You do realize that, “the 1% making it to top 5%” is not saying the same thing as “very, very small percentage or poor people ever make it out of poverty”. Look again at the context of the thread leading up to that cite.
Provide a cite that says 90%+ low-income families stay that way generation after generation. That’s the statistic that would actually support the rhetoric, “very, very small percentage or poor people ever make it out of poverty.” The current reality of USA demographics say otherwise.
Really? You don’t get a check on the 1st and 15th of the month? You don’t use that money to pay for rent or food or clothing? If you didn’t get any benefit from your hard work why would you do it?
Let me ask you this:
I’m a working man as much as the next guy. More, in fact, because I bet I work longer hours and travel more than most people here. I don’t need to get into the specifics of what I do because it is irrelevant for this particular question, but I make well over six figures doing it. Suffice to say, it is a job that requires an advanced college degree and various technical, business and managerial skills.
a) Why am I not paid minimum wage for my job?
b) Am I still part of the “common working people” or am I now in your “rich elite”?
c) What, with my larger wealth, do I owe someone like you (who as far as I can tell, probably doesn’t even work)?
d) Should someone with a job requiring little to no education and few skills make a salary that approaches mine?
e) Would society be better off if people like me who are highly intelligent, educated and talented just worked “make-work” jobs that required little to none of those skills?
I look on the matter as a practical question. To my mind, it makes sense to provide a certain amount of socialism in the form of state-funded healthcare, welfare and the like, quite irrespective of any moral arguments regarding the claims on the one hand of people to a decent standard of living, and on the other to freedom to use one’s money as one pleases.
The reason: a society containing the truly destitute is a dangerous one for everyone rich and poor alike. It doesn’t matter in the slightest whether these destitute people get that way because of something that could broadly speaking be their own fault or not; the result’s the same in either case.
One must measure this danger against the disincentive effect of providing socialist benefits at too high a level, and come up with a compromise. Reasonable people could disagree on where that compromise should be drawn.
It is not an insult. In all my time here, based on his posts, I have not seen anything to indicate to me that Der Trihs holds down a conventional job. If that is a wrong assumption, I’m sure he will correct me. But until that happens, I am assuming he either not part of the workforce or possibly has some unconventional method of supporting himself.
And I believe it is relevant to the discussion, because ultimately what we are talking about is what society owes to people who only marginally contribute to it.
Right. And no one gives Rand Rover a hard time because he is a highly paid taxidermy?
My statement is not an ad-hominem (not ad homonem) as it does not address Der Trihs position. My questions address specifics of competition, income distribution and opportunity.
If they are able-bodied, why should they be “handed” things?
Ultimately the question is how should society treat those people whose skills and abilities have a market value below what is necessary for a sustainable lifestyle (and this incudes the infirmed or elderly and others who can no longer work).
Bob is a janitor at an elementary school. At night he tinkers in his garage trying to perfect the widget of hypotethical lore. As it turns out, he finally makes the widget to end all widgets.
He starts selling widgets to his friends. He eventually gets so many orders that he expands into a leased warehourse, buys more equipment, and hires some people to help him make widgets.
The damn business just won’t be stopped! So Bob obtains some financing, buys a larger factory and more machines, hires some more people, and is selling widgets like a sonofabitch.
Bob decides that he can take his business to the next level by acquiring companies that distribute his widgets and provide raw materials, so he taps the public equity market in an IPO.
After a few years, Bob is getting older, so he retires as CEO and remains on the board. His stock is worth several hundreds of millions of dollars, and he has been paid a nice salary and taken hefty distributions from the company for years and years. The dude is loaded.
So, Der Trihs, in your world, ol’ Bob was just a poor dumbass good-for-nothing loser that needed the government to protect him and give him money while he was a school janitor, but somehow over the years he transformed into a parasitic vermin that robbed others of the product of their labor. You would slap heavy taxes on his ass the whole way up the chain, meaning that his ability to grow the business and hire more people would be severely reduced.
To me, he was just Bob when he was a school janitor and he is just Bob when he’s the multimillionaire shareholder and board member, and society should be set up to encourage other people that can make really awesome widgets to pursue their dream and do so.
I’m from Mississippi. Other than being smart and white(I know some people here think that being white is the ultimate trump card) I didnt have any unusual advantages in my upbringing. My parents dont have any money and I’m from MS so my education is suspect.
I was screwed up as a teen. I didnt have much motivation. I decided that the military could give me direction. The Navy is a hard job but it provides education and health care. See? I made a sacrifice to get what I thought was important. I stayed in the Navy til I felt I was educated enough to get a job in the world.
I’m a nuke mechanic. This is a hard job. It involves working lots of hours and working in crappy sometimes dangerous conditions. Did I go back home to MS to be with my family and work the crappy jobs there? No. I went to where the money is. I moved to NY. I hate cold weather. And my family is far away. I work tons of overtime every year. This gives me a 6 figure income. I don’t think this makes me a bad person.
I am not fortunate. I made a lot of sacrfices to get where I am now. There are a lot of people who refuse to make sacrifices now so that they can have it better in the future.
There was one person posting about how she loved the job she was doing but it didnt provide healthcare. Easy, fulfilling jobs don’t pay much. You want me to work my crappy, dangerous job that provides me good pay and healthcare and then pay taxes to provide you with healthcare while you have a nice cushy job. I’m not really interested in that deal.
Look. Here’s the difference between you and Rover, and me, in this instance. You want the poor to enjoy a lush life en masse. I want each poor person to succeed and be rich one at a time. That’s how it works. Not everyone has equal ability, but let’s leave out the exceptional people. Let’s focus on the poor shlubs, the Ralph Kramdens, Willie Lowmans, and Fred Flinstones of the world. Let’s talk about people with no higher education, and perfectly equal mental and physical ability. There will still be a difference—work ethic. Some people will work harder than others. They just will. Maybe you’re a harder worker than Rover or me. And if the three of us had the same job within a company, you should get the raise, the promotion. Do you disagree with that? Should I get it, even though you do a little better job?
No matter what the job is, there is always a way to do it better than the guy next to you. And when you both compete, trying to do the best job, everyone wins: the people involved and the company, which again benefits all employees. Even take three guys doing the exact same job on an assembly line. And let’s leave out one of them having a bigger brain and offering great ideas. We’re all of the same intellect and ability. You and I are good employees, but Rover is never late. And he always stays a few minutes after his shift is over and wipes things down and sweeps up. No one tells him to do this, he just does. And he’s got a great attitude, too, more pleasant than you or I. Now, if there’s a job open, who should get it? Should we just flip a coin? Or should the guy who puts a little more into it get the nod?
This is the same with ANY job. It just requires that someone take responsibility for himself and seek to outperform the next guy. And if it turns out that you simply can’t, given a particular job, it behooves you to leave that job and put yourself in a situation where you can do better. If you’re more the muscular type, find a job where that is a valuable asset. If not, find a job where it’s not a detriment. If you adopt this attitude you will be the poor worker who gets the promotion. And the next promotion. And the one after that. Then, before you know it you’re not one of those poor guys. You’re one of the people keeping an eye on them looking for the next guy to reward.
That’s how poor people stop being poor. One at a time. I like, and I think Rover does too, because I have respect for people. For individuals. I believe that everyone and anyone can dramatically improve his or her lot in life.
What’s the alternative? Reward everyone the same? Don’t put a value on hard work?On smarts? On initiative? What exactly do you want? A flat society? To twitch your nose and for everyone to be poor? Or rich? Do you realize that neither of those is an option in reality?
So, please, take a break from beating your tired, broken, hate-filled tin drum that the rich are evil and the poor are the abused nobility and explain just how the fuck you think the world should work? Just what in God’s name would make sense in your mind?
I’m really curious? How do YOU think the world should work?
Sir, I take my hat off to you. Not that you did anything special. Just that you did what thousands, millions of other people have done by doing that which is necessary to improve your lot in life. You did it. I did it. Anyone can do it. I hope this real-life example has some effect on DT and others of his mindset. I am not optimistic.
I don’t think I fit in with either side of the argument.
I possess a lot of ‘industry’, but I think it is largely a result of ‘winning’ the ‘genetic lottery’. By that I don’t mean to toot my own horn, as it isn’t warranted, but to say on the one hand that I am demonstrably bigger and stronger than average folks, OTOH I have put plenty of personal effort into capitalizing on this and other innate advantages.
I spent a rather long time subsisting as seriously poor. However, I think a major contributor to my poverty was social prejudice. By the prevailing opinions of the ‘elite’ of the (rather isolated) locale, I should not have been capable of outperforming certain local douchebags, let alone by such a wide margin. And so I believe I experienced something like sabotage. It left me with a distaste for Finance MBA CPA condescension.
At the same time, I viewed this as a temporary setback, escaped the reach of the douchebags in question, and landed myself in a place and position that I’m actually very pleased with. I’m a 6/7 on the ‘satisfied with life’-o-meter. Today that is. As a result of continued ‘industry’.
I do have an opinion on this though:
I intentionally stopped it at ‘lived’, leaving out the clause, ‘the lifestyle you choose.’ If we deny basic care to citizens of our nation, some will be forced to confront death. From the 1st person disinterested perspective, that is too high a penalty to pay for the caprices of circumstance. If one of us is sick, even if the guy is a total loser, let’s get them the health solutions they need, no? I’m not advocating caviar handouts, just health care. Untreated illness is simply unfair.
I’m willing to pay tax for that. Out of my high income. I also don’t mind ‘cash for clunkers’, even though it boils down to my helping pay for stangers’ cars. It reduces our dependence on foreign oil, which is more than you can say for pretty much all other tax spending.
For me, the answer to the quesiton is to train those people skills that will give them the ability to make a good wage, as well as teaching them things like gratification delay, budgeting, proper child care and whatever else is holding them back. I am a firm believer in the teach a man to fish thing, rather than what we are doing now, which is just handing people fish all the time.
I’m not interested in paying taxes to support the bloated USA military-industrial complex, but we all have to abide by the will of our democratically elected representatives.
And my family is far away. I work tons of overtime every year. This gives me a 6 figure income. I don’t think this makes me a bad person.