The Rich are not recession-proof...

[makattak]

Newsweek writes an amazingly lucid and mostly economically sound article:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/206160/

From the article:

It will strike many, no doubt, that the setbacks and anxieties for the country-club set are just deserts. Some will correctly note  that well-paid CEOs and investment bankers helped bring about the economic crisis. They're just getting their comeuppance—and it's about time. Others will point out that countless studies have shown that, in recent decades, the gap between the rich and the rest has widened. From 1990 to 2006, for instance, the share of pretax income received by the top 1 percent grew from 12 percent to 19 percent, says the Congressional Budget Office. The present reverses are a healthy correction. So goes the argument.

All this is understandable, but incomplete. The criticism usually presumes that if the rich and near rich get less, someone else will get more. Redistribution achieves a better social balance. Sometimes that happens. But sometimes when the rich get less, no one else gets more. Regardless of how the rich earned their money—trading bonds, performing surgery, starting new companies, providing legal work—it's no longer so lucrative. The rich get poorer, but no one else gets richer. Society is worse off.

"Trickle-down economics" is a despised phrase and concept to many, but it also embodies a harsh reality. The rich often play a pivotal role in U.S. economic growth, and if they are enfeebled, then the consequences are widespread.

Allow me to highlight the part that too many voters need smacked upside their head OVER and OVER:

The rich get poorer, but no one else gets richer. Society is worse off.

[Headless Thompson Gunner]

Allow me to highlight the part that too many voters need smacked upside their head OVER and OVER:

The rich get poorer, but no one else gets richer. Society is worse off.

Who said any of this was about making society better off?

The game is to make poor people cheer by making rich people suffer.

[Azrael256]

The rich get poorer, but no one else gets richer. Society is worse off.

This is linked to an economic fallacy that I see too much of.  The Economy is not a zero-sum game.  Getting your piece of the pie by taking someone else's is called theft, and it only works until the police find you (or you have a revolution).  You get your own piece and make it bigger by contributing your labor (land, capital, entrepreneurship...) to make the whole pie bigger.

[makattak]

This is linked to an economic fallacy that I see too much of.  The Economy is not a zero-sum game.  Getting your piece of the pie by taking someone else's is called theft, and it only works until the police find you (or you have a revolution).  You get your own piece and make it bigger by contributing your labor (land, capital, entrepreneurship...) to make the whole pie bigger.

Precisely, too many people think: "The rich get rich on the backs of the poor!!!" (Basic marxist philosophy). For examples, read the comments on the article.

People like that REALLY frighten me. Not in a "oh, those are bad ideas that will lead us down the wrong path" sort of fright, but "these people will send us back to the dark ages" kind of frightening....

[Gewehr98]

Hopefully, the rich can hire high-power lawyers to fight it off. 

We just broke into a six-figure income bracket ourselves, but millionaires who worked hard to get where they are certainly don't deserve to get robbed by the government to pay for health care, IMHO. 

[Standing Wolf]

The game is to make poor people cheer by making rich people suffer.

Cheer, indeed, and keep handing their votes to representatives of the Democratic (sic) party in return for more fake class warfare.

[Scout26]

Yet, they continue to cheer on Obama and vilify Reagan.

Morons.....