Quit moaning, yacht boy

Some people can have all the money and success in the world and still can’t quit moaning. I humbly suggest that they stop.

A moneyed idiot named Tom Perkins wrote a letter to the Washington Post warning that there would someday be a “progressive Kristallnacht” against the wealthy people in this country. He sees “a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent.” What is one of the examples Perkins cites as evidence of the coming pogrom against the yacht set? The San Francisco Chronicle apparently attacked Danielle Steel as a “snob.”

A chill just went up my spine. Calling a popular author a mild insult? I can hear the jackboots in the distance.

Millions of dollars apparently cannot buy basic reasoning skills or tact. First off, comparing anything aside from literal genocide to the Nazis should get you banned from debate club. It’s a lazy, juvenile way to argue your point.

Second, using the proposed analogy, does Perkins really think a fascist government will imprison the wealthy in concentration camps? Does he really think there will come a night when people riot in the streets and throw bricks through the windows of any mansions or successful companies, killing dozens, as happened on Kristallnacht? If someone actually came to imprison Perkins, he could just sail away to the Cayman Islands or somewhere on his $130 million yacht, a luxury that the victims of the actual Holocaust did not have.

I don’t resent people for being rich and successful. What I do resent, and what I’m sure other people resent, are those who are rich and successful and still can’t stop complaining and playing the victim and reveling in naked greed and just generally being obnoxious about how rich they are.

So you get people who complain about the threat of paying slightly higher marginal tax rates when they’re so rich that they wouldn’t even feel it. They wouldn’t even feel it! Perkins demonstrated this himself when he bragged that the watch he was wearing was worth “a six pack of Rolexes.” Someone who would do that does not get to complain about persecution because he has just flaunted his power. By definition, the powerful cannot be bullied by the less powerful. At least people with old money know how to handle their wealth with discretion and tact.

I don’t want to see rich people rounded up or killed. What I do wish is that people of every income level would be grateful with what we have and show some compassion to people below us on the economic totem pole rather than looking around in envy to see if someone else might be getting a bigger piece of cake than we are.