If the Occupiers became super rich...

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...do you think they would stay part of the movement, or would they switch sides, and side with the CEOs?

who knows? money can change people. me personally if i became super rich i think i still wouldnt side with the CEOs. its not about money its about equality.

Most of them would switch sides with incredible ease. Even without suddenly acquiring a lot of money, people who earn a lot of money change their political beliefs to suit their new situation. I've observed a lot of people who went from being hippies, opposing nuclear arms, caring about the environment and demanding social justice, tolerance and equality to conservative men in suits. It's not really about their sacred ideals - it's about their personal situation. Ultimately, this is a situation similar to the one observed where people brag about how they'd defend an innocent victim - only if you've been in the situation, you can tell what you'd do. Most people who say they'd defend an innocent victim tend to run even faster than the rest of us, and I think most people who believe in equality and social justice would stop believing in that when given money and a tax form.

Some might, others would just take an elitist 'do as I say not as I do' standpoint. I have to imagine a lot of those kids aren't poor to begin with.

Here's something interesting. Perhaps they're not wealthy enough to be considered "1%", but not poor enough to have to spend their time working. Middle class kids with time on their hands have always been a nuisance. They used to be called hippies, and they showed their opposition to war by letting other, poorer kids die while they dodged the draft to stay out of the jungle and in college and spent their time attending lectures and yelling at recovering veterans.

It's hard to say, but its one of those funny things. Do the occupy members have a clue about being a Type A achiever, working your ass off, going through 6+ years of college + grad school, interning every summer at a high pressure firm and so on? I often find that people who have done the work want to protect the fruits of their efforts whereas people who haven't done the work want to take the fruit of the effort of others.

People in banks such as Goldman, consulting firms such as Deloitte, KPMG, or other high pressure jobs with big paychecks do work extremely long hours, shoulder massive responsibilities and have extremely high demands placed on them, something which few bong-smoking drum-circlers have a clue about. It's a matter of 9 - 5, it's 6 - 2, then 3 hours of sleep a quick shower and then back to work.

A lot of people work long hours in highly educated fields without the financial rewards of the financial industry.

In NYC especially there are a lot of career minded professionals with multiple degrees who don't pull down that kind of money. You can have an experienced psychiatrist on the UES sitting their listening to a suit who just pulled down a million dollar bonus. And they do notice the pay discrepancy. Wall Street is it's own world, even by the standards of NYC's upper middle class. Kind of like Hollywood money.

Very few of the ultra wealthy fall into this hard worker myth look at forbes top 400.
None of them work in bank or consulting firms. None of them work at all. You don't get that rich from being an employee.

Just take the Top 10
5 inherited their money.
2 had windfalls in the tech boom.
2 are investors
1 Owns casinos (but he is a scrapper)

none of them are the people you described.
their combined wealth is 248.5 billion.
divided by the population of the U.S. (311,591,917)
that is a flat screen TV for every man woman and child in america.

10 people and only 6 surnames with 248.5 billion dollars of wealth that they did not get from hard work. But from luck.

this hard work thing.
it is a great myth too bad reality disagrees.

Occupy Wallstreet people are so diverse. I think some of them would side with the CEOs, but some of them are visionaries and would probably use the money to fund their non-profits, or fair-trade companies.

Good question. Occupy Wall Street is not about a hatred of being rich, more about the oppression of the 99% by the 1%. Basically, the 99% wants as much money as the 1%. It raises serious philosophical questions, the prominent one being is it possible for the 99% to ever be as rich as the 1%? Each individual having as much money as the one percent. There's not enough money in print for that. This is a capitalistic quandary for sure.

I think they'd tend not to. Most rich people get rich through inheritance and so grow up in the culture of the rich. Someone who wins the lottery won't have that. I think that the average non-rich American would have an average chance of identifying with the rich, but someone at Occupy would be aware enough of what's goin on politically to know better.

Many OWS types are well to do, but they believe that wealth distribution is for everyone else.

Okay, here's a question for you. Do you believe in the American dream? If the answer is yes then how do you suppose it can happen if wealth is never redistributed? If it never is, how can anyone get rich besides the ones who already are? I just don't get the logic in people who go on and on about "wealth redistribution." They don't even know what they are talking about. If wealth never gets redistributed, you don't have a capitalistic society. That's the idea behind capitalism. Money keeps changing hands and creates WOW an economy. Without you have stasis.

For an economic cycle you MUST have wealth redistribution, otherwise it's an economic caste system that offers no opportunity.

So my reply to everyone who goes on and on about wealth redistribution is "so what?" It should be redistributed. If it isn't you sure as hell do not have have capitalism.

and for themselves going against personal interest is not the profile of a hypocrite it is the manner of a moral person.

Carlos Slim started buying stocks at 12, worked at his fathers company at 17.
Bill Gates started his own company and developed it into the most successful software company in the world. Somehow I suspect this took a lot of hard work.
Warren Buffett started out selling gum and buying gum machines at an early age, worked at various investment banks before starting his own partnership.
Bernard Arnault took his father's company and massively increased its value.
Amancio Ortega is the son of a railway worker, who founded a clothing empire.
Larry Ellison created his own wealth through co-founding Oracle Corporation.
Eike Batista largely created his own wealth through entrepreneurship
Stefan Persson did take over his father's company, but was largely responsible for the expansion from Swedish brand to worldwide.
Li Ka-shing is completely self made.
Karl Albrecht is the son of a miner.

So out of the top 10, 5 (Gates, Buffett, Ortega, Ellison, Ka-shing and Albrecht) are completely self made billionaires. You can denigrate their efforts, but they did work long, hard hours to get where they are now. The other's did inherit small fortunes but increased them dramatically through their own efforts. Trust me, they all work, for themselves. IE self-employed.

did I say American it is hard to take your arguments seriously as it is but lets try to get the same data set. the forbes 400 is american.

But that is a fantastic argument about have the socialist governments of Europe and Asia reward go-getters.

Apparently in america we prefer the silver spoon set.

also before you dive into utter sophistry the person you described in the inital post is an employee of a bank or investment group right?




Not the magic self-made men of your later goalpost shift.
The list I got has 3 Waltons and 2 Kochs on it. The probability of merit being concentrated in only six families is a bit silly to me but please argue it.

turns out hard work will get you to the top of your economic class but it takes a bit of something else to let you transcend it.

A person that thinks that hard work makes you rich has never been to a steel mill or a coal mine. Sure hard work makes people rich unfortunately it is rarely the person working hard that gets the cash.