【Native Speaker每日综合训练—42系列】【42-08】文史哲 Rich People

油桃F

内容：ffffionabear 编辑：油桃F

Stay tuned to our latest post! Follow us here ---> http://weibo.com/u/3476904471

感谢fiona的内容~本期的主题是那些富豪们！！enjoy~~~

Part I: Speaker

The rise of the new global super-rich

Source: TED Talk
http://www.ted.com/talks/chrystia_freeland_the_rise_of_the_new_global_super_rich

[Rephrase 1, 15:35]

油桃F

Part II: Speed

Rich kids' arrogant, disastrous driving fans hatred of wealthy
BY James Palmer (Global Times) | August 29, 2012

[Time 2]
If there's one piece of advice rich parents in China should follow, it's this: Don't let your kids anywhere near a car.

The latest case of drunken and deadly idiocy happened in Chengdu, where a 19-year-old, driving a sedan, hit a group of roadside migrant workers, injuring two and killing one.

The culprit, who didn't have a driving license, looked properly distraught in video taken by onlookers, but it was his female companion who really drew ire by yelling "Go on, film me! Yayayaya!" Hardly the best way to behave after vehicular manslaughter.

But such scandals are nothing new. From Yao Jiaxin, a student who stabbed a young mother to death after he hit her with his Chevrolet in October 2010, to Li Tianyi, the 15-year-old son of a famous musician who drunkenly attacked an older couple after bumping his car into theirs and then shouted "Who dares to call the police?"in September 2011, the mixture of entitlement, arrogance, and youth is inevitably disastrous.

Perhaps the most archetypal case is that of Li Qiming, who ploughed his Volkswagon into a crowd of students on campus of the Baoding-based Hebei University in October 2010, killing one and severely injuring another. Detained by campus security, he yelled out "Go ahead, sue me if you dare. My dad is Li Gang!" His father, the deputy director of the local public security bureau, found his family at the center of a media firestorm, while "My dad is Li Gang!" became a popular Internet meme to refer to corrosive family corruption and influence.
[245 words]

[Time 3]
There's nowhere that more neatly encapsulates the gulf between China's fuerdai, or "second generation rich," and the rest of society than on the roads. As ordinary people strap-hang to work on buses or the subway, the spoilt children of the elite zoom past in BMWs or Mercedes, driving with one hand on the wheel and the other on the smartphone. In ordinary contexts, their carelessness and callousness is merely annoying. But put them in charge on a ton of metal at 90 kph, and it turns lethal.

And when the incidents go public, they become an easy focus for public rage at a society where it can seem like who you know is more important than what you did when it comes to justice. When the perpetrator seems smugly confident that they can get away with things, netizens' anger boils over. Meanwhile, the victims, usually pedestrians trudging home along the road, are often on the lowest rungs of Chinese society. The gulf between culprit and innocent, rich and poor, is brought into sharp focus.

Admittedly, nothing in China so far has been as bad as in Nepal, where then Prince Paras was widely believed to have killed the country's most popular singer, Praveen Gurung, in a hit-and-run accident in 2000. For a Western equivalent, imagine Prince Harry running over James Blunt.

Along with his cousin Dipendra's murderous family rampage, Paras' reputation as a drunk driver was one of the factors that led to the eventual abolition of the Nepalese monarchy.
[236 words]

[Time 4]
China isn't quite at that level of anger. But with every month seeming to bring another rich kid running over a poor one, or some similar scandal of the super-wealthy, the smell of class warfare is hanging heavy in the air in China.

But some Western countries have inequality that, on paper, comes close to rivaling China, without even a fraction of the anger against rich kids. The US or UK fuerdai -actually more like 20th-generation-rich, in the case of some families - simply don't draw the same ire. Paris Hilton might irk, but she hasn't killed anyone.

Partially it's because their parents wouldn't dream of letting them on the roads without a proper license, and certainly wouldn't smile upon them driving drunk. The famous Chinese indulgence of only children may play a powerful role here. Many wealthy Western families instead impose tight limits on their kids, and keep them on relatively tight financial limits till they're old enough to handle money responsibly.

Or perhaps it's because there's more of a sense of noblesse oblige, the responsibility of the rich to the poor. It might just be a cover over fundamental inequality, but elite Western private schools encourage their students to volunteer locally, prospective Ivy League students have to make sure they have the right quota of volunteering on their resumes, and those born into wealth are often the patrons of and donators to charity.

Perhaps that's all it'll take to dampen Chinese society's hatred of rich kids; some decent PR, and learning to drive properly.
[243 words]

Source: People's Daily
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90882/7927813.html


The Wealthy Are Not Narcissists Despite New Report
BY  Steve Siebold | October 27, 2013

[Time 5]
A new study from University of California at Berkeley psychology professor Paul Piff, published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, says that being wealthy increases narcissism.

After interviewing more than 1,200 of the wealthiest individuals over the past 30 years, I can tell you it's not narcissism. The difference: Middle class believes rich people are arrogant, but the truth is the wealthy are confident.

The negative projections and derogatory labels placed on the rich are endless. One of the most common is that the rich are cocky, arrogant people who think they're better than everyone else. The truth is, successful people are confident because they repeatedly bet on themselves and are rarely disappointed. Even when they fail, they're confident in their ability to learn from the loss and come back stronger and richer than ever.

During the recession of 2008-2010, the rich took massive financial losses around the globe, but when interviewed many said they were confident in their ability to earn all the money back even faster than they initially acquired it. This is not arrogance, but self-assuredness in its finest form. The great ones develop their confidence over a period of years, but really catapult to new levels when they suffer a catastrophic loss and make what appears to be an impossible comeback. Once this happens, they no longer fear losing, knowing they can always make the money back.

As any fear-based thoughts diminish with each experience, they direct more of their mental energy towards thoughts of love, abundance and gratitude. This elevated, fearless consciousness keeps them moving towards what they want, as opposed to moving away from what they don't want. This often doubles or triples their net worth quickly due to the new efficiency in their thinking. Eventually they begin to believe they can accomplish anything, and this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

As they move from success to success, they create a psychological tidal wave of momentum that gets stronger every day, bringing their confidence so high it is often interpreted as arrogance.
Don Shula said, "If you're going to take gambles, you must have one thing: self-confidence."
[353 words]

[Time 6]
Selfish and self-absorbed?

The middle class believes the wealthy are selfish and self-absorbed. Guess what? It's true. The difference is the middle class thinks it's wrong while the wealthy thinks it's right. The masses are programmed to believe at an early age they should put the needs of others in front of their own. While this sounds like a spirit driven, high-level philosophy, it's the worst advice you can get.

When you fly on a commercial airliner, the first thing the flight attendant tells the passengers is, "in case of an emergency, please secure your oxygen mask first before you help anyone else - even children." This selfish strategy has saved many lives, and the premise is simple: If you're not taking care of you, you're not in a position to help anyone else. You can't give what you don't have, and if you're struggling to pay your bills while volunteering four nights a week, you're probably hurting more people than you're helping.

The philosophy of the wealthy is to get rich, get what you want, and help others in any way you wish. Your volunteer work, while noble, won't touch anywhere near the number of people you could be helping by creating a new product or service that makes life easier for or better for other people.

Any self-made millionaire will tell you there is a period of time in the beginning of the wealth building process where you must focus on yourself and your business in order to succeed at an uncommon level. They know it's not the highest level of thought, but it's necessary to create massive success. Once their fortune is secure, they are able to elevate their thinking if they wish, to the plight and suffering of others. They don't believe they are obligated to give back, but many choose to.

Meanwhile, the masses are toiling away with the best intentions while not being able to give much to themselves or others. They are capable of everything the rich are capable of, but few ever break out because their beliefs are so heavily ingrained in their consciousness that it keeps them blind to higher levels of thought.

Duke Ellington said, "Selfishness can be a virtue. Selfishness is essential to survival, and without survival we cannot protect those whom we love more than ourselves."
[388 words]

Source: The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-siebold/the-wealthy-are-not-narci_b_3823635.html

油桃F

Part III: Obstacle

Rich People Aren't Makers, They Are Takers
By Sean McElwee | January 23, 2014

[Paraphrase 7]
For those who haven't had the great misfortune of reading Atlas Shrugged, the book is premised on the idea that if the world's "creative leaders," businessmen, innovators, artists (i.e., the "makers") went on strike, our entire society would collapse. These strikers hide out in a utopian compound in the mountains of Colorado while the rest of us despondently wail and gnash our teeth and beg for them to once again bestow their creativity upon us. The book mirrors in many ways the more lefty Elysium, where to escape the environmental degradation they have wrought, the wealthiest go off to form their own society in the sky. The rest of the human population remains mired in slum-like conditions, because the only thing standing between humanity and savagery is Bill Gates.

But have no fear! Rather than collectively solving our problems, humanity needs a salvific "Jesus" in the form of (who else?) Matt Damon to make us citizens of Elysium and thereby save humanity. These two, very disparate tales of woe both have common elements (what I will call the "Randian vision"): society relies on the wealthy; collective action through government is either meaningless or detrimental; and a few individuals ("great men") should be the center of social change and innovation.

But all of these assumptions are false. The appeal of the Randian vision to today's wealthy is obvious: it puts them back at the center of economic life. They long ago realized that rather than being the beneficent "makers" they had always imagined themselves to be, they were the parasitical "takers" they so despised. Their wealth, which was once a symbol that God praised their work, became an instrument for social change (Carnegie, Rockefeller) and eventually good in itself (Gates, Jobs). Social Darwinism, the idea that the economy is a "survival of the fittest" competition where the superior end up on top, exults the businessman as superior and deserving. But as Henry George noted of Herbert Spencer (the founder of Social Darwinism): "Mr. Spencer is like one who might insist that each should swim for himself in crossing a river, ignoring the fact that some had been artificially provided with corks and other artificially loaded with lead." F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thorstein Veblen ridiculed the idea that the wealthy were in any way superior. Social Darwinism has resurged in conservative thought, supplementing the Randian vision to fortify a social order in which a minuscule proportion of society reaps its rewards.
Because the wealthy are no longer willing to use their wealth for good, they have decided to glorify the wealth itself as good, thus, Harry Bingswanger writes in Forbes,

"Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)"

Here we see the Randian vision in all its idiotic glory. If you could make a profit by pressing puppies into coffee, you deserve more moral praise than someone who dedicates their life to the poor. As E.F. Schumacher observed about capitalism, "Call a thing immoral or ugly, soul-destroying or a degradation to man, a peril to the peace of the world or to the well-being of future generations: as long as you have not shown it to be 'uneconomic' [unprofitable] you have not really questioned its right to exist, grow, and prosper." To justify their wealth, the titans of industry must make themselves the center of economic progress and society, but the dirty little secret is that they aren't; they're just along for the ride. As Richard Hofstadter observed about American capitalism, "Once great men created fortunes; today a great system creates fortunate men."

This observation fits with the facts: William Baumol found in the 1960s that 90 percent of the United States' GDP today is due to innovations since 1870. Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon estimates that a flat tax of 90% of income is justifiable because "social capital" accounts for 90% of income in developed countries. The Human Genome Project cost the government $3.8 billion but generated $796 billion in economic gains. The project is expected to bring about returns of 140 to 1 to the public. Research by Kenneth Flam finds that, "eighteen of the twenty five most important breakthroughs in computer technology between 1950 and 1962 were funded by the government, and in many cases the first buyer of the technology was also the government." The Randian vision praises hedge fund managers, even though most hedge funds underperform the market. Social Darwinism praises the CEO even though the most highly-paid CEOs are often unsuccessful and many companies run fine without them. Society praises Zuckerberg, Brin and Dorsey, but it was DARPA that made their coding possible. Much of the research the government pursues isn't profitable enough to merit the attention of private companies, or is simply too risky. Private space flight is only imaginable because the government went there first.

It seems almost axiomatic that no good person has ever done something great merely for a profit. They seek something more important than material possession. So why should we fear if the wealthiest left us? I would fear for the world if the empathetic, the intelligent, the compassionate, the fearless and the creative left us. We don't celebrate these virtues unless they somehow lead to monetary gain, but often they don't. Norman Borlaug, father of the "Green Revolution" that by some estimates saved 1 billion people from starvation and who was hailed as "... a towering scientist whose work rivals that of the 20th century's other great scientific benefactors of humankind," didn't work for money; he worked to help people. A Dallas Observer story about him noted that he,  "rarely indulged in the comforts of the industrialized West for any extended period of time. His choice has been to immerse himself in locales where people stare death in the face every day." When a reporter saw Mother Teresa helping a disfigured leper, he said to her, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars." Mother Theresa said, "Neither would I."

The Walton family heirs, whose fortune relies entirely on predation -- of labor, of the environment, of government, of small business -- controls more wealth than the poorest 40 million Americans. Imagine what we could do with that fortune if they left. For all the credit Bill Gates gets, it may be worth wondering, as Peter Singer did, if he has given enough:

"Gates may have given away nearly $30 billion, but that still leaves him sitting at the top of the Forbes list of the richest Americans, with $53 billion. His 66,000-square-foot high-tech lakeside estate near Seattle is reportedly worth more than $100 million. Property taxes are about $1 million. Among his possessions is the Leicester Codex, the only handwritten book by Leonardo da Vinci still in private hands, for which he paid $30.8 million in 1994. Has Bill Gates done enough? More pointedly, you might ask: if he really believes that all lives have equal value, what is he doing living in such an expensive house and owning a Leonardo Codex? Are there no more lives that could be saved by living more modestly and adding the money thus saved to the amount he has already given?"

If Gates donated all $53 billion to foreign humanitarian aid, it would be double what the U.S. government gives yearly ($23 billion in 2013). Imagine the good we could do with the fortunes of the rich, who have only amassed the wealth because of the infrastructure developed by society. Innovators regularly rely on government and academic funding for projects that corporations don't think will be profitable (according to Singer, "less than 10 percent of the world's health research budget is spent on combating conditions that account for 90 percent of the global burden of disease"). The arts are largely supported by public funding, not private donations. And many businesses are less self-sufficient than they imagine, requiring bailouts and competition between states to support them. Many corporations, like Walmart, dump poor employees on to government largess rather than pay them enough to feed themselves. And who builds the roads and takes out the garbage?

Were the richest .01% to venture out and form their own society, the rest of us would not devolve into violent conflict; rather, without the expensive burden of the wealthy tapeworms siphoning our common wealth, we could begin to solve our problems. So to the rich who threaten to leave New York, I say, "go." If the rich somehow manage to form their own planet, we can start fixing the problems on ours. We are the makers, they are the takers.
[1497 words]

Source: The Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-mcelwee/makers-takers-ayn-rand_b_4290138.html

sherryv

重回小分队！咩哈哈！

Speaker:

The existence of very rich people is a worldwide phenomenon.

One causesis political: crony capitalism (lower taxes, deregulation, particularly of financial services, privatization, weaker legal protections for trade unions)

Getting rid of cronycapitalism is very difficult.

Super star effectsdue to globalization and tech revolution.

Problems are:

Once have economicand political power, it’s tempting to manipulate or even the rules in one’s own favor.

Inequity in education
Structure unemployment

cyndichiang

Time2 1'55''
Time3 1'40''
Time4 2'07''
Chinese "second generation rich" is hatred by the society because  these rich kids are arrogant and some of them violate laws without regreting,cases that reflect the gulf between poor and rich classes.
Different from wealth Western kids who are educated in a limited and strict environment,Chinese rich kids are always under indulgence by their parents.

Time5 2'05''
Time6 2'18''
People might think the wealthy are narcissists(自我陶醉者),but they are actually confident and self-assured, confidence that bring them further success.
The wealthy are indeed selfish,but selfishness here is a quality to survive and has no reason to be blamed

Obstacle  8'08''

jokerking

还是要坚持小分队的~
spd : 1.30  1.40  1.28  1.54  2.08
OB :   9.10

dagnyd

timer2+timer3+timer4：6:54
chinese rich kids gain lots of hatred from car accident
the driving condition of rich kids in other countries
timer5+timer6：5:32
Middle class misunderstands the characters of rich class, including arrogance and selfish
timer7：14

slave918

有些连词
T2 1:42
3 stories about young culprit in China
T3 1：48
The incident shows the gulf between the rich and poor.
T4 1:38
The problem not lies in the money, but lies in the parents who spoil their kids.
T5 1:55
The author opposes that the rich people are not arrogant but confident, since they rarely fail in the past and even when they confront a failure, they can make the money back sooner.
T6 2:11
selfness enables us to be succeed first, and then to help others.
Obstacle:
2 stories show that the rich men are the center of society.
However, the author denies that opinion.
读不下去了。。。难以驾驭

psychoarya

time2+time3+time4 5:25
Chinese rich people’s kids behave bad. several examples
Nepal’s prince
Western rich kids
some advice

time5+time6 4:44
some misunderstanding about wealthy people
selfishness is essential before you are able to take care of yourself

obstacle 8:56

TINGYI-2014

2'45 2'26  2'14  2'16  2'32  10'25
Wealth is not the only thing in our life. A poor farmer can have a life as respectable as the king. So do not pay too much attention on the topic or may lost the way.