Liberal jealousy

A lot of conservatives love to peddle the idea that liberals simply hate rich people out of jealousy, and that's why we value economic and social justice: if you stand up for society's "losers," you must harbor a jealous hatred of its "winners." But if that were the case, we'd hate Warren Buffet, John Stewart (who's doing pretty well himself), and most every wealthy liberal Hollywood icon just as much as we hate Grover Norquist and the Koch brothers.

It's not that we hate rich people; it's more that, as people with morals, spines, and standards, we actually give a shit HOW a person becomes rich and how they behave after they become rich. 

So if you're rich because you came up with a good business idea, put it into action, and ran your business well, then good for you! And if you recognize how much of your success is due to the efforts of your employees and due to the infrastructure in the US that makes it possible for new businesses to succeed; and so you pay your employees a decent living and pay your share in taxes like an adult, then also good for you!

But if you only became rich by skimping on your workers' salaries, or cutting corners on workplace safety, or by selling faulty products, or shipping jobs to sweatshops overseas, then I have no reason to revere you for your so-called "success."  If you then spend that money on lobbying for nefarious causes, bribing government officials, and hiring legal teams to find legal loopholes that allow unethical business practices, I'm not going to revere you as some god-like "job creator" that the rest of society owes some sort of feudal-style fealty to. Why should I support behavior like that?  Why should I view that as any different from people who become rich by other harmful means like robbing banks, committing extortion, or working as a contract killer?

There are lots of ways to get rich. Some of them benefit society, others harm society (or the planet). I'm not going to treat them as the same just so that rich people will smile down on me, and I'll never understand the submissive mentality of people who do. 

Then, of course, you have slightly less "submissive" conservatives whose motives go a bit beyond mere obedience and reverance for anyone with money: the ones who are deluded by fantasies that someday they'll be rich and when that happens they don't want to have to act responsibly. But I think that's still really telling of their mentality. It's akin to a slave supporting slavery because he would LOVE to get the chance to whip other slaves someday, once he somehow buys a plantation. A decent person simply doesn't entertain desires to harm other people for profit, not even in fantasies where they'd have the capability.

If I had my own company, I wouldn't triple my salary while cutting my employees' pay like the Hostess CEOs. I wouldn't run several sweatshops that barely pay a thing while buying myself several expensive hummers like Phil Knight. I wouldn't expect the government to cut public education funding before taxing me an extra 3% like Grover Norquist or the Koch brothers. I would never spend money funding disinformation and climate change denialism.  If these things were necessary to grow my company into a large one, then I'd keep it as a small business. If these things were necessary to give myself an exorbitant salary, then I'd maintain a modest, comfortable one.  I would only lay people off as a last resort to keep the company afloat (and again, never while raising my own pay, or even keeping it the same). I would never dump toxins into people's drinking water, or into vital habitat for some other species.  I wouldn't make my employees work in dangerous conditions (such as handling carcinogenic chemicals without proper protective gear) in order to save money on protective measures (money that would likely go into my pocket and not theirs).

I wouldn't do these things for the same reason I'd never murder someone for money: because I'm not a sociopath, and I'm not a greedy 8-year-old trapped in an adult business-major's body.  Anyone who does these things, or who would do these things if only they had the means, is human scum. And I refuse to treat them any other way.