There are no free markets in the US. The major player have the power of the railroad trusts that brought about anti-trust laws over a century ago but have been abandoned since Reagan.
Oh please, I don’t want you to think that was a sneer at community colleges. I assure it the sneer was directly firmly at yourself. You are clearly not up to Community College standards and could use some education in logic.
Oh, poor, poor lurking guest. This right here is the hugest different between us. You think I am “sheeple” (and the mere fact that you would use this word unironically shows me you are a copycat thinker) because… there’s a lot of competition for the best-paying jobs or opportunities. Of course there are: people desire them! This is nothing new, and no system ever practicsed by mankind has been any different. But you are wrong when you say I have no chance. If I work hard, use my brain to its fullest extent, and really devote myself to doing what I want to do, I can succeed - but the world does not owe me success as a right.
And, even if I fail, so what? There are many more important things than winning the Nobel Prize or making a lot of money. Success is merely a game we mortals play while dealing with the important things in life.
Of course, I’m trying to fill in the blanks on your post, which seems to be missing random words. You could be praising me as the Queen of Sheba and I might not have realized it.
If I take the OP at face value. I should have all the perks the POTUS does.
Where is my private jet???
What might actually help is if the OP had any sort of knowledge or understanding of the study of economics.
The idea of a “free market” is you can buy or sell your goods for whatever price you can get for them. You can hire someone or take a job for someone else for the best salary you can negotiate. The alternative is someone tells you what price or salary you have to have. And typically that will screw someone else who has to buy products at a cost maybe they can’t afford.
The free market allows you to make your own choices about what sort of skills you will develop, what sort of career you will pursue and what kind of lifestyle you want.
You are kidding yourself. Maybe those who inhereted their wealth, which is a small percentage. Most people become millionares through hard work. If it were so easy, everyone would do it.
“You think you betta’ dan me?”
Alright, so no one is better than anyone else. But should some community college grad be compensated the same as a graduate from a top ranked business school?
To summarize…
-
I live in the greatest country on earth, and the only real superpower
-
My standard of living is better than 95% of the rest of world’s population
-
But That Guy Over There seems to have it better than me
-
It can’t be my fault, or just the luck of the draw, that caused that to happen
-
I have to admit…I would like my standard of living to improve, more towards the level of That Guy Over There. I’m not real sure why he has it so good, but it must not be because he’s smarter, works harder, or takes more risks than me.
-
I’ll muddy the waters of my true intentions, practice cognitive dissonance, and perhaps even confuse myself by preaching a bunch of gobbledy-gook about love, good, evil and how I am a helpless, oppressed victim. It’s a great defense mechanism. It removes all responsibility and accountability for my own state from me, and transfers it to the ‘ether’, or ‘society’, or That Guy Over There.
-
Rather than empower myself, and take action to improve my state, I will willingly disempower myself by transferring my resources and rights to another body (I’ll call it ‘the government’) who promises to make my life better. And they promise to make my life better by sticking it to That Guy Over There.
-
Unfortunately, that body now has complete and ultimate decision-making authority over how much of money I am allowed to keep, who I can do business with, and what things I can put into my body. I willingly gave up those things to the government, who now controls all the levers, and who can legally enforce them at the point of a gun. I did it because they promised to make my life better. Because after all, the state of my life before had nothing to do with me, or my own decisions, or just the luck of the draw (and by the way, I won the luck of the draw…since I was born in a country that immediately provided me with a standard of living better than 95% of the rest of the worlds population).
-
Also unfortunately, if this thing called ‘the government’ screws up, or makes things worse, or continues to take more and more of my money and rights, I won’t be able to change my mind. It’s too late. Once I sign over my rights to them, they ain’t giving them back.
Trust me, most millionaires aren’t nearly as stupid as that statement. Most are incredibly bright, actually.
Well, certainloy, if they can do the job. I would take a little closer look at ComCol grads than from a major university, though, because they vary hugely in output, and because they’re more likely to have mastered the basic knowledge but perhaps not advanced skills. I’d also want to know the circumstances - I might be more interested in someone who furthered their education with ComCol night school at age 40 than in someone who drifted in and out at 19.
As others have pointed out, this is simply not true.
Link.
Here are some stats on millionaires:
Most millionaires *aren’t *stupid. Most are self made, work their asses off, spend money wisely and invest heavily. They become millionaires because they think, work and plan.
Slee
Why do I get the urge to read that OP while playing the bongos?
That’s pretty silly. That’s like saying, “I could throw an incomplete pass like Peyton Manning did right there. Pay me all of that money!”
Surely these guys had enough going for them that the board hired them with that big salary…
That’s retard movie logic. You know what I’m talking about. Where the retarded kid or the pack of misfits and uncoordinated goons can, through sheer pluck and determination, actually compete with competant people who actually trained and prepared and demonstrated real aptitude.
Well that depends on so many variables that it renders the answer to your a question a very firm “it depends”. What job, what industry, what location, what kind of person, what experience, what qualifications, etc.
If I’m hiring somebody I’m going to want that candidate that can do the job the best, not the one who shelled out the most. Since with my current path if I’m ever hiring anyone it’ll be in computers, and I have done research into that field. A very sizable portion of computer and network techs, administrators, and engineers never go beyond an Associates degree. They go on to get additional certifications, learn new skills, and get experiences. Working up to some of the advanced certifications can get you over $100,000 a year.
In a post with some sound observations, you threw in these wallbangers. You’re unfairly excluding the middle & acting like things must be exactly as they are, or… the Khmer Rouge. Horsefeathers. Germany is more social-democratic than we are, & hasn’t slaughtered anyone in 60 years. Heck, we were more social-democratic in 1950 than we are now. Reasonable change is always possible, & even that free-market optimist Adam Smith believed in something like a living wage.
Pfft. If the UK goes to a republic, I’m inviting the peerage to come rule us. Clearly we can’t manage ourselves anymore… 
[this is a joke. mostly.]
I want you to think about the contrast in how you think about the USA internationally & how you think about it domestically. IdahoMauleMan is not a superpower. It’s the community held together by that government you mock.
Anyway, welcome to the boards, lurking guest! We have some real econ buffs who can actually teach you something, not just these scornpuppies.
Socialists really don’t understand the economic concept of incentives, do they?
:cough: I’m a social democrat, & I have at least some grounding in economics. I know what incentives are. Unlike free market fundamentalists, I’m willing to manipulate them. You don’t rely on gravity to build a house.
What they don’t understand is the freedom to be. That means they are free to reap the rewards of their labor. It doesn’t mean they have to work for someone else.
The example of 2 people with average IQ’s who can’t afford a house is pure nonsense. My father and mother never progressed beyond high school. With that knowledge my father built his first home. He built it from scratch using the basic math and sciences he was taught in school. He went to the library and learned what he needed to make it happen.
His son (me) bought a house while working and going to school. I did this by first buying a used mobile home and putting the savings in stock. It was cheaper than renting. I sold the mobile home and stock for a down payment on a house. The house payment was less than even a small apartment so I used the savings to pay it off in 10 years. I’ve taught other people this simple method of owning property that is cheaper than renting. It’s not fancy but it’s home. I could have paid it off faster if I split out the upstairs into a rental unit. All it would have taken was the addition of another door.
What makes a capitalist country like the United States a good place to earn money is the freedom to do so. Many countries have taxes or bureaucracies that greatly impede this process. There is nothing stopping someone from starting a lawn mowing service on the weekends with little capital investment and growing it into a thriving business. The tools needed to put on a roof are a ladder, a hammer and a pair of sheers.
You also don’t build a house ignoring gravity.
Yes, and the free market allows that to happen. There are jobs for people who just have technical skills and their salary will be reflected by current market conditions. Unlike a degreed graduate, however, their skillset is more specific. And they tend to cap out much sooner. Sure a network engineer with just an assoicates degree and some certifications can earn over $100,000. A managing director in an IT consulting firm like Accenture can earn twice that. A partner can earn over half a million or more. But the free market lets you decide which career path is best for you.
See that’s the problem with your view. You ignore the real difficulties everyone faces. Let’s say the prestigious business school does pay more.
Tell me, who’s going to have an easier time of getting the prestigious business school, the kid from a poor family or the kid from a rich family who could afford prep school? Why is it fair someone’s birth maps out part of their life like that?
I have cites I can dig out if you’d like that show kids from a more expensive school statistically get into better schools even if they do worse academically. Should the educational deck be stacked against people with poor parents? If so, why?
Let’s say the poor kid makes it into the prestigious business school, with the rich family kid. Which one is more likely to have their education stopped by expenses? Which one is likely to have to work two jobs, to the detriment of their grades, instead of focusing sole on their education? Is that handicap okay? If so, why?
You can’t extract blood from a turnup is poor people slang that means you can’t use money you don’t have access to (you can’t use what isn’t there).
Also one could make the argument of benefit to society. Consider the tax lawyer and the agricultural worker. Which one’s labor contributes more to society, the one who helps keep society fed with safe food, or the one helps mega-corps dodge taxes? Which one does society compensate more?
The “Free” market is at best a lesser of evils, but it is an evil. Things like healthcare show it isn’t even the lesser of evils in some cases.
Exactly. You have to understand it, & use it. But if you bow down to gravity & ask it to build a house for you, you get nothing.
And if you build your house to surrender to gravity at first opportunity, you have an instant ruin.
This is why “laissez-faire” & “deregulation” are never really practiced as hardcore libertarians imagine. There’s always somebody who sees a way to do “better” (by whatever subjective standard) than sheer economic chaos, & has the pull to make it happen. So you can have good old-fashioned corruption, you can have 1950’s-style central planning, but you’ll never have a totally unregulated state.
The problem is that we elect to public office a mix of well-meaning amateurs & corrupt professional flatterers, & neither has any great chance of really knowing macro-economics (but then neither does the electorate). Pols will say they believe in, “market solutions,” say–but not know enough to judge what a given plan really means.
I’m really grateful that I was pushed into taking macro in college. I wouldn’t be very good at political economics, but I’m at least a page ahead of the typical voter.
This is the only thing I’m going to respond to in this thread, because it was specifically pointed at my comments and because msmith537 is still posting in it.
I don’t know how old you are or what kind of experience you said. I re-read my posted comments, and they seem quite clear. Either way, I won’t pit you over it. My sole statement on the subject was ultimately to the effect that people are people, and the market is made up of people, and they come from different places and come by their skills differently, and it is the nature of the skill, not the place they come from, which determines their value to me. I also suspect you have no experience hiring or managing, or come from a very inbred (metaphorically speaking) culture.
I can tell you from experience: the market is not perfect. It doesn’t have to be, to be of value. It doesn’t always value people’s skills properly, or even at all (if there isn’t enough information). And the market’s valuation has nothing to do with their value to me.
Secondly, the fame of the institution/s where they studied may not have much to do with their success. I think one way or another I could name a number fo people from top universities who weren’t worth a pile of dog feces, and a number from hunbler origins who did very well indeed.
To borrow from your own example, let us say I am hiring a tech consultant. I could go out and hire Mr. Degree Smartypants, with his PfD is computer Science from Nameyname U. I bet he has a lot of ideas. He’s probably good with theory.
What he isn’t going to help with, however, is the actual business of picking from practical options and putting them into place. I want someone who’s done this kind of thing a dozen times or so, and has shown himself (or herself, though there are relatively few women in the field) capable. There is a place for book learning and a place for practical experience, and managing takes both kinds of skills. Only a complete fool would convince himself he only wanted to hire people approved by an outside party, be it the market, the university, or the competitor next door. Their valuation is not the same as your valuation, which is fundamentally why we have a market int he first place.