Greed can be in ones own family,,eating too much of the food, Hogging the TV,,,or stereo, etc. It's all greed... No it's not,,it's up to the individual it's theirs. You demanding they share through power, force,,,that's greedy. They may be selfish,,but that's just a perception from another. That I can agree with because you are doing harm,, Ahhh,,,this is the error. People from the right do not think all Liberals hate all wealthy people, it's the Liberal media that tries to paint the wealthy as greedy to induce class warfare. It's how they rile their base,,,follow? The more they can divide, the more they secure the vote. It's how they tried to frame Romney and many others, they want people to hate. ''HATE THAT RICH GUY,,AND VOTE FOR US'' It's as old as the Hills, the left has done this forever in politics. The left ran into a problem though when people saw Romney in that debate, they realized he's not the Rich horrible guy they tried to make him appear. It's why his numbers went up, and probably why he'll win...
The definition of greed includes the words 'excessive' and 'gluttony'.....However words are often re-defined by the users....i.e., the word "gay" used to mean joyous, given to social pleasures, morally unrestrained, licentious, etc. Today it means Homosexual. As far as I know, no one is questioning it's new use.
Do you consider all your 'desires' satisfied? Will you not aspire to anything more? If so, what is the cut-off where your aspirations change to greed? Will you dictate to others when they should stop aspiring for a higher position in their lives?
The cut off is when it hurts others or yourself, isn't it? I mean, Santa Claus is greedy for giving stuff to kids, especially those hard to find, right?
"Greed" is a negative evolutionary trait: "The starving man wants, but never gets. The satisfied man never wants, but has everything."
Why is it that people call the money earned by people's ambitions greedy, but don't call it greedy to steal that money from the people that earned it to give it to somebody that didn't?
Define "earned". All business takes place in the context of society's rules and support mechanisms. Just by having one currency and a regulated stock market the USA makes a massive impact on how those ambitions can be. There is a definite trade-off between the realization of the ambition of the individual (which is nearly always measure in dollar signs nowadays but which isn't historically the case) and the needs of the society in which he lives. Ideally, society contributes to the individual and the individual contributes to society in return. So if you are saying that the current crony-capitalist system we have evolved, with all its tax loopholes and subsidies and favorable regulations and massive red tape (although compared to somewhere like Russia we're nothing special) is the only possible playing field for someone to realize their ambitions then UnBubba has a point. You then have to accept that this means the changes in real wealth between rich and poor will continue to widen and the middle class will continue to shrink (the trend of the past three decades). The end result of this would be more like a South American country than the USA we remember. And what about estate taxes? Why should spoiled rich kids get to inherit obscene amounts of wealth from their ambitious and hardworking parents? Why shouldn't they get $30 milllion instead of $100 million (just picking numbers out of my head); does that really ruin their prospects in life or undo everything their parents worked for? This would be a very useful longterm method of both revenue generation and of reversing the increasing real wealth gap WITHOUT having to impose excess taxation on the successful ambitious people. By framing the question into a single if/or statement, UnBubba actually is cutting off real debate on this issue. I'd be interested in seeing his reply to my more multi-dimensional question.
