well i sail a dinghy and yacht on the thames. its a lot cleaner than it ever used to be. i wouldnt dring the water though iv had a few mouthfuls when i capsized on the ginghy and im still here, i have been to chernobyl too now the water there i wouldnt drink

Doonesbury always has quotes on its website. Following are things heard a Rmoney fundraiser:

"Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P."
-- guest at a Romney event in the Hamptons

"Tell them who's on your yacht this weekend! Tell him!"
-- Carol Simmons, a guest at a Romney Hamptons fundraiser

"Obama's a socialist."
-- Ted Conklin, speaking from his gold Mercedes outside a Romney Hamptons fundraiser

"I don't think the common person is getting it. Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them."
-- guest at a Romeny Hamptons fundraiser, speaking from her Range Rover

Late to the party this time round...
This was my first post and my first sift!

http://videosift.com/video/Riding-the-Freak-Wave-on-a-Yacht

Edit: Oh, hey... I've been to this party before. Just noticed my post somewhere up above this one

.01%er here...man are things GRRRRRRRRRREAT! Y'all should join me. Being rich is fu—gotta go, it's my turn to snort lines off of some titties on the deck of my yacht.

holy crap those are huge land yachts!
surprisingly parking meters are still exactly the same design.

"Taken literally, the top 1 percent of American households had a minimum income of $516,633 in 2010 — a figure that includes wages, government transfers and money from capital gains, dividends and other investment income." -Washington Post

In the video, Romney and the interviewer are specifically using the term "millionaires," so I have to take their exchange at face value as meaning anyone with a net worth of at least 1 million dollars. They could have a salary of $1 for all I know, but somewhere they have assets and cash available to them summing to a million dollars.

I'd be envious of an income of $500,000 all the same, since I could become a millionaire in under 3 years by just continuing to live as I do now.

>> ^cosmovitelli:

>> ^HaricotVert:
I should have clarified. The absolute definition of "millionaire" would describe anyone whose net worth is greater than $999,999.99. Many people who have barely over the $1,000,000 threshold lead rather reasonable lives, as in they don't drive Lamborghinis or own private islands or have yachts.

Surely a million doesn't get you into the 1%? Maybe in 1990.. At a guess I'd say you needed at least $5 million to qualify, no? And probably invested in a dozen properties so the 'envious' can pay off your mortgages..
Btw well done QM he's black and has big ears! Well spotted, again. Now let adults talk.

>> ^HaricotVert:

I should have clarified. The absolute definition of "millionaire" would describe anyone whose net worth is greater than $999,999.99. Many people who have barely over the $1,000,000 threshold lead rather reasonable lives, as in they don't drive Lamborghinis or own private islands or have yachts.


Surely a million doesn't get you into the 1%? Maybe in 1990.. At a guess I'd say you needed at least $5 million to qualify, no? And probably invested in a dozen properties so the 'envious' can pay off your mortgages..

Btw well done QM he's black and has big ears! Well spotted, again. Now let adults talk.

I should have clarified. The absolute definition of "millionaire" would describe anyone whose net worth is greater than $999,999.99. Many people who have barely over the $1,000,000 threshold lead rather reasonable lives, as in they don't drive Lamborghinis or own private islands or have yachts.

The frugality of millionaires (and multi-millionaires) is explored and discussed in the book The Millionaire Next Door (first chapter available here), in which the authors Stanley and Danko collected data from a sample of 1100 millionaires and multi-millionaires. They apparently found common threads of "wealth accumulation" that allows people with strong salaries to put themselves over that million-dollar threshold over the course of years of saving and frugal living.

The short of it being that the vast majority of modest millionaires are not amoral hedge fund managers who lord his or her wealth over the hoi polloi. They're fastidious, industrious workers who have full-time jobs like me, although they typically get paid more (doctors, lawyers, etc.), have families and homes, and save a lot.

>> ^00Scud00:

>> ^HaricotVert:
It bears mentioning that most millionaires live very frugal lives themselves, anyhow.
I don't suppose you can cite any credible sources for that statement, and while we're at it, what's your definition of "frugal"?

>> ^SeesThruYou:

OMG! I can't believe how fugly cars used to be...
those are not cars. those are land yachts.

He's unlikable because of his palpable disdain for anyone who earns less than $50k a year. He's unlikable because he insists income inequality exists because we don't let the poor send their kids to work. He's unlikable because he blames some of the lowest paid people doing some of the least desirable jobs for creating poverty. If Newt was sailing around the middle of the ocean in his yacht and came across someone barely treading water he'd throw them a brick and tell them to swim their lazy asses to shore.

This has nothing to do with encouraging students to take an interest in their school, its about blaming the poor for being poor because they don't work hard enough.

>> ^tyrellmojohnston:

HOW is it a bad thing to come up with ideas that can potentially teach our youth the value of an honest day's work by giving them ways to (legally) invest in and add value to the very schools in which they attend?
There's a pretty good chance you've completely missed his point. Disguising a use-case as a general rule is just a cover for what's obviously a disdain for Gingrich the man. Hate him or not, he's smart enough to devastate Obama in any debate with his words. (It's Gingrich's unlikability that would eventually be his undoing, imo. He's nowhere NEAR as "cool" as Obama and voters totally love "cool". Not as handsome as Romney, either. People seem to dig that too.)
And as a side note, there's a pretty damn good chance that giving this video the title "Newt Gingrich wants child janitors?" is hopelessly mired in bias.
No one's marching children into factories here.
>> ^Crosswords:
Creating wage equality and promoting class mobility by firing those fat cat school janitors and replacing them with children. Why that's so brilliant its retarded!!

Fixed, thanks!

In reply to this comment by oritteropo:
*dead account closed

If I were ever rich enough to own a yacht, I want one of those.

in his defense..there ARE lazy people out there..I've met them, I've worked with them. but they're the exception, not the rule. You don't base national policy on what that small percentage of people MIGHT do.

Most people want to go out there and make a difference. They're just sick and tired that their quality of life being determined by their workplace. They're sick and tired of their livelihoods being threatened by people they will never meet.

There are certain things _all_ Americans deserve regardless of whether or not they work, regardless of how much money they make.

You want your gold-plated back-scratcher? then yeah, you gotta work for that. You want that second house or that yacht? Then yeah, work for it. What the right refuses to believe that there are PLENTY of people who have ZERO desire to be rich. They don't want mansions, they don't want expensive cars, they don't want elaborate furnishings. They just want healthcare, they don't want to be bankrupt if they get a major illness, they want education, they WANT a job that isn't going to treat them like shit. No one wants to be a second class citizen.

if you use an estimate for 2010 by the centrist to liberal Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, which pegs the share of all federal taxes for the top 1 percent at 22.7 percent.

One percent pays roughly one-fifth of taxes? Is that fair?

America was founded on principles by John Locke. Those principles were that land should not only be owned by the rich. According to wikipedia Locke implies "He just implies that government would function to moderate the conflict between the unlimited accumulation of property and a more nearly equal distribution of wealth and does not say which principles that government should apply to solve this problem"

It's quite the problem, as government can't capriciously deprive anyone of rights or private property without due process.

But actually I agree with you. If I tax the rich, they will buy fewer megayachts, (which would create jobs if U.S. regulation hadn't gutted the yacht-building industry here) and the government will just piss that tax money away on bombing Libya, or maybe homeland security irradiating pregnant women secret surface scan x-rays.

It's never explained by the left what this magic millionaire money will do that the spending addicts haven't already done. As for libyan/x-rays, the left wanted an all-powerful federal leviathan unable to be reigned in by the states...why act surprised when it does things you don't like?

>> ^hpqp:

Great speaker, and great writer too.
Seriously, who needs more than 2mio$ a year? Geez!!


What are you talking about? With what am I supposed to paint my giraffes on the diamond yacht other than the wonderful green color of mashed dollar bills?
2mio a year do you have ANY idead how long their freaking necks are?