A while ago, someone posted something on Facebook that appeared on my newsfeed, a quote that went something like, “A man that makes (or earns or gets or receives) a dollar without working for it steals that dollar from a man who did work for it.”
I liked the sentiment, because I read it as, “A man that gets a dollar without working for it (for instance, a Wal-Mart stockholder) steals that dollar from someone who did work for it (say, an underpaid Wal-Mart employee).” I wanted to find the source of the quote, so I turned to Google. (The quote was far enough in the past that Facebook couldn’t/wouldn’t show it to me.) The results were surprising to me, to say the least.
Every time I found anything close to that quote, it was an excerpt from a longer quote that offered a different view: “The man that gets a dollar without working for it (a welfare recipient) steals that dollar from someone who did work for it (a man with a job).” The longer quote was being used to demonstrate that welfare is an evil that must be discontinued. (By the way, I often heard that sentiment from a former landlord that didn’t see anything wrong with getting disability pay for an injury that he did NOT receive on the job, but nevertheless prevented him from working.)
While I understand that there are many people that use the welfare system so they don’t have to work, why are so many people ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Wouldn’t it be better to root out the cheaters, and leave the system in place to aid the people that really need it? Like people who were thrown out of work because it is cheaper to have an overseas worker do the work than pay a living wage to an American worker, who cannot find a replacement job? Someone that can’t even get a McJob, because the hirers know that the applicant will continue to search for the type of employment for which she is qualified and are afraid that the overqualified worker might eventually get a job for which she IS qualified (as if anyone over the age of sixteen ever considered a McJob as permanent employment)?
I don’t worry about people who get paid for not working. If someone can find a creative way to earn money that he can do while sitting in an easy chair sipping his favorite brew, I have no objection.
What bothers me, is people who get paid for stuff that actively harms other people. The investment bankers who created the financial crisis of 07-08, for instance. They knew perfectly well their efforts would result in millions of people losing their homes, losing their jobs, losing their pension funds as a result of the bankers hiring armies of con artists to write and sell worthless mortgage paper. But they didn’t give a damn, so long as they made a profit.
I am not nor ever will be wealthy in a financial sense. But I have a criteria I apply whenever I look for a job: “if I take this job will I be making a positive or negative contribution to society?” If I don’t feel I will be actually helping somebody, it isn’t real work.
If welfare is so great, why isn’t everyone on it? And let’s get real: the dollar going to the welfare recipient robs “a man” with a job of maybe like a hundredth of a cent, probably much less.
While one might say that WalMart stockholders are making money on the backs of workers (though with they aren’t making a lot lately) there are plenty of other stockholders in companies who don’t screw workers - like Facebook for instance. Plus stocks go up and down (which lets people make money) for lots of reasons, like increased sales which might be associated with hiring more people.
Kind of the same trend as Liberals who demonize ‘Wal-Mart stockholders’, ‘bankers’, ‘CEOs’ and other riffraff.
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While one might say that WalMart stockholders are making money on the backs of workers (though with they aren’t making a lot lately) there are plenty of other stockholders in companies who don’t screw workers - like Facebook for instance. Plus stocks go up and down (which lets people make money) for lots of reasons, like increased sales which might be associated with hiring more people.
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Well, as long as there are good companies that aren’t screwing over the workers, right?
[QUOTE=OffByOne]
I liked the sentiment, because I read it as, “A man that gets a dollar without working for it (for instance, a Wal-Mart stockholder) steals that dollar from someone who did work for it (say, an underpaid Wal-Mart employee).” I wanted to find the source of the quote, so I turned to Google. (The quote was far enough in the past that Facebook couldn’t/wouldn’t show it to me.) The results were surprising to me, to say the least.
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Quick question…how many underpaid Wal-Mart employees would there be without the stockholders? Answer: zero.
The irony here is the exactly same thought process that goes into your (ridiculous) statement about the evil stockholder and poor, abused employee goes into the meme about the evil welfare cheater ‘stealing’ from the man who works. It’s basically an attempt to demonize the side opposite to whatever political world view you have, and really is just an appeal to emotion. Liberals do it (see most of the posts so far in this thread), and get riled up when Conservatives do it as well. It’s all about Gores and Oxes.
Because there aren’t actually that many people who cheat, so it’s not worth it to root them out. You fell for the classic appeal to emotion, only less well known than the ‘never fight a land war in Asia’ or ‘never bet against a Sicilian when death is on the line’.
But nice use of ‘McJob’ and the consummate appeal to emotion there. You’ll go far on this board.
Are you denying that some companies make money by doing immoral things? Nevertheless, someone making money by not “working” for it is irrelevant.
If they went private tomorrow, would they fire everyone? Nope. The original stockholders might be credited for funding a company, but most of the current ones have little to do with day to day finances - often nothing.
I’m rather surprised at your surprise; your reading of it is rather odd and contrary to what is intended by the phrase, not that I agree with the sentiment of the phrase. Where on earth did you get the idea that stockholders didn’t have to work for their dollars to invest in companies and that they are using said dollars to steal from the employees of the very company they are financially invested in?
I don’t think that’s what he’s suggesting. An investor may or may not have worked to acquire the dollars he invests, but the rent, interest, dividends or other return on ivestment that he gets he does not work for. When you own a valuable asset, no labour on your part is required to turn it to your financial advantage.
Rent is weird, because there’s some work involved, but almost never the amount of work an actual laborer or clerk would have to perform for the same income.
Same for being a paid member of a board of directors. It involves some work – which might be as little as signing a piece of paper once a year, or as much as actually running a company in detail.
There are a hell of a lot of jobs that are mixed in this regard; they involve some work, but also enjoy the benefit of some “unearned” income.
(How about an author whose book gets published, then bought to be made into a movie. He worked once, to write the book, but gets paid twice for it! Did he “work” for the second income?)
Just to clarify, Social Security Disability is NOT welfare. I receive disability due to a life altering injury that occurred on the job. However, I worked my ass off for twenty years prior to being hurt and paid for the benefit through my taxes. Social Security is a BENEFIT/ENTITLEMENT that one receives based on the contributions he/she made to the system during their working years.
My apologies if I come off as defensive, but I get tired of people referring to it as welfare. Think of disability more like an insurance policy. You pay into it year after year and hope you will never need to use it. In thankful it’s here for me, but rest assured that I paid into the system for many many years and earned the benefit that I’m now collecting.
And the OP made reference to a disability cheat in his post. I know they’re out there, but for the life of me I don’t know how they do it. It took five years for me to get approved and the qualifications were mind boggling. The medical review was intense and I’m classified as permanently disabled with no improvement expected. Yet every seven years I must be medically reviewed.
Not to mention, who the hell wants to live on what disability pays? It isn’t easy and I get more than most because I had a high paying career. Yeah, I gave up close to 100k a year and gold plated union benefits to live the high life on $1600 a month. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very grateful for the help I am provided, but living high on the backs of Joe taxpayer I’m not.
The work, though, can be delegated. You can hire an agent to manage your property for you. You get the rent, not because you manage the property, but because you own it.
No, ignoring those who actively manage their portfolios (which is work), what the investor does is risk his capital. If he’s right, he makes money. If not…
But the biggest non sequitur is that this steals something from the Walmart employee. Purchasing a publicly traded stock with my money does not divert money (again, mine to do with what I like) from the Walmart employee. Perhaps the OP can explain the economics of his assertion, which seems ridiculous on its face.
This. I’ll even concede to the farcical notion that all stockholders inherited every dime they have ever owned so they have never had to work for their wealth to invest and call investing not work if an explanation of how investing in Walmart steals money from Walmart employees can be offered. Because that’s not what the OP is sugesting, it’s what he flat out says:
Let us stipulate that without shareholders, there could be no WalMart employees. That being said, such shareholders are not entitled to perpetual verbal fellation nor are they innoculated against having societal responsibilities. They could as a group demand that the company provide benefits and living wages to their employees. Rather than make such demands, they choose to treat their employees like shit in order to extract greater rates of return on their investments. They don’t have to do this and indeed not every corporation chooses to do this. One of their competitors, Costco, does very well and treats their employees well. Could Costco investors get a greater return by treating their employees like chattel slaves? Probably, but they choose not to be assholes, a choice that WalMart shareholders did not select.
It’s not as unreasonable as you make it sound. For an illustrative example (ie, the numbers are entirely made up):
Say welfare was $1 month (perhaps this example occurs in the early 1800s).
Say there were 1000 people eligible for welfare who apply.
Say there were 5 people not eligible for welfare who cheat and apply anyway.
Say the cost of checking a particular person’s eligibility is fifty cents.
Under that example, allowing the cheats means we spend $1005, $5 going where it should not. However, checking the cheats means we spend $1502.50, with none of the money going where it should not. You could argue that it’s worthwhile to have no cheats, but the economics in this case means it might be better to just let the cheaters go and save the taxpayers $497.50.
Of course, with different numbers, the calculation changes. If there were 1,000 eligible applicants and 5,000 scammers, the extra fifty cents is worth it. And in the real world, the cost of verifying eligibility has diminishing returns, where it might make sense to do a cursory check but not a full investigation.
But anyone can see that, economically, sometimes it makes sense to let the cheaters slide rather than screw everyone else to get the cheaters.
EDIT: Good attempt to use an appeal to emotion with some Princess Bride references to slander an economic argument as an emotional appeal. A Bold move!
The unstated premise in the claim made in the OP is that all wealth is created by labour, and anybody who is paid a dollar without having worked for it is receiving a dollar that someone else has created by his labour, and that, morally, the worker is entitled to the wealth created by his labour.
The unstated premise is, however, unproven and not widely accepted. At the age of 15 I was taught that the factors of production are land, labour, capital and enterprise. While you could probably argue over the definition of each of those factors and quibble with the inclusions and exclusions in the list, I don’t think many economists would consider that labour is the only factor of production.
