The two are not mutually exclusive. Many think that but they are broadly generalizing or think that the only way to accumulate great wealth is to under pay the help and screw people over.

So @kgoodyear no one fell for your contrived bait. Any comment?

Money can have weird effects on people. In this case, I'd say you find new friend(s). There's a lot of good that can be done when you have money. Nor do you need to be poor to be liberal. No "justification" needed. Move on...from "them" since they weren't real friends to begin with. Sad, but it is what it is.

Im not, because they're not going to expect me to, because it's a right wing myth that democratic socialism is incompatible with capitalism. As long as I didnt throw my profits into lobbying for deregulation, tax breaks for the richest, and tearing down environmental protections to make my buck easier to grasp, there is very little if any conflict of interest there. I wouldn't waste my time innovating for an unsustainable, inevitably dying industry in the first place, but if I happened to be stuck with that as my only idea somehow, my friends know how broke I am thanks to the corporate oligarchy we live in and would be happy for me. And I would like to think Id use my new wealth and influence to shine a light on how rich people arent the ones who need more breaks, but who knows, Im sure Im as fallible as the next guy. But I do know what it's like to go hungry or count pocketchange for dinner, and I'm not likely to forget it.

The fact that so many poor conservatives advocate for policies based on the speculation "what if I get rich?" is a huge part of the problem right now.

The five wealthiest people I know (a lawyer, a patent attorney, a network security expert, the owner of a company producing gym equipment and the owner of an engineering firm) are all liberal socialists. They don't justify their wealth; they just pay their taxes willingly and are glad people less fortunate than themselves benefit from it, and fund good causes.

They are good people. Personally, I'm a horrible person; so I wouldn't care what the friends I have now thought of me, because they wouldn't be invited to my private Caribbean island where I'd spend my days snorting coke off the firm bumcheeks of well-toned 18-year-olds dressed as ancient Egyptian slaves and crashing platinum-plated helicopters just for the hell of it.

why would i invent something for an industry in which i didn't believe?

g

Thank you for providing a terrific example of a straw man fallacy.

I am assuming this is a hypothetical question, formulated and presented to try and make some point about 'liberal/socialists'.

If so, it just doesn't work.

Try again.

I'm a liberal and I'm in marketing. I'm also a former commodities broker at the Chicago Board of Trade. Not sure of your point here. I'm assuming you're trying to find some way to denigrate Democratic Socialism which is nothing like the type of socialism you seem to be alluding to.