I think Sam is half-right. If you gave the entire country a level playing field, within 20 years you would indeed see the same inequalities of wealth as you do today. However, it probably won’t be the same people, at least not most of them. Luck is too much of a factoe. Even someone like Bill Gates couldn’t have gotten where he is without a shitload of luck.
But what are you going to do? Take away everyone’s money every 20 years? I admit the current situation isn’t all that optimal (and that *Economist * article was very enlightening). But what’s the alternative? How can you reduce inequality without damaging the productivity and innovation of society as a whole?
Have none of you studied economics and learn how American Capitalism works?
A man or woman designs a product or service and needs to develop a corporation around the concept to build and sell it. First he has to get his permits approved and then find financing to get it started. He goes out for investors and if he has a reputation for honesty and hard work the investors are always looking for a new place to put their money. When he gets into production and is satisfied that his employees can build the product they usually, at that time, put together a contract that will pay the employees a working salary or give them a piece of the action. Nobody starts out at the top.
Okay the company is finally getting off the ground and the products are being bought by the public and a Board of Directors is often formed at this time and includes many of the people who made the production possible by their initial investments. If everyone plays it straight and ethics is imposed on many levels of the corporation it often turn out like Microsoft. Jobs are created, profits are made by the investors and the employees. If the profits are good enough benefit packages are developed and everyone wins.
The problem is that lately (do I need to point the looters from the Bush Administrations) get involved in these corporation and steal them blind. There are only a handful of these looters that do destroy the Capitalism that built the country.
Too many people think as some of you do that there is only so much money to be made and if Gates has more than others then nobody else can make any. I’m sorry that you feel this way and it reflects your lack of education.
Since 1989, we have seen a terrible lack of ethics starting in D.C. and coming down to several large corporations including Halliburton who don’t know how to run a corporation on the level. These men and women will all face prison as soon as Bush can get his own lawyers out of the way. His association with these terrible men should have cost him his election but it didn’t because he is a Christian.
What a shame that so many of you feel that you deserve wages that you do not earn. I’ve worked in many assembly production corporations and seen people like you who do as little as possible and wonder why the raises don’t come your way. The stories of kids starting out in the mail room or shipping department and end up as President of the Company are the stories that made America famous. It takes increased education, sweat and giving up time to learn what the next guy does on the employment chart.
There’s unlimited money to be made in America and just wishing for it won’t bring it to you. When you think you should take more than you deserve, your ethics often slips which is what is happening in America in several large corporations. How would you like to work for Halliburton knowing they have padded their bills and taken the American tax payer for several billion dollars. If that is okay with you, then there you are.
Business and making money is great fun if you have a focused end game that involves honor.
x-ray vision, MIT alum, what high school did you graduate from? I’m still thinking about the pay for your hypothetical six employees. Would you believe me if I said $100k ea? I’d like to think I would be that generous.
How much more innovation can we stand? If they don’t quit playing with the food, in search of “new” and “improved”, I may just stop eating. Did anyone really need green ketchup? Aren’t we already so productive that we don’t need ourselves?
It most certainly is an emotional thing with you. You resent the fact that you need to work 40+ hours a week in whatever it is you do for a living while some imbecile child will grow up never having to work a day in their life.
How exactly does the capitalist system “rob the lower and middle classes”? How exactly would you fix it? Would you have the government provide subsidies to every failing industry so that workers never need be laid off from work? Should everyone enjoy the same level of socialized services?
In reality, most people don’t really work that hard. At least, not at the kind of work that builds wealth.
Well that’s a little extreme, but I would advocate changes to the tax laws that reduce loopholes that let the super-rich get out of paying their fair share. I’m also not really opposed to the idea of a progressive tax structure since the marginal benefit of additional wealth decreases as wealth increases and poor folks have less disposible income to spend.
Do you have a flying car? I don’t have a flying car. It’s the year 2005 and none of us is driving a flying car. Until somebody invents a flying car then no, we’re not done with innovation. A hotel orbiting Jupiter would be nice, too. And all those new foods? There the reason there isn’t any more non-political famine in the world.
Seriously, though, I don’t know what the future holds. And unless there are people out there willing to work 100 hour weeks for the miniscule chance that they’ll become filthy rich (and in the process transfrom society in some unknown way), none of us will. And its not just me, its my country in general. You’re used to America being a modern, advanced consumer society. Do you want to live in a third-world nation? Becasue that’s where you’ll be without innovation.
(and don’t start saying that American poor are alrady living in a third world nation, They aren’t. Not really. I’ve seen REAL poverty, and it doesn’t exist in the U.S.).
You realize that that’s a ridiculous amount of money for unskilled, non-physical, low risk labor to make don’t you? Do you realize a socity that rewards that amount of money for that amount of work isn’t feasible? You’ve lost what little credibility you were contributing to this thread.
So, if QtM has his own office and makes $1,000,000 a year and he doesn’t pay his receptionist $100,000 a year, tell us, what does that make him?
Why is it unfeasible & ridiculous to pay someone well? Should I post a GQ on that, as I’d really like to know?
The MIT question was for real - how do you suppose someone gets into a school like that? 'Cause I can tell you for sure that plenty of straight-A valedictorian extra-curricular etc. etc.'s don’t. Sure, lovely Sandy’s fictional bank loans money to “good” people, but the rest of the world does business with their friends - and how do you think you make friends with people who have money?
One of the things everyone’s taking for granted here are the large number of people who are not and won’t ever be on a wealth track, without whom none of us could be having this conversation. How about teachers? Policemen? Firemen? What kind of society do you have when some of the most critical positions are excluded from participating in the Great Wealth Hunt that people think is so important?
Let’s go hunt something else, is all I’m saying.
I wouldn’t presume to tell QtM what to pay his receptionist. However, with his 3 cars & 3 houses, I’d sure hope she can afford to live someplace nice, too.
Gee, I wonder if the people in the starving areas who now have access to genetically modified crops that are resistent to pests feel the same way you do?
At least you can choose to stop eating. They don’t have that luxury. For you to decide that food has been ‘improved enough’ is the height of bourgeois arrogance.
In order to clarify, the statistics I used were from the book another poster mentioned, “The Millionaire Next Door.” The statics that were gathered were taken from 1995-1996. They do deal with people who are considered millionaires. I agree a millionaire would not be classified as one of the “super wealthy.” I used the statistics because I thought they were more relevant to the OP’s original question of why don’t employers pay their employees more when they themselves already have so much. Although the OP’s title used the word “super rich”, I did not think that term went with her original question. The “super rich” are not generally the ones who decided what employees are paid. I rather doubt Theresa Heintz Kerry is the one who decides what dollar amount per hour the various ketchup making employees make. She has a board and managers etc that do that. I thought the OP was asking more in terms of the wealthy that actually run their own businesses and make the actual decisions as to pay levels. This would be more in line with the millionaires represented by the book.
And I don’t believe there is anything wrong with someone if they are not rich. I don’t think becoming rich is a priority for most people. In my circle of friends and acquaintances their priority is raising their families. They want to make enough money so they can provide for their children’s needs. For some, private school is an additional expense they are willing to take on. For some, money for family vacations is important to them. I don’t think most people see “self aggrandizement as the point of living.” Sure who wouldn’t want to win the lottery, but to actually sacrifice time and money away from family, most don’t want to do that, and I see nothing wrong with that at all. And for those that do want to make those sacrifices, well that is fine also, I don’t see a need to penalize them, as some here are suggesting.
And I do think most people are able to improve their situations if they choose to. Becoming super wealthy, no that is going to happen to only a very few. But I know too many people who have worked hard and achieved a nice improvement in their wealth to think that it is impossible for most others to do the same.
And I love the fact that 41% of the people believe they will reach the top 1%. If some of those actually put a plan together and work at it, and get to the level of top 5%, well that is a nice place to be. At that level, they will have acheived a certain level of security and will have a lot more choices available to them. And if one of those choices is to give some back to their community, they would benefit even more.
Its unfeasible because no one would go through all the schooling, hard work and risk to potentially make $400,000 a year when one can get a job popping out widgets with no schooling, no hard work, and no risk and make $100,000 a year.
I don’t know how one gets into MIT, that part was hypothetical too. I thought you were busting my balls with the high school question. I went to a technical a vocational high school and I took four years of auto mechanics. Right now I’m trading stocks and I want to have my own bussiness within five years. I’m doing this with my own money that I made over the years working two jobs. I may lose it all but I’m taking a risk and spendidng a lot of my free time learning and paying mentors a lot of money to teach me more. If I’m a success story in 20 years, I hope the system in place doesn’t force me to share my wealth with Evil Captor’s kids.
Why should QtM’s receptionist get to live someplace nice too?
$100,000 a year is what, in the top 10% income bracket? It’s a simple fact that not everyone can be in the top 10% (or any percentage other than 100 for that matter). While you offer is very generous, it’s not possible that everyone do something similar. The free market works because it allows the total wealth to grow, over time. People of any income bracket are, overall, better off today than they would have been decades ago. I think this report (pdf) is a good example of how our lives compare with our ancestors.
I read the link Evil Captor, but the question still stands: what do we do about it? Yes, it’s true that people start in different places in life, but it’s impossible to make everyone start at the same place. Yes, it’s true that luck factors into wealth, but there is no way to completely remove luck as a factor. What is your solution to making our system “fair”?
You can buy a gold brick and drop it down a well if it tickles you; I won’t try to stop you. But it’s gluttonous, regardless of anyone’s opinion. We all engage in it to a greater or lesser degree. Gluttony is the conventional sin of the rich, in the sense that laziness is the conventional sin of the poor. I believe what the OP was claiming is that rich people are no longer conventionally viewed as gluttonous or stingy, whereas poor people are still conventionally viewed as lazy. That seems to be true in some places, and I agree that it makes no sense.
Debating whether the “system” is “fair” is a distraction from the OP. The claim was simply why rich people aren’t viewed as greedy. What I have found interesting is that people are seriously claiming it’s because greed and gluttony are no longer valid concepts. I find that a peculiar point of view. It’s as if someone claimed that airplanes can fly because gravity no longer exists.
QtM’s post wasn’t in regard to the OP, it was in regard to your post:
QtM’s reply:
Do you really think the ancients knew where to draw the line? Are you the one saying we should have a line drawn? And what do we do when one makes too much money?
Quotes like this one are a distraction from questions being asked based on statements made in the evolution of this thread.
Evil Captor made statements regarding our system not being fair and has been asked more than once what does he propose as a solution. Sounds like a fair follow up question to me.
OK, here’s my ideas along these lines. My plan doesn’t require communism or even big government programs. It just depends on a clearer understanding of the way in which free market economies actually works, and in developing economic policies that are consistent with that better understanding.
Let’s say you start fresh with a free-market capitalist society. Everybody’s equally wealthy, or poor, or whatever, and they go out in the marketplace and try to make more bucks. Under the classic free-market system, there are winners and losers. Some get rich, some go bust. Free-market types would like us to believe that that’s the end of it, with each generation producing a completely new batch of winners and losers, but of course that isn’t the end of it. As people accumulate wealth, they also accumulate political power. They use that further increase their wealth and also to try to ensure that they and their progeny are able to sustain that wealth as long as possible. Which in the case of very large fortunes, can be indefinitely, even if the offspring do nothing but clip coupons.
Of course, the effect that this has on the free-market system and on society in general is utterly unimportant to almost all of the wealthy because the advantages to being wealthy in a capitalist society outweigh all other considerations. They just want to retain their advantages.
The inevitable result of all this greed is just what you might expect – the wealthy accumulate almost all of the nation’s wealth, leaving the middle class and the poor living from paycheck to paycheck, in increasingly desparate conditions. It happened in the 1890s (they didn’t call it the Gilded Age for nothing) and something very much like it is happening now. (The Master has spoken on this topic.)
The way to solve the problem is to focus our economic and social programs on developing and building a strong middle class, rather than a strong upper class. After all, the upper class has plenty of power and clout – no need to worry about them, they can take care of themselves. And the lower classes will quickly and easily move into the middle class, if you have a strong middle class. All you need is a minimal safety net to keep them healthy and alive as they do so – starving babies are a Bad Thing, period.
But if your middle class is robust, they’ll generate plenty of wealth, keeping your economy robust, making the rich richer, which I’m not at all opposed to … so long as that wealth is not accumulated by squeezing the middle class, as is now the case. To ensure that, you want a strong educational system, you want to retain and expand jobs that pay a living wage, and minimize market forces that tend to transform people into faceless bots working for minimum wage for large corporations like Wal-Mart. You try to keep small businesses healthy and vibrant, but not by turning their employees into poverty cases.
You want EVERYONE to win here, and this bugs the hell out of free-market types, because they basically don’t care about middle class and poor people – they only care about the total amount of wealth generated by a society. Which always means, making the rich richer. Bad idea, for the rich as well as everybody else, but only a few wealthy people have the vision to understand that.
To make this happen, you DON’T do things like that dumb-ass tax cut for the rich that Dubya got passed. It’s not gonna do ANYTHING for anybody but make the jobs of a few tax accountants for the rich easier. And you oppose outsourcing because that’s shipping high-paying middle-class jobs overseas, in the case of programmers, and it’s causing problems for lower middle class folks in the case of call centers. Maybe you penalize companies that do it, maybe you find a more subtle method.
You also do some things that free markets like, such as make it as easy as possible for small businesses to start up and to compete against big businesses. Howzabout rendering those damned non-competition agreements and intellectually confiscatory intellectual property agreements people have to sign to get a tech or management job? You want to make it as easy as possible for people to get training and certification for in-demand jobs (if any).
another idea: take a good look at inheritance tax for the super wealthy. Will Bill Gates Jr. be able to somehow survive on $10 million, do you suppose, instead of $10,000 million? I somehow think so. Let the rich stay rich, but the ridiculous wealth accumulated by some needs to get back to regular people at some point.
Hey, there’s a big problem with CEO salaries in this country, as even coservative pubs like Forbes and WSJ have admitted. How about capping CEO salaries at 20X the median salary earned by their corporation. Wanna make more money? Make your cow-orkers richer along with your self.
And when you find yourself in a position where companies are doing very well, making huge profits, yet jobs remain scarce and what jobs there are tend to be low-paying service-sector jobs, you figure something is wrong and start programs to deal with the situation, instead of just hailing the glorious victory of the free market over … your citizens.
I think you already answered your own question when you siad “You can buy a gold brick and drop it down a well if it tickles you; I won’t try to stop you” (my emphasis). We tolerate these gluttonous actions to take place because the cure (the majority legislating the allowable actions of the minority) is much worse than the disease. What I see in most of the replies is not so much a statement that gluttany no longer exists, as a resistence against the idea of enforcing anti-glutany regulations. If you want to try to change people’s opinions from the bottom up, be my guest, but top-down social engineering is always a bad idea.
Its been a number of years for me too, also since college…though I’m looking into renting Atlas Shrugged and The Fountain Head on tape just for ole times sake. I used them as extreme examples to counter the cartoonish representations of the ‘evil rich’ I find in these types of threads. I think it makes a good counter myself…people in these threads tend to do and say the same kinds of over the top things that Rands antagonist do. If they are going to act like cartoons I’m going to use cartoon examples.
As I said…if folks are going to throw up cartoonish examples (like this) then I’ll respond in kind.
So, to summarize, you figure that because some executives from a fast-food industry didn’t decide to eat at their own restaruant when entertaining clients…that this is a problem for some reason? That, instead, they decided to take clients (who, presumably, generate income to the parent company, buy or sell services, etc…in other words, are a large part of the fast food companies BUSINESS) to a nice restaurant (i.e. ‘quite hoity’ :rolleyes: )…and this is surprising? And the only substantive thing you could think of was that while these ‘dumb broads’ who are executives presumably are eating high on the hog, the REAL work is being done by some poor shlubs making burgers or fries and getting shafted for $6.75/hr. And it was solely so they could ‘give themselves airs’. And then you are surprised when folks actually in business roll their eyes at you? Interesting.
Maybe you should try actually studying the history of Carnegie the man…and where his fortune came from? I mean, seeing as you are a ‘PhD’ and all, perhaps you could crack a book first and all.
Well, I’m glad its still my choice…I’m relieved that it hasn’t been co-opted by the masses yet. How exactly are you proposing to ‘shifting of priorities and values’ of society without resorting to legislation? Without FORCING folks to your view, they will have the view they currently have. And if you are unwilling to force (much to my own relief) then you are going to be sadly disappointed. More folks than you are appearently aware of have at least the basic understanding of how the economy actually functions…and what role the ‘Super Wealth’ actually play in it.
As for buying into the ‘myth that self-aggrandizement is the point of living’ its going to be damn hard for you to break that ‘myth’. People work and make a living primarily so they CAN live well. If that means a television and a six pack in the fridge or a new private jet its the same thing. People don’t work for the good of society…they work for the good of themselves and their families. Until you understand that you will continue to be puzzled why socialism doesn’t have a bigger hold in the US. Most American’s don’t really think they should work to be their brothers keeper.
Classic. Socialist tendencies and a neo-luddite to boot. How much more innovation could they stand in the middle ages? Why couldn’t we have kept the horse and buggy instead of that new fangled car thing. After all, think of all those buggy whip manufacturers out of work!! As for genetically modified crops (you aren’t from Europe are you?), its your right to refuse them if you don’t want them. If enough folks feel the same way then the genetically modified crop industry will fold and we’ll simply go back to eating pestacide laced foods going to waste much faster. Market forces and all. Certainly there isn’t a big market for genetically modified crops in Europe…so they don’t sell there.
You give such trite examples of ‘innovation’ though. Green ketchup?? I dont think thats exactly on the cutting edge of new ‘innovations’. However, obviously SOMEONE wants green ketchup…because it sells. Unless you are under the delusion that the ketchup manufactures force folks to buy their product. If no one wants green ketchup (put me in that category) then manufacturers won’t make it…and there will be no green ketchup. Market forces again. Unless of course we get the government controls of our industries as some crave…then we’d have green ketchup whether we wanted it or not…or we’d have only red, reguardless of our need for the green.
How much more innovation could they stand in the middle ages? Why couldn’t we have kept the horse and buggy instead of that new fangled car thing. After all, think of all those buggy whip manufacturers out of work!! As for genetically modified crops (you aren’t from Europe are you?), its your right to refuse them if you don’t want them. If enough folks feel the same way then the genetically modified crop industry will fold and we’ll simply go back to eating pestacide laced foods going to waste much faster. Market forces and all. Certainly there isn’t a big market for genetically modified crops in Europe…so they don’t sell there.