Interchangeable carbon blobs. Only 1% generate any wealth.

Great Debates
61

I see. So even when government fails, it’s really the corporation’s fault.

I’ve got news for you - they didn’t ‘weaken’ the government - they worked WITH the government. They co-opted government. And government allowed itself to be co-opted. That includes people high up in the Obama administration, who are as we speak moving through that revolving door between big government and big business. The people who got the biggest bailouts were the ones who gave most to the politicians. And while CEOs complicit in the failures of 2008 were held accountable by the market and in some cases by the government, the people responsible for oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suffered no such fate.

No, the lack of oversight happens because the people on Congress charged with oversight don’t know what they are doing and don’t have the resources to minutely regulate trillions of dollars of economic activity, so they have to rely on industry ‘experts’ and commissions made up of industry people to tell them how to regulate. It’s no surprise that such regulations are bent to benefit those making the rules.

It also happens because the people being regulated are the ones giving the most money to politicians.

Big business loves big government. They love Sarbanes-Oxley and all those other rules that require buildings full of accountants to comply with. It gives them a big advantage over the small businesses who are overwhelmed by the rules and regulations.

If there’s one thing worse than government, it’s the confluence of government and big business. But so long as you have a big government, there’s no way to avoid it.

Oh, really? I must have missed that part of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. “We hold these truths as self-evident - that government shall be used to balance the power of the rich with that of everyone else.” Nope, not there.

You don’t just get to claim that that’s the purpose of Democracy. That’s the purpose of socialism. Democracy is just a means of choosing the government. The purpose of government itself is a completely different question, and historically democracies were intended to balance political power among the people, precisely because it was recognized that government power is dangerous.

I think you need to look up the definition of ‘despot’. I’ll give you a better one: “One man, one vote. ONCE.”

If you elect a despotic government, voting it out isn’t really an option. Plenty of despots have risen to power democratically, usually by promising a chicken for every pot, and then once in power clamped down on the people.

It’s even easier with a corporation: Don’t buy their stuff. Convince other people not to buy their stuff just like you build political coalitions. Corporations actually respond to that.

Here’s an even better one: Start your company and compete with them.

If the corporation is using force against you or defrauding you, take them to court. If a corporation attains a monopoly through shenanigans and then distorts the market with monopoly power, appeal to the government for an anti-trust ruling.

We have plenty of power over corporations. Corporations do not have the right to use force, so they are ultimately responsible to their customers, their workers, and their communities. Corporations that forget that wind up on the ash bin of history.

Are you kidding? The free market was about to remove the entire leadership of GM and Chrysler before the government saved them. When the Enron debacle happened, the market punished every single company that used similar hard-to-penetrate accounting tactics, almost overnight. Stock prices can collapse in a day over a bad decision, and a CEO can be looking for a new job a week later.

It’s government that moves with the speed of molasses in winter. And again I remind you - the people responsible for the major screwups that are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are still running the show.

In your opinion. I don’t see big corporations as the bogeyman or businessmen as evil fatcats with cigars trying to oppress me. I see a rich tapestry of people of all talents and income levels voluntarily working together to make things better and faster than they could themselves, for their mutual benefit. I see some people rising to the top of the heap and getting to direct a larger percentage of this activity than others, because they helped create the capital being used to create those things. I see the people with the most demonstrated ability to coordinate firms having the most power and control. And I think that’s a really good thing.

Actually, without government they couldn’t have done it at all. It was Fannie and Freddie that started buying mortgages and acting as a clearinghouse for derivatives. It was FDIC insurance that gave banks protection from losses, and ultimately it was the knowledge that the financial system was ‘too big to fail’ which gave them confidence that government would bail everything out if it all went too far sideways.

That’s a little glib - there is certainly plenty of blame to go around, in business as well as government. But there’s a larger systemic issue - the rise of computer trading and global markets created a system that no one could understand. It got too complex, too fast. Risk was hidden, and people made bad decisions. And that includes the government, who was just as clueless as everyone else. They don’t have magical powers of perception, you know: most regulation is done after the fact, when problems are exposed. The government has no more predictive power than anyone else.

In the his case, the problem was really, really big. But that doesn’t mean government would have avoided it - especially since all the evidence we have shows that the government was a hearty participant.

That’s very easy to say after the fact. Before the fact, no one knew what the right ‘balance’ was. It’s easy to defend government if you just assume that they would always have been better than the alternative without evidence.

I don’t reject morality - I have a different morality. My morality says that people have a right to keep what they earn so long as they pay for their share of common services, and that government doesn’t have a right to take property from others for the purposes of ‘spreading the wealth around’ or ‘leveling the playing field’. That’s MY morality - it’s based on the inviolate rights of the individual to live for his own sake and make his own way in the world so long as he does not impose force on others to get what he wants.

62

The minorest quibble, Big T, if you will forgive. A relatively piddling matter, but that’s the trouble with quibbles.

Equality not to the point of the possible, but to the point of the practical. There is a reason why Herrison Bergeron is so often the only Vonnegut most conservatives ever read, it is an apt and pointed satire on the notion of enforced equality. We must allow some room for human distinction, because humans crave that so very, very much.

I don’t really care that the rich guy can buy more loud, shiny crap than I, he’s welcome to it. If a man exercise his free choice by headlong pursuit of ambition, he is answering his need to do so. So long as his access to health care and mine are on a rough parity, his children’s access to education, the essential freedoms of the creature comforts…then I shrug. If he truly believes in sacrificing untold hours of his life in order to own a Lamborghini, sure, no prob, Bob.

But to truly embody democracy, the rich man must not be empowered more than any other man in the civic arena, in the questions of who votes for what decisions. This is the first and most important step, the equality of all citizens in the civic arena. Money talks, I can cope with that, grudgingly. But when money votes, when the rich man has more political power than his fellow citizen, then there is work to be done.

Now would be good, yesterday would have been better. Tomorrow will have to do.

63

Can you explain the mechanism that makes this so? I won’t ask you to substantiate your dogma, dogma is what it is, an article of faith, and welcome to it. But it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Indeed, you have my heartfelt agreement that the confluence of government and business has tended to be a Bad Thing. Hooo, doggies!

But what mechanism makes this so? You seem to suggest that all the fault lies with Big Government, that without such a pernicious influence, business would be as harmless to the common good as daffodils, or a field of frolicking axolotyls. But why should this be so? If you are unwilling or unable to define Big Government, then we must be content to accept your criticisms of its inherent nature? And suffer your disdain for our apparent devotion to this amorphous dark deity?

TL:DR WTF is “Big Government”, anyway?

If government is truly the creature of the people’s will, and I have no more dear a goal than that, then why should I fear its power? So long as I have a precisely equal share in that government, why should I worry about whether or not **Sam Stone **thinks it is too big?

64

Ah, another outsourcing and offshoring thread disguised as something else. Excellent…we haven’t done this in a few days now! Without getting into all of the side discussions (which Sam seems to be hitting all the high points on anyway):

Actually, everyone who works generates wealth. You are still hung up on your lack of understanding of the answers you already got to this line of discussion several threads back.

Sadly, afaik no one actually believes this. YOU believe that others believe this because you lack the capability of understanding the answers given to you on this previously. Every worker who works is generating wealth. While some workers are more expendable than others, this basic concept remains.

Well, I suppose you could automate everything, thus limiting the numbers of workers to a bare minimum, and if you take it to the extremes then you’d only need the people who build out and design the automated systems, and of course the people who design and build the original concept and do the programming of the systems. The real answer, as given to you already, is that you need the people who do the work to, well, do the work, and you need the people who have the original concepts to conceive of the products or services in the first place. And, of course, you need all the other people involved in any produce…the marketers, the sales folks, logistics, HR, management, even support staff to keep the places where all of those people work clean and in working order. The part you don’t get is that while it’s certainly important to have the workers, nothing gets done without the person or people who have that original concept, or build the company to make all that labor have some point. You refuse to get that part of what has been told you many times, and instead you continue to harp on this over and over again, as if your believe in what you think others believe has some sort of point, other than continued mental masturbation on your part.

Since that’s unlikely to happen, what would be the point of speculating on it? Sure, maybe in some sort of fabber sci-fi future we could get rid of 99% of the workers, and everything would be done by machines in automated fabber factories. If that happens then it will so radically alter society that it won’t be recognizable to us…pretty much like our society would be unrecognizable to someone living hundreds of years ago (‘What??? Less than 2% of your people FARM??? WTF??’ :confused:).

What you REALLY mean, though, is ‘Offshoring and Outsourcing are KILLING AMERICA AND WE NEED TO INSTITUTE MASSIVE TARIFFS RIGHT NOW!!’ blah blah blah. It’s the same song and dance with you…it never changes. Every discussion you have is about outsourcing, offshoring and tariffs.

How do we generate any wealth now that we don’t have switch board operators, buggy whip manufacturers, a large horse transport industry, a large rail road industry, or 90%+ of our population working on the farm??? Why hasn’t America already collapsed???

When you can finally answer that question honestly you will FINALLY understand that it’s not all about offshoring, outsourcing or tariffs…there is a wider world out there. Perhaps one day you could talk about, oh, maybe taxes for instance. Just as a change of pace.

Do you have any idea how supply and demand works? If you have only supply, what is the corollary? Just out of curiosity.

-XT

65

No you don’t. But you do see big government as the bogeyman and government officials as jackbooted thugs trying to oppress you.

As evil big government is just as much a myth as evil big business. The fact is they both have their uses. And it wouldn’t be a good idea to let either one run unchecked.

There are some people who think you can solve any problem by enacting some government regulations. And there are some people who think you can solve any problem by abolishing government regulations. Both groups are willing to let their dogma override their reason.

66

Well, at least you’ve changed your mind about that.

As compared to most people in the world, yes, quite a lot of them. Truck drivers can do quite well; long haul drivers are paid pretty good bucks.

67

If you have to go to work when you’d rather go fishing, you aren’t rich.

68

Hyperbole? Of the screeds posted here by you and others I am the only one who has provided cites.

Want more?

As for who got what and how much they were not exactly forthcoming on those details:

How many people lost everything? I do not know. I guess “everything” is a bit too vague. But we can see the lasting, serious effects even now.

How’s Wall Street doing though?

Wall Street was saved by tax payers. Where’s the trickle down?

Hmmm…inequality. Wonder what that looks like?

To hear Sam Stone tell it these folk deserve that money because they work hard for it. We need them to be the drivers of industry.

I showed earlier how the wealthy actually pay a lower tax rate than the middle class. Sure they will cite the higher marginal rate but then they rarely pay that higher rate in reality. Not to mention taxes, that evil boogeyman, are at their lowest rate in decades.

So how is it the rich “deserve” their money and are wealth creators? I submit they are net wealth sinks. Yes they invest in companies but there is no “trickle down”. Most of the wealth gets locked in their bank accounts. Economic activity is strongest when there is a healthy middle class going out and buying things. Further, the wealthy get their wealth on the backs of their employees. Did Charles and David Koch have a “big idea” or just lucky enough to be born to someone who did? If they fired all their employees would they make any money?

I have no problem with the rich guys making money but as noted above do they deserve 550x what their average workers make?

69

No, you are providing nothing more than a continuation of your rant against the evil you think is call Wall Street. What does that have to do with this thread or this OP? Without any further reading I’m pretty confident you’re about to bitch about CEO pay and severance packages.

That’s right, you don’t know. So why did you ask it? What was the point to injecting your bullshit rhetoric other than to take a big dump?

We get it, 2008 scared you, it scared a lot of people, get over it.

The rich are NOT the wealth creators, they were the people that created wealth in the previous generation. Look through the list of Forbes top 400. Then go through and count how many people have jobs because of that 400. Off the top of my head you’ll see the guys that started Microsoft and Apple, the family of the guy that started Walmart. These guys didn’t start rich, they had an idea that paid off big. Read Outliers, he goes through most of them, and they are the “1 in 100.”

Yes, these evil rich people you talk of don’t need employees any more, they are rich and quite well set. Look again at that list of people you scorn so deeply and notice how many of them still go to work every day.

Who the fuck cares? Does an NBA player deserve 550x the guy working the concession stand?

But wait, what would a game be without a hotdog and beer? Surely the guy working at the concession stand is the one creating wealth, the guy on the court just go “lucky” because he was “rich.”

Or maybe you don’t have a sweet clue what you’re talking about even though all of this has been explained to you before.

70

Now that’s a bumper sticker.

71

Okay, back on track.

There is an economic principle that is frequently overlooked: scaling.

When you are paid hourly, there are only two ways to make more money: one is to work more hours, but as a truck driver you are legally capped (the rest of us limited by 168). The other is to increase your hourly wage, but as a truck driver how do you convince someone you’re worth more than the other guy? Interchangeability stops his hourly* rate from going up.

Now, let’s go back to Stephen King, he’s paid per book, not per hour. So there are two ways for him to make more money, sell more books or charge more per book.

With all the millions of other authors, how does King charge more per book? He has to tell better stories than the others, way better stories, he has to be that 1 in 1000.

Now, how does he sell more books. Imagine if he had to physically write out each book like in the 1500’s, his earning potential would be limited to how fast he could write. Compare this back to an hourly wage, if it takes him all day to write out one book he’d only make $20 per day.

In the 1800’s he could get a printing press and slowly start printing more. That press requires the investment of capital, so now King doesn’t get $20 per book because he’s got to repay the loan. But now he can print 10 books per day.

At some point, it will make sense for King to hire people at an hourly wage to print books for him. They will “generate wealth” as part of the process that makes King rich. As long as people want to buy his books workers will have a job printing them.

But notice, people aren’t buying the books for the physical book itself, they are buying it for the story inside. So it stands to reason that King is better off spending his time coming up with new stories, than printing books.

Go back to the truck driver and consider how he can make more money if his hours are capped and the interchangeability of truck drives keeps his wage capped. He could drive more dangerous routes like the guys that go to Afghanistan. Or, if he has the capability, he could start a trucking company. Now he gets paid per load, and his earning potential is only limited by the number of contracts he can secure. As long as he can offer a better product that his competitor he’ll generate wealth. But that would put him in the “1 in 100” that can run a successful trucking company.

*I know most truck drivers aren’t paid hourly, you can put your nit back in its protective case.

72

That’s all great but the fact remains the truck driver is creating wealth. All work creates wealth, unless your work is along the lines of being some sort of evil genius destroying Gotham.

73

Sure, and every player contributes which is why they’re on the team. But Derrick Rose scored 28 of the 103 points to win Sunday. Who is generating the win? Who is more interchangeable?

74

The guy who owns the team, of course! Its his entreprenuership and decision-making talent that make it all possible for Mr. Rose.

75

It has to do with who is creating wealth.

Walmart has nothing without its employees. Great that Sam Walton came up with a good business model and he should reap the lion’s share of the rewards for getting it going.

He does so on the backs of the people working for him though. No one is saying they stock boy should earn $100,000/year. Neither should the employees be squeezed at every opportunity.

We need not speculate on what happens if the government does not protect employees and demand at least a minimum for them. We have seen what work conditions were like in the early 20th century. Further, we see it continuing in numerous places around the world today (as cited above). You and Sam seem to think the market is magical and will solve everything and leave us in some meritocracy where everyone earns their worth.

That does not happen. Provably. Historically. Currently.

If a basketball player earns 550x what the concession guy does fine. Except we are not talking about the concession guy alone but an average of all employees in the organization. If the basketball player does not perform he won’tbe earning that salary for long.

Now look at the Wall Street folks. Dick Fuld earned north of $350 million. He sent his company out of business. His average yearly compensation was about $64 million. Lehman Bros. had 22,919 employees. Spread evenly among all them if Fuld earned a mere $50 million/year every employee could get $600/year more (and we have not even touched the other executive bonuses…if they all took a pay decrease that would still leave them very wealthy by any measure everyone at Lehman could have had a substantial pay increase (across the board). Numerous others on Wall Street should have gone out of business but were saved by my tax money. For that they continued to give themselves generous bonuses.

Also, what was Dick Fuld’s “big idea” that he should prosper so? Was it how to put your company out of business? Sure he made Lehman a lot of money…right till the place where it went bankrupt over night.

Where is the risk? With great risk can come great rewards but presumably the downside is there too. Except with these guys there is no downside. Thousands of employees are out of work, Fuld walks away a very wealthy man. I want a job where I can put a company out of business and get wealthy doing it.

There is a wealth transfer in this country. It is from the poor/middle class to the already wealthy. Even Warren buffet has noted this.

Sam thinks the poor want to rob the rich. The poor simply want a decent wage for a decent day’s work. Instead we get stagnant or shrinking wages while those at the top not only make a lot but continue to take an ever bigger piece of the pie.

You have done nothing to show why they should be getting paid like this and why the money should be transferring up the ladder. Why is it ok to move jobs to places that operate sweat shops and force employees into prostitution and force them to get abortions (as cited above)? You are ok with that because it is just good business for those at the top to make more money?

We have shown the people employed by a company all add wealth. Again, no one is saying pay the truck drive a million dollars. Yet if the company is profitable and making its owners big bucks why shouldn’t the people who enable that profit not enjoy some of the rewards as well? Why should those at the top take ever greater percentages for themselves while leaving all the rest behind?

If nothing else it is bad for the economy. Concentrating wealth in a few hands comes nowhere near providing the economic stimulus that spreading the money around lots of less wealthy people would.

76

Until NBA players forced a collective bargaining agreement on the management they certainly got paid nowhere near the kind of salaries they enjoy today.

If we assume it was $5000 in 1950 then the average salary was $46,661 in today’s dollars. Assume you get five years playing and retire with no other marketable skill. That would put most players in the poor house in short order.

But hey…those players have no claim to more money! It is the team owner who took the risk and the team owner who should prosper! If he can get away with paying them minimum wage then good on him! :rolleyes:

77

Exactly. Look at all the bungled teams that go bankrupt and move. Had Rose been on one of those he wouldn’t be in the playoffs. What does this prove?

Rose is the 1 in 100 of NBA players generating wins. The Bulls represent the 1 in 100 teams managed well enough to sign him and put together a successful organization, other teams couldn’t do that.

The point isn’t that Rose carries his team and wins all by himself, that’s the straw man Le Jac what’s you to worship. Obviously a basketball team needs 12 players for the roster, a coach, trainers, a bus driver.

Obviously Walmart needs employees, it’s a department store, 1 of 100 department stores that for some reason became the world’s largest. Why did Walmart do so much better than K-Mart or Zellers? Was it the stellar cashiers? Highly efficient stock boys? The 70 year old greeters? Why was Walmart able to open new stores while K-mart was shutting down?

There were hundreds of interchangeable discount department stores, but only Walmart set itself apart. Now we look at the landscape of discount department stores and see everyone copying that model.

There were hundreds of mp3 players on the market in 2001, but Tony Fadell was able to come up with a light variation that was a huge hit. He wasn’t the only one, because there were thousands working on them. But clearly Tony is better than the guy that came up with the Zune. Now, of the hundreds of companies making mp3 players, only 1 in 100 had the ability to develop, produce, and market the iPod. It’s hard to say what would have happened had Fadell been working at Microsoft and put out the same thing. You’ll notice at the same time Sony was trying desperately to market the mini-disk players, how would they have done with Fadell on staff?

Now, why do you suppose Fadell was working at Apple in the first place? He clearly could have worked for any of the other hundreds of consumer electronic companies.

This discussion doesn’t need to be complicated unless you fail to understand what we’re actually talking about and try to confuse terms.

1 in 100: Walmart is the 1 in 100 of discount department stores that did something better than all the others.

There were lots of other people trying to make horseless carriages at the start of the 20th century, Henry Ford was the 1 in 100 that looked at a bicycle assembly line and decided to apply that to cars. Something everyone else followed.

78

Fascinating! Are you going to give us a brief history of Eli Whitney and the cotton gin, or perhaps explain the relevance of your historical lesson to the discussion?

79

Nobody is denying that some people generate more wealth than others. What you said in your first post was that just 1 out of 100 people generate wealth. That is, quite plainly, wrong. But I’m not saying everyone generates the same amount.

And even the NBA comparison demonstrates the completely arbitrary nature of deciding who creates wealth. Rose is merely an employee; he’s not the guy who runs the Chicago Bulls or the NBA. The NBA, as a business enterprise, would likely not be affected at all if Derrick Rose walked off the edge of the earth, and even the effect on the Bulls would be miniscule. So although Rose is highly paid, and rightly so, the truth is that if he wasn’t around someone else would get the money and the overall impact on the NBA’s product quality and resulting revenue would be barely noticeable. Rose is not an easily replaced talent for the Bulls in terms of their team, but in terms of pro basketball he is quite interchangeable.

By your logic, I could quite easily argue that the real wealth generator there is the owner of the Bulls. Or maybe the guy who founded the Bulls. Or the founder of the NBA or, hell, Dr. James Naismith. Would pro basketball be at all affected if Derrick Rose had never been born? Not really.

Would the NFL be much affected had Peyton Manning never been born? Nope. Would it have been affected if Pete Rozelle had never been born? Well, there, you may have an argument, given Rozelle’s central importance in the conversion of football into a broadcast product - but even Rozelle was simply selling products and ideas other people had created, so how do you determine who created the wealth that is the National Football League?

80

Why? Why is THAT disparity okay with you, but a CEO’s salary makes you go ape shit? Why should Rose get more than the guy serving popcorn? Who do you consider more interchangeable, Rose or the guy serving popcorn. Do you even know that guys name? Surely he was a part of the Bull’s success, he’s genearting wealth, providing a service. It’s almost as if people don’t go to The United Center to get popcorn from that guy. You’ll notice that the Bulls aren’t playing right now (as of noon on Tuesday), why aren’t people in the stadium buying popcorn?

Yup, so now we’re back to CEOs, wait, not CEOs, just the one, that it seems touched you in the park. You’re pissed that Fuld made $350million, are you pissed that Derrick Rose made $5,546,160?

You admit you don’t know what Dick Fuld did, or what Lehman Brothers did, yet you’re really really super angry about it. LB was the 4th largest investment bank in the USA, meaning that they provided a service people wanted. Lots and lots and lots of people gave them money.

Were those people forced to? Those people loved LB on the way up when they were generating boat loads of cash, just like people love Derrick Rose while he’s leading the Bulls to a championship. How will people feel about Rose if he totally blows tomorrow’s game and costs them the championship?

So Dick Fuld used to make $350million, what is he making now?

As **Sam **pointed out, how long does it take to get rid of a politician after they fuck up on a global scale? Who did it take longer to fire, Bush or Fuld? How many congressmen lost their job as a result of the financial fuck up they played a part in? What kind of severance do they get?

That’s right, he made LB a lot of money, you answered your own question. Would you have preferred he didn’t make them any money and drove them into bankruptcy a year earlier? Fuld was making $350million because that’s what investors thought he should be paid. Just like consumers are okay with Steve Jobs making $646 million per year.

And what you’ll notice is that as far as this thread is concerned I don’t even consider Dick Fuld to be the 1 in 100 with a big idea. He’s part of the 99 interchangeable carbon blobs running the hundreds of financial companies. Just like the current CEO of Walmart.

Now, stop looking for bullshit that confirms your bias and read up on the actual Lehman Brothers, Henry, Emanuel, and Mayer. They were the ones that started as poor immigrants, and had a “big idea” to get into the cotton trade. They were the 1 in 100 shop owners smart enough and crazy enough to accept cotton as payment. Had the price of cotton plummeted we’d have never heard about any of them.

But please, don’t let that stop you from posting yet another link to another story about how bad the 2008 was.

So quit bitching on the internet and go get one of those jobs. What’s stopping you? If running the 4th largest investment firm is so easy, you should have offered to do with for $100million and saved LH $250million per year.

Yes, and I heard that he sends people a dollar every time they post it on the internet.

The people generating wealth (who are not the same thing as the people that currently have wealth) come up with an idea/product/service that people will pay them for. That makes them rich. If you think of that as a wealth transfer then I’m sorry but you’re an idiot. Steve Jobs got rich because people wanted iPods. They got something in exchange for the cash they paid. Those customers are happier with an iPod than with the $300 they shelled out. And they’re happier having spent $20 on King’s latest novel. Capitalism, it’s a beautiful thing. Unless you only see it as those people are $320 poorer.

And they can have that, if they provide a service people want to pay them for. See how that works? I’d love to get paid to argue on the internet but no one will give me money for that, why? Why won’t you send me $20 every time I post?

Yes I have, it’s because they provide a service society deems valuable. Why is Derrick Rose getting so much money? Because he’s generating wins and bringing in fans. You have yet to show what everyone on the team should get an equal salary. Why the guy selling popcorn deserves some of Rose’s income.

I’m not, but all of the customers at Walmart are okay with that. See how that works?

I really don’t know how to make it any clearer for you. The cashier at the Apple Store is never going to make more than any other cashier. It doesn’t matter how much money Apple makes as a company. That cashier makes the same as the cashier across the hall at the Sony store, or down the hall at the weird store selling novelty hats. They are what’s known as interchangeable. If you want to make more money, don’t be a cashier, you do realize we allow that right? Right? Just because your dad was a cashier, and your grandfather before him, doesn’t mean that’s the only job you’re allowed to have.

Bullshit, that’s something you have to prove. If you suddenly gave all the poor people $300, how many would buy an iPod or similar consumer gadget? Where does that money go? Back to those generating wealth.

If you’re serious about helping the poor get out of the way and let the 1 in 100 generate wealth by creating supply. As you’ve describe that involves hiring lots of people, and now you’ve got a nice functioning economy.