BaconForAllah Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 So CEOs, business people, etc. are vilified constantly by the leftists. Raise taxes on the evil wealthy, they have more than enough, on and on we hear. Now across many podcasts, interviews, articles, even books-- I can't recall a leftist of whichever Occupy or Sanders or general progressive strain ever saying "Jerry Seinfeld doesn't need 80 million/year from Seinfeld syndication, that is completely unethical and he is a monster for hoarding all that money." Whichever token celebrity site you are unfortunate enough to click on, the range is from 50 to 80 million from my checking that Downey made from the recent Avengers film (and it was possibly even worse than the Iron Man ones, a feat in itself). Friends stars still get something like 15-20 million/year each residual income from the series. Hugh Laurie was making 700K-1M per episode on House in the late seasons. Seinfeld and David still earn ~$80M/year residual income via Seinfeld royalties (how ironic for David to have played Sanders on the recent SNL!). Dr. Dre sold Beats to Apple for whatever large sum and is nearly a billionaire now. Before exposing himself as a fraud, the NBC News guy Williams was earning 10M/year. Name your professional athlete being paid massive sums, tons and tons more examples we can all of course give. I am interested in knowing why none of these people are ever the targets of leftists. Where are the "Lebron James doesn't need more mansions" chants? When David Boaz was selling his recent book, he was on John Stossel's show and talking about how people don't see business people doing magical flashy things every day, so my hunch is that of course with it not being sexy like the entertainment and athletic fields, business people aren't seen as direct sales like celebrities. Samsung teams are having meetings today and tomorrow to work out the Note 6 and S7 designs and marketing; we won't be seeing those until mid 2016 as tangible items we can trade our cash for. Is it as simple as that? Flashy vs not sexy? Thanks for any input.
dsayers Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 Celebrities are a form of the media and the media is the right hand of the State. They tend to praise the State and distract people from talking about important things. Finger pointing is for the purpose of distraction, so there'd be no point in pointing the finger at those who already distract. 1
st434u Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 Three reasons I can think of, at least two of which are related to each other: 1) Most celebrities support socialism in it's various ways. 2) Socialists/communists see them as just another worker, who is hired to do a job, whereas they see business owners as the evil capitalists who are extracting surplus value from workers. 3) Socialists/communists can relate to the fact that celebrities are producing something that they want, that would not be possible without their participation. Because they don't understand businesses, profit or the market, they believe that all these three could be eliminated and still have the production of every consumer product and service that they want. They see these three as abstract entities that play no role in the production process, and only fleece surplus value off the people who actually produce them (the workers).
shirgall Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 Celebrities support socialism because it is profitable to do so. Socialists support celebrities because they are marketing multipliers even if they are imperfect conduits of "the message".
AccuTron Posted October 31, 2015 Posted October 31, 2015 When I think of big social problems, I think "spoiled brat." Such as current feminism ("hideous feminism"), trashing Sweden with immigration, other topics, usually there's a huge base of people clamoring for destructive crap based upon their feeeewings (sic) with utter refusal to listen to rational thought. I wonder how much politicians/business seem like Daddy, with money and rules, and entertainment seems like Mommy, with popsicles and ice cream. Don't want to offend Mommy with the dessert. Also, to criticize a performer, yet pay money for their shows, one must admit an inner schizo state, and I think the decision is more for pleasure than ethics.
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