When do you consider someone "wealthy" or "rich"?

Discussion in 'Business & Economics' started by Seattle, Aug 8, 2019.

  1. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Nope. A lot of men are like Kavanaugh. Making yourself feel better by saying "well, they are not really adults so I can exclude them from that group" isn't all that useful.

    Words mean things, and adult means someone who has reached a certain age. That age can differ depending on the criterion but is usually between 17 and 21 in the US. In no case does it include qualifiers like "people who treat women well" or "people who show good judgment" or any other subjective criteria.

    That's it. That's what the word means.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    I'm not interested in what you find "useful". (For what?)
    I'm interested in making accurate statements and honest observations and verifiably correct claims.
    The quote marks around that bs of yours are at best badly mistaken, btw, the attempted paraphrase being significantly different from anything I have posted here or would post anywhere
    (example: "that group", "I can exclude", and all the connotations of assigning that misrepresentational paraphrase to my posting, are stereotypical inventions of your own - not derived from, but instead conflicting with, my posting here. You have built a straw man to address your replies to, for some reason; in your case I think as a defense mechanism, so that you can reply like that without embarrassing yourself in your own eyes)
    - yet another example of the reason my replies to you folks are as repetitive as I can make them: you need the same corrections, over and over and over, and it's very important the folks attempting to straighten you out on these basics do as little work as possible (the whole point of the Republican feed's instigation of stereotype assaults like that is to waste time and deflect focus. Such posting here functions as squid ink or smoke screening or cover fire).

    In other words: "Making myself feel better by - " wtf are you even talking about?

    Briefly: A lot of white American men are like Kavanaugh - so you misspoke: Your post should have read "Yep. A lot of men are like Kavanaugh".

    Meanwhile: The immaturity, the juvenile mindset, the sheer tantrum-prone childishness, of the white male Republican voter in this country is in my opinion possibly the single most important fact about the current political situation. It explains their meanness and approval of sadistic authority, for example, which otherwise has no clear connection to their ignorance - a clear and present danger to any functioning democracy.
    No, it doesn't. That's a specialized and secondary and comparatively trivial (in this context) legal meaning.
    As I keep having to post, when addressed from the right:
    ?
    Will you guys please buy a fucking dictionary - one without the word "Webster" in its name would be best, usage advice is necessary (if it defines the word "adult" as a verb, without qualification or warning, look elsewhere) - and look up this stuff before you post?

    Here's Wiki:
    That is: You will find, implicitly in all and explicitly in the prescriptive, "one who has attained maturity", "one who has fully developed", etc, given as primary and general and common and standard meanings. You will find the concept and reasonably synonymous term in all human cultures, including those that do not keep track of age in years. You will find your little brain glitch there explicitly described as a "legal" definition - a narrow and essentially arbitrary definition as much free of the otherwise fundamental "subjective" meanings and implications as possible. (It's seldom possible to prove maturity and psychological capability or complexity in court - age in years will have to do, shallow and inadequate proxy though it obviously is.)

    And I mark another illustration of the circumstantial fact: the media feed from the political movement that has taken over the Republican Party cripples the ability of its victims to reason, think, or even perceive certain aspects of the common reality.

    Look at the amount of time spent on this forum in high school or even grade school level vocabulary lessons, grammar lessons, introductions to elementary logic, how to use a dictionary, how to read a graph, and so forth: it's part of the same grim chore that confronts the martyr who tries to explain what fascism is, why fascism is not socialism, why fascism is dangerous, why personal conflicts of interest involving money or power in one's political representatives are dangerous, and so forth.

    That isn't trivial. That is how fascism wins, when it does - it bulldozes public discussion into landfill, without even the memory of what happened to what used to be.
     
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  5. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    For communication.

    If posters make up their own meanings for words, communication becomes rather difficult, don't you ken?
    Excellent. Then let's stick to the actual meaning of words.
     
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  7. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    I prefer grown-ass, but will settle for "of voting age".
     
  8. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    That works. It's like the term "of a certain age" - a bit ambiguous but everyone knows that you are talking about your own definition of an age group.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    That's why I corrected your grade school level mistake, the kind the modern American "conservative" makes routinely these days, and recommended a good dictionary - same one Vociferous and Seattle and the rest can't figure out how to use.
    The American Heritage series is pretty good - I prefer the Third.
    Because you are attacking personally and from what you consider the "right", I think you will continue to brush off all third party sources of information (such as dictionaries and usage analyses and cross-cultural anecdotes and quotes from good writing and so forth), and instead insist on your personal meaning for "adult" (that the word refers only to a legally established age in years, that by definition its meaning is a legally specified age in years) regardless of what is posted in front of you, and regardless of what you find in sources of information about the meanings of words.

    "Us"? You address yourself. I've never done anything else. I've known what the English language word "adult" means for many years.

    "Let's" start with you looking them up in the dictionary - or reading provided links, etc. We can discuss the nuances when you have the basics under control.

    For example: the meaning of the word "adult" changes with context. If you overheard a Texas A &M college student complaining that their divorcing parents needed to learn to act like adults, I doubt you would take that as meaning acting like 18 year olds. That is, you don't believe your claim any more than I do. You don't use the adjective "adult" to mean characteristic of 18 year olds in Texas any more than I do, or anyone here.

    Another: My guess is that nobody here regards acting like a normal 18 year old Greek pledge at Texas A&M (https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https://tse1.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.GST8yGuiCj9QnFY_PyEpgQHaEK&pid=Api&f=1 ) as acting like an adult at all - let alone by definition.

    I'll try again:
    Do you doubt - in your own judgment, doubt - that if you looked up the meaning of the word "adult" or investigated its common usage you would find anything substantially different ?
     
    Last edited: Aug 24, 2020
  10. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    I know a lot of management curses too, having worked in industrial management for over 30 years. I even know a rather good one in Arabic.

    But tell me, what are you selling?
     
    Write4U likes this.
  11. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    21,634
    Or not.
     
  12. Seattle Valued Senior Member

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    8,849
    Tell me more! Can I get in on the ground floor so I can understand a lot of new things too or is enrollment not open to the general public?

    I'm so excited for you.
     
  13. Jeeves Valued Senior Member

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    5,089
    Trump University?
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    So no dictionary consultation, no fact-checking, no re-evaluation. Instead, sloppy innuendo and a genuinely disappointing ethical breakdown. One would have expected better, before reading that.

    Clarification? Ok: The editing job there, revealing as it does the necessary considerations behind the omitted context of those quotes, is pretty ugly: the poster has chosen dishonesty over discussion, in a raw and transparent form. And as with their similarly cornered and reactionary predecessors here (and everywhere), their posts are dwindling to one line ambiguity and innuendo - getting cornered by a dictionary is apparently painful.

    So the fact that there is no way to justify or defend the rather silly claim that "adult" refers to a specific age in years and nothing else ("actually"?) - no longer matters: from here on until they forget the poster is going to pretend that the "actual meaning" of the word "adult" is a specific age in years, and nothing else; that when educated and literate native speakers of English people use that word they are not referring to "subjective" stuff like maturity, self-control, responsibility, good judgement, etc, but rather to a calendar age and nothing but. The conservative poster will die on that kind of hill.

    And even more intriguing: the merely temporarily "conservative" poster will die on that kind of hill: that intellectual implosion to absurdity correlates not with personality or character or mental competence in general but with an adopted ideological frame. It comes with the territory, not the homesteader.

    Or to highlight:
    We have a poster insisting when people from Texas talk about behaving like an adult, letting the adults handle it, etc., they are "actually" - in rightwing real life, the rightwing reality no kidding - talking about acting like an 18 year old fraternity pledge at Texas A&M.

    The poster believes that. They insist on the rest of us believing that they believe that.

    And in doing so they make oracles out of posts like this one:
    It took me a while after I ran across it to fully credit this observation:

    - The media operations of the fascist movement in the US have, as similar operations in other fascist movements in other places famously have in their own cultures, damaged the minds of American "conservatives". They can no longer think clearly about certain issues. -

    But the net or residual insight has proven itself unavoidable: The American "conservative", trapped into accommodating an insanity, is to that extent not ok.

    And that's the one interesting lesson of this (and these) tangents: There is no physical reality behind the issue of when American "conservatives" consider someone wealthy or rich, so any thread on the topic will founder on ascriptions of envy, of defiance of "the man" or the "evil capitalist", of whether the wealthy are viewed as deserving and decent people, and similar borrowings from cartoonish stereotypes of other people's supposed thinking.
     
  15. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    12,451
    Ah, so you are selling an academic cheating service, I see.

    I've reported this and hope very much to see you banned shortly.
     
  16. Michael 345 New year. PRESENT is 72 years oldl Valued Senior Member

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    Read your post

    Iggied subject person. Thanks

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  17. exchemist Valued Senior Member

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    No need - this person, or bot, will get banned and that will save you the trouble.
     
  18. Bells Staff Member

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    Bot from the Ukraine..

    Apparently the academic courses they were selling did not teach them how to even spell "course".
     
  19. river

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    17,307
    Wealthy and Rich , but not necessarily intelligent .
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    When do you consider someone "wealthy" or "rich"?

    When they have acquired more than what is needed for survival.
    The desire to acquire more than what is "needed" is the foundation of "greed".

    Greed
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greed#
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2020
  21. river

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    17,307
    Perhaps you could look at Wealthy and the Rich that way , and to your point for some it is greed . And Power .

    But for others , Wealth is a way to Express their personal tastes from Architecture , arts , sciences , history etc. .

    Wealth enriches the intellect . And the people you meet as well .
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2020
  22. Write4U Valued Senior Member

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    20,069
    Right.
    That is not a logical argument.
    How many of the top 1% do you know and have enriched your intellect?
    Your words....

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    The most important question is how the wealth is acquired and at what long term costs?
    Think about it.

    There is no free lunch, and History has shown that "trickle down economics" are based on a false premise.
     
    Last edited: Oct 20, 2020
  23. river

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    17,307
    What do you mean ?
     

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