Did I say the wealthy are bad people? No. I don't believe they are--I simply disagree with the republican mantra to high heaven on "you earn it you keep it" because there is so much that people cannot possibly earn, and that those who have been so fortunate as to have not one but two wealthy/brilliant/hard-working parents (EG Sergei Brin's parents weren't the first, but were certainly the next two), who went to the few good schools in this country, got legacy'd into elite universities and so on...are already miles and miles and miles ahead of anybody else...before you start to take into account their individual merits.
Look, no matter what kind of opportunity you give someone, at the end of the day, that someone must actually be willing to take advantage of that opportunity. Sure, you can plop someone into Duke/Harvard/Yale/whatever. However, most times, said candidate is good enough to float if not swim. Rarely is the candidate an absolute dud.
However, even getting that opportunity is a Herculean task for those who don't have the above fortune (good parenting, schools, connections), which is where I believe the role of the government comes in. Not everyone has two good parents. Not everyone has connections. Not everyone has wealth. This is where the government, through progressive economic policy, should come in and level the playing field.
Republicans believe that progressive policies promote equal outcome rather than equal opportunity. Currently, I believe that opportunities are nowhere close to equal. You cannot honestly tell me that someone immigrating to the United States with two parents who have little command of English and few possessions has an equal opportunity as the child of a multimillionaire. That's just plain untrue.
I'm saying that the government has a much larger role to play than the shills-for-the-rich republicans believe it does in terms of economic policy, and a much smaller role to play in terms of the moralizing social policies that the republicans believe it is supposed to have.
Basically, the case is this:
Republicans: socially intrusive, economically laissez-faire government
Democrats: live-and-let-live social policies, active economic engagement to attempt to equalize for the luck the more fortunate/privileged individuals in this country have.
I don't begrudge the wealthy their success. I begrudge the republicans for abandoning everyone else. Their greed and self-servicing attitudes are plain as day.
As for what I want wealth for, the answer is simple: to build a family that doesn't blow up the way mine did over money. If you can sneeze and cover the cost of a college education for 3 children and afford to live an upper-middle-class lifestyle, that's already fantastic. To me, at the moment, everything else beyond that seems like so much gravy. Mansions, yachts, country clubs...all of that stuff is over my head. I get my entertainment from good stories and colorful gaming experiences and youtube. So I myself don't need much. It's just that I want to be the kind of father/husband my father never ever was.
