% is too small?

Not that I have ever had anything even close to this calculation. But at least I was confident that I wasn’t being greedy.

The more I think about it, the more I conclude that I have to decide how much I need each year for that year. Then I can look around and see how things are going, not be held to an old, possibly miscalculated, formula.

Hey, Maybe I misunderstood the agreement that the 40 billionaires made, but I thought they said they would give away half of their yearly income to charity????? That is a lot different from one half of their wealth.

Justice, good question.

According to thebillionaireclubs.com, the object is to “create a billion dollar impact in their lifetime”. (note that their slogan is “Helping entrepreneurs create massive impact”). It makes sense that being a successful entrepreneur in the giving away of money is just as important in one’s aquisition of it.

According to The Guardian, the pledge is to commit “half their fortunes”. Kitty Kelly (writing in the Huffington Post) singled out Oprah as not wanting to be a member, quoting her responding to critics as to what she does with her contributions to charity with “To hell with your criticism,” she said. “I don’t care what you have to say about what I did. I did it.”

I don’t see any reference to half of one’s yearly incomes, but maybe another group is doing that.

“When you consider what an enormous windfall gain it is to be born in America, it is painful to hear some people complain bitterly that someone else got a bigger windfall gain than they did.” - Thomas Sowell

Palin, I’m thinking you are no spring chicken, and I mean that as a compliment. So many commentors are accepting the dogmatic principle that hard work equals success. Experience will show this to be false.

Each year, millions of Americans who work and have insurance end up bankrupt due to illness or injury. Did they get what they deserve from all their hard work?

The poor tend to have the poorest schools, and the best private schools are full of the wealthy elite, at both high school and college levels.

Nepotism still plays a large role in determining who gets the best jobs, further entrenching the wealthy in their class.

America may still be the land of opportunity, but let’s not pretend that all opportunities are equal. Hard work is to be commended and encouraged, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking it ensures success.

Lew, you’re ranting. Your comments don’t make sense. Calm down; wipe the drool off your keyboard, and try again.

“It was during the spring term of 1968, at Lakeside Prep School that Bill Gates first used a computer. Though computers were still too expensive to buy, the school held a fundraiser and acquired computer time on a DEC PDP-10 owned by General Electric.”

Bill Gates was lucky. He was at the right place at the right time. How many high schools in 1968 had access to computers? None?

pathetic. little league. yeesh. you want vengeance, buy the apartments your antagonists live in and evict them for ¨new construction¨. but do it 2 or 3 times. heh. woody.

when will Mammon age out?

corzak asks: “How many high schools in 1968 had access to computers?”

Mine, for one. Well, by 1969 or 1970, anyway. And I got to play with it, and ended up with a reasonably good career in the telecom industry.

What Bill Gates had that I didn’t was access to IBM executives who wanted a third-party operating system for their new-fangled personal computer, and access to a guy who had created such a system and didn’t know IBM was willing to pay bags and bags of money for one.

Like Warren Buffett, the Rockefellers, and nearly all wealthy capitalists, Gates didn’t actually create the thing that made him rich; he just played middleman at the right time and place. People who actually create stuff usually do so as part of a large team, at a company that’s already gotten them to sign away the rights to the stuff they create in return for a modest salary. This is what happened to me, and to thousands of others: we took jobs with big companies, actually created valuable goods and services, and watched as the middlemen and moneychangers skimmed the majority of that value for themselves. That’s how capitalism works.

You don’t have to be a Renaissance scholar (like me) or a humanist (like Machiavelli) to recognize in Jimbo Andrews an old man’s bitter frustration. He has discovered that his wealth has not made him free but, on the contrary, has left him utterly dependent on that fickle Goddess Fortuna—-a whore, Machiavelli calls her, because she scatters her favors indifferently to anyone foolish enough to love her for the wealth she promises to bestow.

Jimbo still has a choice, as Warren Buffett tries to tell him. He can continue to fawn slavishly on Lady Fortune, the only wife he has been constant to and of whom he lives in fear (sooner or later, Fortuna always takes away what she has given). Or he can “divorce” her by throwing away her unneeded gifts and become a truly free human being who relies on other human beings instead of serving this fickle whore. (Buffett and Gates both seem to have made this choice.)

@Nemesys,

When I said that society needs to restrain possessive individualism, I didn’t mean government should step in and take away the wealth of capitalists like Andrews—-although the government should certainly make such a big hog pay extra taxes for his place at the trough so they can keep the farm running.

I agree with you that the principal (but not “the only real”) function of the government is to safeguard the rights we derive from the Constitution. Every right, however, to some extent empowers its holder OVER AGAINST everybody else. The “right” to smoke in public is an obvious example, but we don’t have to argue over whether or not that “right” harms others. A simpler example is the right to property. You have a right to your property only so long as your neighbors (or the society to which you and they belong) recognize that right.

Since rights, then, depend not on God or the Constitution but on society, it’s self-deluding to pretend that the possessive individual owes the success and security s/he enjoys to anything other than their fellow human beings. In a pre-societal state of nature, there are no rights; or, as Hobbes puts it, everybody has a right to everything.

BRIAN Is envy the 4th or 5th deadly sins? Or is a a tool for failures to cover there own failure in life. Don’t worry, PRIDE is the biggest sin.

He just needs time to prepare. I’m thinking…next Little League Reunion.

Actually Little League does keep records and has a “Hall of Excellence,” which is oddly named, given that George Walker Bush is a member.

http://www.littleleague.org/learn/museum/hallofexcellence.htm

You & Ignatius Reilly, Drome, but I agree with much of what you write.

To use your definition of the purpose of our federal government, Nemesys, let me ask you what you did seven years ago, when Bush-Dick used our military to invade & occupy Iraq? That act was hardly constitutional, right?

Lew, I will be happy to discuss with you if you ever come up with something worth discussing, but your remarks now are just fire-&-miss nonsense. I would also suggest that you cease commenting once you have begun drinking.

Thanks BRIAN for your usual lack of logic and your childish hate of successful people. Haven’t touched a drop in a decade. I suppose you don’t either with your government paid (taxpayer) drugs. So you haven’t answered me, what’s wrong with a man giving half his worldly goods to charity without the help of the federal government? I Suppose you pay higher taxes than them so your contributions can be properly distributed.

Oh I live in the insurance capital of the world. All the industry is going up in premiums 20=25% due to our government meddling in health care. I thought your god Obama said it wouldn’t cost any more? Did he lie or is he just stupid? “Duh, I give a lot of free stuff away and it won’t cost notten.” Nice going Prez. Most Americans health plans come up in November. Isn’t there some kind of government thing that comes up that month. Happy changey/hopey!

Re: drinking and abstention (the lowbrow’s notion of self-sacrifice).

Aristotle with his cool, pagan wisdom observes that anyone who has to strive for temperance is already intemperate.

So much for Lewreader’s Christian boast of abstinence. Does he ENVY those of us who can drink without losing any sleep or productivity? That would be as foolish as envying pathetic slobs like Jimbo Andrews, who will (predictably) turn down the opportunity Buffett is giving him to become a real person and free himself from his dependence on Lady Luck..

“The source of our ignorance is the same as the source of our happiness.” (Montaigne)

Lew, when you write things like “Or is a a tool for failures to cover there own failure in life”, “Is envy the 4th or 5th deadly sins” (which would be a neat trick on envy’s part), “They are given 5 times the amount suggested by the major religion of this country”, and “If you had two sons or daughters, which would you give away” (which seems, incoherently, to equate one’s money with one’s children), then it is kindness to presume that drink is the problem and not semi-literacy & thoughtlessness.

Thank you for informing me that I should have presumed the latter. Where you get the notion that I use “government paid [sic] (taxpayer) drugs”, I have no idea, but you do employ fantasies in both your rationale for supporting Bush-Dick and in your consideration about other members of these forums. I try to stick to the facts about you: You live off of Social Security & your wife’s job; you haven’t earned a dime in years; you fallaciously dismiss Rush Limbaugh & others of his ilk as “entertainers”, although they speak only of political matters and do so with a pretense of informing their listeners (although—I think that we agree—they misinform much more often); you are a literacy volunteer (one might wonder about the training, considering your own prose, but that’s neither here nor there); you live in Hartford, but you hate both the Hartford daily and The New York Times, which you associate with Pravda, although you have yet to cite any government propaganda in the Times; and you spend much time almost every day commenting on a multitude of cartoons & comics. I suggest that you do the same and stick to what you know about me.

As to your question, “what’s wrong with a man[sic] giving half his worldly goods to charity without the help of the federal government?”, my answer is Nothing.

You are correct that insurance premiums are rising, as they have been for the last thirty years. The health-insurance reform bill did not go far enough, and insurance companies are pre-emptively raising premiums, but insurance companies would have raised them anyway. You have made a stronger case for universal single-payer health care. I suggest that you employ your literacy and read T.R. Reid’s Healing Of America. You visit the library (paid for by taxes) regularly (although Teapublicans would shut them down): you can find the book there.

Drome, I am not always with Aristotle, but I am in this. The ancient Athenians knew that moderation in all things was itself immoderate. Thus, the annual Dionysian rites. It is 23:00 here. I think that I may have a glass of Pinot Noir or maybe a dark beer. Cheers & salud to the drinkers & non-drinkers both.

Some habitual drinkers no longer know what they’re drinking. If Andrews is really enjoying single malt, as Heeyuk hinted yesterday, why does he put ice in his glass? To get the best out of whisky you just use a few drops of water to release its bouquet. You never dull the palate with ice or—-horror of horrors—-splash in fizzy soda.

I take my scotch neat: no water, no ice, just scotch.