I've just read two diaries on the titular question,The Super Rich With Consciences: Super-Donors to Obama and Dems and Why rich progressives will not ride to the rescue. Both are well worth your time and the issue well worth your consideration. Below the fold are a selection my comments to both.
To the first diary cited above:
I'm so glad the moderate billionaires (4+ / 0-)
are stepping up because, although I donated $1500 to Obama the first time around, my home equity was wiped out and I just can't afford it.
But the financial sector was saved and I'm sure the trickling down will begin any day now, raining down on us like piss from the sky.
There is nothing to cheer about when our government becomes the plaything of the rich whatever their persuasion.
Did you read the news yesterday about (0+ / 0-)
the middle class losing 40% of their net worth because it consisted largely of home equity? Did you note that the wealthy, whose wealth consists largely of financial assets have been made whole and then some since the crash?
The little guys were Obama's base for Christ's sake. I gave him $1500. I lost $200,000 in home equity and got mugged by his bullshit mortgage relief program HAMP.
How many dollars and votes do you think he will be getting from folks like me this time around?
So, go run to sugar daddy because you are and should be scared shitless about what's coming.
The diarist responds:
a rather nasty comment. (2+ / 0-)
I will vote for Obama and have given money to him. Sorry about you loss. Most Americans do nothave 200000 equity to lose. You put down 200000 on a house and lost irt all?
To which I responded:
I apologize for directing my ire toward you (0+ / 0-)
personally. I highly disapprove of the use of such rhetorical tactics here and so I have violated one of my own principles. You don't deserve to be addressed in that manner.
Actually, I have been in this house since 1995 and in 2004 refinanced pursuant to a divorce so I could buy out my ex. But I still had the amount of equity as stated.
I subsequently retired with adequate but reduced income and was intending to sell the house when the kids moved out and use the proceeds to buy a smaller home with a lower payment.
Now, I either default and destroy my credit rating or continue to pay up, thus spending my retirement savings sooner and faster than I'd intended. In addition, I now also lack the financial cushion that would have enabled me to start a small business not to mention to pay increased medical costs.
My situation, is hardly unique, and that my friend, is a big problem for Obama and the Democrats. Its bigger than that, its the problem of this nation and those of Europe and elsewhere. It is a problem of developed nations in the toils of late stage capitalism, wherein the opportunities for high rates of return on capital are in other, often undemocratic countries. Meanwhile, the citizens of the developed countries, where the capital was initially created, do not equally share in the gains offered from those higher rates of return generated abroad.
Just as the right has engineered a bloodless and "silent coup", so the left now needs to mount a bloodless revolution.
Cheers, and once again, I am sorry.
As to the second diary my response is short and sweet.
"Pity would be no more (1+ / 0-)
If we did not make somebody poor;
And Mercy no more could be
If all were as happy as we."
William Blake
For the notion of noblesse oblige the French revolutionaries had the right answer.