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By that I mean, getting to the heart of the issue.

Yes. Materialism as a means of control.

Rich people are going to be rich because that's all they know and if they're not rich they'll die.

Poor people want to be rich or at least think they do but after being poor for so long most poor people couldn't handle being rich and would just die anyways.

Back in October, we coined the term ‘Plutonomy’ (The Global Investigator, Plutonomy:
Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, October 14 2005). Our thesis is that the rich
are the dominant drivers of demand in many economies around the world (the US, UK,
Canada and Australia). These economies have seen the rich take an increasing share of
income and wealth over the last 20 years, to the extent that the rich now dominate income,
wealth and spending in these countries. Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable
treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper and become a
greater share of the economy in the plutonomy countries. Also, new media dissemination
technologies like internet downloading, cable and satellite TV, have disproportionately
increased the audiences, and hence gains to “superstars” – think golf, soccer, and baseball
players, music/TV and movie icons, fashion models, designers, celebrity chefs etc. These
“content” providers, the tech whizzes who own the pipes and distribution, the lawyers and
bankers who intermediate globalization and productivity, the CEOs who lead the charge in
converting globalization and technology to increase the profit share of the economy at the
expense of labor, all contribute to plutonomy. Indeed, David Gordon and Ian Dew-Becker of
the NBER demonstrate that the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the US – the
plutonomists in our parlance – have benefited disproportionately from the recent
productivity surge in the US. ( See “Where did the Productivity Growth Go? Inflation
Dynamics and the Distribution of Income”, NBERWorking Paper 11842, December 2005).
By contrast, in other countries such as Japan, France and the Netherlands (read much of
continental Europe), egalitarianism has kept the rich to a similar share of income and wealth
that they accounted for in the 1980s – in other words, they haven’t really gotten any richer,
in relative terms.
We believe that the plutonomy thesis helps explain some of the conundrums that vex so
many equity investors, such as why high oil prices haven’t slowed the global economy, why
consumer confidence might be low yet consumption remains robust in the US, why savings
rates are low, and why the dollar depreciation hasn’t done much for the US trade deficit.
Why as equity investors do we care about these issues? Despite being in great shape, we
think that global capitalists are going to be getting an even greater share of the wealth pie
over the next few years, as capitalists benefit disproportionately from globalization and the
productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor. As we believe plutonomy explains away
some of the conundrums we highlighted above, we are very relaxed about these issues.
Indeed, if the rich keep getting richer, as we suggest, savings rates might get even worse in
the plutonomy countries. If plutonomy explains away many conundrums that our equity
clients worry about, then this suggests the risk premia ascribed to equities might be too high.
Furthermore, if the rich will be getting even richer in the coming years, this bodes extremely
well for businesses selling to or servicing the rich, be it for example luxury goods stocks or
private banks.

Is this to say that poverty is terrible? That lesser clothing in the eyes of society lead to poverty? That being thrifty is a bad thing, especially in this economy?

I'm not saying it's a virture but I don't think it's entirely bad.

In regards to the funny about dressing poor part, I'll assume it was made obvious elsewhere in this thread or in one of the links contained therein. I skimmed the thread for the most part so my apologies if my assumptions weren't on the mark.

That's not what I'm saying at all. Like I said, I shop a lot at Goodwill and similar thrift stores run by charities. There's a lot of decent clothing to be had for a very reasonable price. The thing is, you can buy clothes there and wear nothing but those clothes without looking as if you have no idea how to dress yourself. You don't have to look like a reject from the Haight-Ashbury Circus just because you're "poor" and shop at thrift stores. These people choose to look like that. They're not dressing like they're "poor" so much as they're dressing like classless white trash.

It's nothing to be ashamed of, especially if you're impoverished through no fault of your own, and that's the case for a few people. However, as a society we've stopped blaming people for their own bad decision making and started blaming outside forces/people for the consequences that very clearly come from the actions some people choose; having children when they don't have the means to support them, smoking/drinking/other vices, and failing to prioritize paying for basic needs over frivolous expenses. The last one is probably the worst. I saw an article a few years back about a mother who was having difficulty making ends meet since she'd starting working and had come off welfare. It was a complete sob story piece about how hard things were for her, but a picture that accompanied it showed a huge projection TV in her living room, and another showed her talking on what was at the time a top-of-the-line cell phone. We're looking for the causes of the problem but ignoring the obvious ones because we don't want to chastise people who are in a bad situation.

I think the worst part is that by giving credence to the idea that other people are to blame, that all business/businessmen only have what they have because they've someone 'cheated' to get it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

You are controlled through image and then you wonder why politicians are all image and no substance.

Cato the Younger said the same thing (almost verbatim) and he was wrong then too.

My point is that "image" is the only thing in play here, Einstein. I'm not sure how I'm the one who is controlled by image when I'm pointing out that appearance, and little else, seems to be the primary motivator for the yahoos taking up space in the NYC.

So, "you're wrong because I say you're wrong" again? No matter how you dress it, that's an old song-and-dance.

Perhaps the real reason you're so adamant about what these reprobates are about is that you have so much in common with them. Making a pretense of rejecting your/their background while still enjoying the perks of it and preaching to the rest of us as if you're somehow possessed of some prescience or wisdom everyone else lacks...sounds to me as if you might as well drop what you're doing and go join your soul-mates on Wall Street.

Please come back when you've got something more to add than "I'm right because I said so," and the at-this-point-laughable "I'm smarter than you."

Your Pal,
Jubber

I've taken the liberty of creating "The Aestu Wheel of Rebuttal" I'm convinced he has a set of darts at the ready whenever a debate starts.