I’ve never been a fan of Roseanne Barr.
Her voice is grating and quite frankly, she never struck me as funny. Just annoying.
I never watched her television show.
I did see her try to sing (or pretend to try to sing) our national anthem before a baseball game, but her rendition was truly awful, very offensive and literally painful to the ears.
I happen to love the country that gave her the opportunity to earn ridiculous wealth with marginal talent and didn’t find her butchering of the anthem the least bit amusing.
However, I’m beginning to suspect that Roseanne has been a comic genius whom I’ve simply failed to appreciate.
After she pulled off a deadpan delivery of this skit disguised as a live interview in which she suggests we send bankers of a certain income bracket to re-education camps or the guillotine.
I was about ready to ROFLOL, as they say here on the internet.
Something stopped me, though.
Specifically, it was the suspicion she had really been dead serious.
Now if it was a joke, it was a good one.
She really had me going there for a minute — actually, she’s still got me going.
Though Roseanne’s rant wasn’t as funny as Sunny’s take on eating the rich, Sunny had been able to edit out her outtakes.
Without even a hint of breaking a smile, Roseanne calmly called for the confiscation of wealth and decapitation (if necessary) of bankers with accrued wealth in excess of $100 million dollars who refused to fork it over.
It’s kind of scary to believe she might have been serious. But Shirley, she’s couldn’t have been, could she?
With the hue and cry following the execution of convicted cop-killer Troy Davis by lethal injection still echoing in the air, who would call for an old-fashioned beheading — except Roseanne Barr, never a woman known for her taste?
Anyone but me curious why Roseanne picked $100 million dollars as the metric by which we should measure excess wealth?
Coincidentally, it turns her net worth is estimated at $80 million dollars.
From this information one might conclude that Roseanne may be angry and she may be mean, but she isn’t stupid.
She’s pragmatic. She wants to lead the revolution, not become its inevitable victim.
She’s smart enough to realize that robbing only bankers with more than $100 million in net worth won’t begin to satisfy those who want government redistribution of wealth.
Entertainers and professional athletes would surely find themselves on the list of easy targets. Many people perceive they are among those who are grossly overpaid for what they do.
After all, it isn’t hard to wonder — what has Roseanne ever done that was worth $80 million dollars?
What actor is worth what they are paid?
The most accurate answer is: all of them.
If someone offers to pay an exorbitant salary, what fool refuses to accept it?
To hate another human being simply for having more than you do is to fall prey to one of the seven deadly sins: envy.
If you really want bankers, professional athletes or actors to earn less, stop giving them your money.
If you want more money, do something to earn it.
Don’t ask the government to take money from another person in order to give it to you.
The machinery that makes greed possible is usury. Usury is condemned by the God of the Bible. Money doesn’t replicate itself. When a man wants to start a small business, like a hot dog stand, and he needs to have $2,000 to start up, but only has $1,000, he goes to a banker and borrows the money. If the hot dog stand is successful, he will pay the banker back with interest. If it’s not successful, he will have to still pay back the bank, including compounded interest. Did the $1,000 somehow “grow” anything inside that bank to make it “more” than it was? What gives the bank the right to ask for more than was lent? What is the value of the unpaid loan? Still $1,000. How does the bank lose by not having that $1,000? Does the bank “lose” anything when you withdraw money from your checking account?
My point is that the bank adds punitive damages to losers beyond what is lost. It has no more responsibility to punish losers than it does to reward winners. The market rewards winners and the bank, and everyone wins when an entrepeneur is successful. But everybody loses when an entrepeneur loses more than the loss would entail. Adding punishment to loss beyond what is lost is cruel, vindictive and greedy. See how this works?
Doc,
Respectfully, the $1000 loan in your hypothetical situation doesn’t come from money that belongs to “the bank.” It’s lent from the bank’s total deposits. Banks make money from fees and interest. Otherwise they go out of business.
If everyone withdrew their money at the same time, the bank would be broke because it has lent out money comprised in part from those deposits. The bank would in turn have to call its outstanding loans in order to honor the withdrawals. In that scenario, everybody loses.
When people borrow more than they can pay back and default into bankruptcy, everybody loses. The only way we win is if we stop borrowing so damn much money and get out of debt. Maybe the guy with $1000 gets a partner instead of a loan. If people don’t face adversity if they don’t repay a loan, why ever repay a debt? The problem isn’t lending, it’s thinking you need to borrow money.
Actions must have consequences. Don’t borrow money if you can’t pay it back, unless you don’t mind declaring bankruptcy and losing your credit worthiness.
John,
I made a little error in my post. I meant to say ” How does the bank lose by not having that $1,000 back …plus interest?” I didn’t mean to imply that the borrower didn’t owe the money, just that he only owed the money without a huge penalty….usury.
A simple loan fee would be adequate to cover the bank’s expenses in making the transaction.
If the borrower defaults, the bank could recover its losses with ownership of collateral, just like pawn shops do.
We are becoming more and more aware out here in Tea Party Land of how the Federal Reserve Board operates, and we don’t like what we see.
Like “Luke” in ” Cool Hand Luke” said, ” Yeah, well, it’s just a bunch of guys making a bunch of rules.”
I agree that you normally shouldn’t borrow money if you can’t pay it back, but without risk, there’s no reward. And still, that money has no intrinsic capability of “growing itself”; capital is only created by production of goods and services,….real stuff, not numbers in a ledger.
I have a saying: ” Necessity is the mother of economies; entrepeneurship is the father. Brotherhood is the fruit of faith in God and hard work….together.”
” What we got here is failure to commun’cate.”
Looking into the history of banking shows lots of room for creation of huge power structures that can ultimately destroy economies, both micro and macro….as we have seen recently. ” Crony Capitalists” and ” Banksters” together make simple envy look like a Sunday School picnic…
Thanks for your reply….