/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.14698325]

Back in my day, if you met somebody who came from a rich family, you would just call them lucky. You'd say "man I wish my parents left me millions when they passed away". No resentment, just a little envy.

Today, everybody's so bitter, calling anyone who is fortunate enough to have had a good upbringing "privileged". Privilege is now an insult, used with the intent to make people feel bad for having an advantage.

There's this fantasy in contemporary thinking that any deviation in privilege is a terrible thing that must be corrected. People who believe this also unironically call themselves "communists", and think that communism will eradicate privilege.

Their idea extends further. If you're White, male, and rich, then all your achievements are simply the result of privilege, and the reason women and minorities attain less is due to a glass ceiling. The problem is that this sort of reasoning doesn't come a want of meritocracy. It stems from resentment and hatred of the rich. Instead of trying to do well in life, they instead expend all their effort into bringing down those more privileged than themselves.

Any books that critique the left's resentment of the rich?

[Anonymous No.14698380]

>>14698325
Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple might be exactly what you're looking for. The resentment towards others more fortunate than themselves is well expounded upon - by a psychiatrist given the chance to talk with innumerable dispossessed denizens of Britain's underbelly, no less!

[Anonymous No.14698456]

>>14698380
Interesting...
>Dalrymple's key insight in Life at the Bottom is that long-term poverty is caused not by economics but by a dysfunctional set of values, one that is continually reinforced by an elite culture searching for victims. This culture persuades those at the bottom that they have no responsibility for their actions and are not the molders of their own lives.

Although I'm not really concerned with "people at the bottom". I'm talking about the middle class left (academics, journalists, etc.) who view the rich with hatred. It's analogous to the white middle class man who champions political correctness even though it doesn't personally affect him. They are the ones who pushed this anti-privilege agenda onto women, Blacks, and minorities.

[Anonymous No.14698468]

>>14698325
>Back in my day, if you met somebody who came from a rich family, you would just call them lucky. You'd say "man I wish my parents left me millions when they passed away". No resentment, just a little envy.
holy fuckin cope

[Anonymous No.14698645]

>>14698468
The boomer memes are real. People didn't give a as much of a shit because a high school drop out could earn an income that let them buy a house and provide for a family of four within days of dropping out. An entire year of college could be paid for by working a part time job over the summer. No shit people in modern times are more conscious of wealth inequality. We're the first generation to be worse off than our parents but the stock market is rising so the president says the economy is doing well. To the youth of today the fiscal reality of this nation is total insanity.

[Anonymous No.14698661]

>>14698645
>We're the first generation to be worse off than our parents
Wrong

[Anonymous No.14700024]

>>14698645
People who grew up in the 1930s and during WWII might disagree.

[Anonymous No.14700068]

>>14700024
Post-war, then.

[Anonymous No.14700072]

>>14698645
Boomer standard of living as a child/teen:
>only one phone in house, usually hogged by mother or sister
>much smaller houses, less privacy
>parents were much stricter, so were schools
>no internet, no computers. If you had an essay to write, you relied on the library card catalog for research and then had to hand-write or type it out. Also you were marked down for spelliing and grammar errors, so if you made one mistake you had to start over.
>most jobs were shit labour jobs - no part time cushy office jobs doing web design or freelance graphics work
>if you wanted to go anywhere you walked or found your own way by bus
>getting money from a bank or cashing a checkmeant waiting in line up to an hour
>stores closed on Sundays and evenings
>holidays were camping in the woods with a ton of mosquitos and bugs or visiting elderly relatives.
>food was legit bland as fuck unless you lived near a city. Fresh fruit was insanely expensive in the winter if available at all.
>clothes and toys were much more expensive
>only very rich people had a/c in the summer.

[Anonymous No.14700082]

>>14700072
muh convenience

[Anonymous No.14700341]

>>14698325
>left's?
Dude, are you even wealthy?

[Anonymous No.14700428]

>>14698325
>White Privilege
This is obviously not about "the rich," it's about "the whites."
It's about using victim theory and the never-ending pool of white guilt to get something for yourself.
It's entirely made up, a social engineering tactic built on repetition, peer pressure, and shaming.

[Anonymous No.14700454]

>>14698325
>There's this fantasy in contemporary thinking that any deviation in privilege is a terrible thing that must be corrected. People who believe this also unironically call themselves "communists", and think that communism will eradicate privilege.

You've got this backwards pal. The long march through western institutions caused this. Open communism is just the last step. It sucks, but communists have successfuly subverted your entire culture to the point where the majority will beg for their communist overlords to be installed. They have rightly predicted that they need to unite these people against a singular enemy that has oppressed them and deprived them of their rights, the white male.

[Anonymous No.14700457]

>>14700072
Thiw

[Saged, hidden and reported No.14700478]

>>14698325
The only way the rich got rich is by exploiting the classes lower than them. It's not about privilege, it's about exploitation. Stop believing the myth of the self-made man.

[Anonymous No.14700484]

>>14698456
Women were given too many rights in the west and they no longer desire western men as a result. Feminism is a shit-test the western men are failing. There is deep covert admiration for fundamental Islamists from western feminists because only a strict society can calm down their hysterical personality and remold them into functioning citizens. The most radical feminist will gladly be part of a harem in the most fundamentalist patriarchy, it's the deepest wish they have and the one they cannot cope with.

[Anonymous No.14700486]

>>14698325
>No resentment, just a little envy.
Uh, aren’t you forgetting all the violent blood drenched revolutions? The fact that we HAVEN’T brought out the pitchforks and guillotines really goes to show you how little resentment there actually is now.

[Anonymous No.14700490]

>>14700072
which of those are supposed to be the bad points?

[Anonymous No.14700498]

>>14700484
Now THIS is a hysterical fantasy

[Anonymous No.14700504]

You sound like a complete cuck

[Anonymous No.14700530]

>>14700072
I’d love to own a three room shack with no A/C, but I’m stuck renting one.

[Anonymous No.14700652]

>>14698325
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is such an insufferable CUNT

[Anonymous No.14700730]

>>14698325
>Today, everybody's so bitter
Because of wealth inequality mate. Over the past few decades, the rich have been accumulating all the wealth and power, while the rest (while seeing their lives improve in ways like sanitation, medicine, etc.) have less and less power, because their slice of the wealth pie is getting smaller and smaller.

And I am NOT some lefty, I am NOT somebody who goes on about "white privilege", I think that concept is absolute bullshit.

The thing is that all this identity politics bullshit, this war between the left and right, is absolute GOLD for the wealthy (who have enough gold as it is). It means we're not attacking the real enemy: the wealthy.

Again, I'm not a lefty, I am in no way a "socialist", absolutely fucking not. I'm just an average middle class person who thinks that the rich have too much.

In fact if you listen to Bill Gates on this issue, he says that taxes on the wealthy should rise. He fully admits it. But he's also smart enough that he's not going to pay taxes that he DOESN'T NEED TO, is he? He has said this before. The burden is upon lawmakers to create new taxes.

[Anonymous No.14700808]

>>14700730
I fully agree with you anon, except that increasing taxes (income taxes) will merely slow the accumulation of wealth by the top 1%. The inequality gap will continue to grow. To really address the issue inheritance taxes need to increase dramatically, something you’ll find little support for at the moment.

[Anonymous No.14700809]

>>14698661
Good refutation. An explanation would have been nice though.

[Anonymous No.14700827]

Whites are by far the least privileged group not just in the West, but in the history of civilization. No other group has taken what they've built and given it to others, for free, then intentionally made it harder for their own ancestors to achieve in the societies they built while making it easier for people who had nothing to do with it.

This is what Infinite Jest was about, btw.

[Anonymous No.14700834]

>>14700484
They have never and will never desire weak men. Western men are weak.

[Anonymous No.14700842]

>>14700827
It’s about profit. By flooding the market with a large surplus of labor, the cost of labor drops. Believing the west is kneeling before primitive Africans is retarded

[Anonymous No.14700864]

>>14700842
Partially true, and only as it applies to the economy. But as it applies to academia, it's 100% kneeling and accepting decreased quality for happy points. This is true in the corporate world as well to a degree.

[Anonymous No.14700958]

>>14700428
its same thing with whites who don't acknowledge the superior intelligence of asian + Ashkenazi jews. Check average IQs. Asians American have to sue universities over the much higher standards for asians because too many asian people are great candidates for the elite universities. If SJWs didn't try and force muh diversity on college campuses, they would up to 70% asian (85% if you include indians) and 15 % jewish and maybe 5 % white (even less you stop legacy admissions and only judged on academic merit).

Funny IQ is only pseudo-science when it doesn't support a personal worldview.

[Anonymous No.14700990]

>>14700958
Literally no one does this though.

[Anonymous No.14700997]

>>14700072
Is this supposed to be a list of bad things?

[Anonymous No.14701016]

>>14700990
>seething mayo
conservative white folks love to declare their superior intelligence to black people, but stop at recognizing the higher IQs of asians and jews.

[Anonymous No.14701021]

>>14698325
>Back in my day, if you met somebody who came from a rich family, you would just call them lucky. You'd say "man I wish my parents left me millions when they passed away". No resentment, just a little envy.
10-4 dinosaur

[Anonymous No.14701064]

>>14701016
No they don't, lol.

[Anonymous No.14701409]

>>14698456
>I'm talking about the middle class left (academics, journalists, etc.) who view the rich with hatred
And you are correct at that. The poor don't hate the rich. They are too worried about their misery to waste energy on that. The comfy middle class is the one consumed by burning hatred against the rich.

[Anonymous No.14701467]

>>14700478
I'm curious.
Is there evidence for this?

[Anonymous No.14701553]

>>14698325
Sounds like entitlement preference dysphoria on the part of some people...

[Anonymous No.14702029]

>>14700072
Sounds fine, better even

[Anonymous No.14702699]

>>14698325
>wages stagnant for decades
>manufacturing automated or outsourced
>millennial generation born into serfdom where they will never be able to own any property
"why are people so resentful these days? in my day everyone could just work their way into the middle class!"
this really calls for the big think

[Anonymous No.14703042]

>>14701016
Jews are on par with Episcopalians in IQ, so saying they are above whit people is a bit much. Asians are vastly under represented in the Ivy League though.

[Anonymous No.14703164]

>>14700958
You are obviously not a genius.
The asians tested are from a sample size inclusive only of their brightest. The bat eating morons are not included in your "average."
And Ashkenazis are of similar IQ to Europeans because they are European, the difference being their extremely inbred and have all sorts of genetic problems.

Your post is pure projection.

[Anonymous No.14703189]

>>14703164
*they're
The "Ashkenazi Genius" myth was created, obviously, by Ashkenazis as a way to explain their extreme and noticeable neuroticism and schizophrenic tendencies.

[Anonymous No.14703223]

>>14700072
The size of houses doesn't matter if you can't afford a house. Jobs being cushy doesn't matter if half of us can't get jobs. Having to walk or get the bus is not a deprivation, having your own car is not worth being unemployed and homeless.

I understand how a boomer who is guaranteed employment and a home would interpret smartphones and cheap fruit as being indicative of a richer society, but if you have to pick between smartphones&fruit or homes&jobs then it must be conceded that the boomers did in fact have it better.

[Anonymous No.14703227]

>>14698325
Nietzsche (not directed to the left specifically), Girard and Bertrand de Jouvenel. Far better at explaining this phenomenon than 19th century materialist economics.

[Anonymous No.14703229]

If anything labour agitation and socialism is at its weakest since post WW2...

[Anonymous No.14703305]

>>14698325
Dude ur retarted theres a difference between prosperity (till 20 mil) or power(above 200 mil).

[Anonymous No.14703343]

>>14701467
No, it's basically apriori asserted as a test of loyalty. If you don't believe it you're not welcome in their circlejerk.

[Anonymous No.14703345]

>>14701016
Find me a single example of a conservative or even white nationalist figure who asserts IQ differences matter between whites and blacks but are not relevant when talking about Jews/Asians. You're talking out of your ass.

[Anonymous No.14703358]

>>14698325

dont you feel a little ashamed for asking /lit/ for books that agree with you?
why dont you try to find books that disagree with your viewpoint and see if they hold up?

[Anonymous No.14703543]

>>14700808
Introduce a wealth tax. Like this:
>Elizabeth Warren proposed an annual tax on wealth in January 2019, specifically a 2% tax for wealth over $50 million and another 1% surcharge on wealth over $1 billion. Wealth is defined as including all asset classes, including financial assets and real estate. Economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman estimated that about 75,000 households (less than 0.1%) would pay the tax. The tax would raise around $2.75 trillion over 10 years, roughly 1% GDP on average per year. This would raise the total tax burden for those subject to the wealth tax from 3.2% relative to their wealth under current law to about 4.3% on average, versus the 7.2% for the bottom 99% families.[84] For scale, the federal budget deficit in 2018 was 3.9% GDP and is expected to rise towards 5% GDP over the next decade.[85] The plan received both praise and criticism. Two billionaires, Michael Bloomberg and Howard Schultz, criticized the proposal as "unconstitutional" and "ridiculous," respectively. Warren was not surprised by this reaction, stating: "Another billionaire who thinks that billionaires shouldn't pay more in taxes."[86] Economist Paul Krugman wrote in January 2019 that polls indicate the idea of taxing the rich more is very popular.[87]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States#Proposals_to_reduce_wealth_inequality

The TLDR is a proposed tax on wealth, which includes financial assets, real estate, everything. A pretty low rate (2% on wealth over $50 million, and another 1% on wealth over $1 billion), but since the sums involved are so large, it should raise a fair amount. In fact I'd probably prefer a higher tax.

Of course you might say "the rich will just move their money out of America" but firstly, are they really going to sell up all their real estate? No they're not. They will still want property in the US. So we can tax that. Secondly, do they really want to put all their wealth into potentially less stable and secure countries abroad? To some extent they might do that, like putting money in Switzerland, which is a pretty damn stable country. But it's still worth imposing the tax, rather than not having it at all.

>inheritance taxes
Only if you mean increasing rates for the uber-rich. I think people (both common folk and rich folk) should be entitled to work hard to save money that they can leave to their kids. But yes, you could increase the rate on the uber-rich, by a couple of percentage points or more.

[Anonymous No.14703556]

>>14701553
Entitlement is something you need to believe if you want to succeed in life - everybody who fights for something in life believes they're entitled to whatever they're fighting for.

[Anonymous No.14703561]

>>14703543
>tax wealth
>wealth includes assets
>taxing assets

Oh, she's retarded.

[Anonymous No.14703574]

>>14703561
>thing bad (no reasons given)
Oh, you're retarded.

[Anonymous No.14703602]

>>14698325
>Today, everybody's so bitter, calling anyone who is fortunate enough to have had a good upbringing "privileged". Privilege is now an insult, used with the intent to make people feel bad for having an advantage.

lol my psychologist did that the last session we had, i was arguing about i´m always at disadvantage in social situations because i have anxiety and i don´t like normies and she made a big fuss about me not being the only one with stuggles in life and that i come from a privilege background and that there are many people who suffer because they have to work their ass off and such and such


i mean she´s a moron for comparing my social troubles with financial troubles, it´s like comparing apples and oranges, mere subjectivity which is worse so there´s no reason for comparing each other, that´s why i don´t like about women, they get so emotional about these things lmao

[Anonymous No.14703606]

>>14700072
That, and less rights for workers, women, minorities or anyone in the queer community.

[Anonymous No.14703607]

>>14700730
central planners at central banks are the main cause of inequality. it is their policy of punishing savers by creating inflation that incentivizes the flooding of money into bonds, stocks and housing. these asset bubbles, measured by a currency with plummeting purchasing power, are the "wealth" which seething leftists want the same central planners to grab for them. i can't think of a bigger bunch of midwits to be honest. End The Fucking Fed

[Anonymous No.14703634]

>>14703602
>my psychologist

[Anonymous No.14703643]

>>14703634
therapist, whatever, i´m a esl retard

[Anonymous No.14703669]

>>14700808
Why would I want to support a tax that would hurt my children?

[Anonymous No.14703692]

>>14703543
Works, until the swine find a loophole. The only sure way, is forceful taking of all their wealth, and assets and giving it to the working class.

[Anonymous No.14703738]

>>14703606
And that's a good thing!

[Anonymous No.14703752]

>>14703602
As much as you want to deny it, she also has a point

[Anonymous No.14704577]

>>14698325
>What is demography, the thread.

[Anonymous No.14704607]

>>14700808
>To really address the issue inheritance taxes need to increase dramatically

No. You're double-dipping taxes. The govt. already taxed that money that is being passed down.

Might as well propose a double-income tax or a double-sales tax. Fuck off.

[Anonymous No.14704814]

>>14698380
>Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple
Never thought I'd see this book mentioned here. Seconding.

[Anonymous No.14704973]

>>14703223
How can you not afford a house?? Seriously, i know lots of people on minimum wage how own their own homes.

[Anonymous No.14704988]

>>14700478
I'll take China's rapid growth in standard of living, for $500, Alex.

[Anonymous No.14705084]

>>14700730
Complete agreement. I have heard people on the far left demonise Milton Freidman, but if I recall even he proposed a 'negative income tax' for low earners as a measure along the way to phase into a more healthy market economy.

The idea that these could be economic issues that aren't in the slightest being addressed by tribalist bullshit rhetoric is completely beyond some people.

Instead we have lefty snowflakes banging on about privilege and righty snowflakes trying to find some way of talking around the fact they're just scared of brown people. And nothing changes.

[Anonymous No.14705622]

>>14703602
She had no point. The other reply is from a slave.

[Anonymous No.14705736]

>>14700827
Currently watching the semi rural place i grew up in get bulldozed and filled with an endless sea of suburban houses, they don't even have local shops or community centres (they won't need them). Instead they've built massive shopping hubs filled with international giants, many of which i've never seen in this country before (walmart, ikea).
The funny thing is that despite all these new houses being built, they're all still completely unaffordable, the people moving in are almost exclusively indian.
And no one with power is saying, or will ever say, a word about it.

[Anonymous No.14705756]

>>14704988
pretty easy to boost your standard of living in a country where the standards are fucking zero

[Anonymous No.14705769]

>>14703602
I'm sure that made you feel so much better knowing the psychologist was firmly rooting for you.

[Anonymous No.14705967]

>>14703556
Hardly. It's entirely coherent to strive and not to expect others to respect your claims to anything. You just have to also expend effort to defend your claims so it's too risky or expensive to take from you.

[Anonymous No.14706343]

>>14703752
explain why do you think that

[Anonymous No.14706349]

>>14705769
not really, she´s a stuck up bitch

[Anonymous No.14706360]

>>14703602
I studied counselling and that's like the first thing they told us not to do.

[Anonymous No.14706392]

>>14706360
Yeah this is pretty unprofessional. How is "other people have it worse" going to help? If it were enough anon could have cured himself in ten seconds.

[Anonymous No.14706423]

>>14705967
Sometimes you guys talk like you're homesteading in the woods, but really you're living in an apartment