The rich are getting richer.....

[blitzkraig]

The latest Forbes report says the the rich are once again getting richer. The wealth of the richest 400 people went up 10%! And the CNBC webpage article on this has a subtitle that says 'What a relief'. !!!!!!!!!#$@#%$@#%@!

Stuff like this makes me feel like my head is going to explode! Profits are going up across the board and people like us are getting laid off left and right! The unemployment rate is hovering around what? 6% now? AND THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER!?!?!?! $H!T! I'll be graduating from college in 4 months and I'll probably be lucky to find a job that pays even a LIVING WAGE, and the RICH ARE GETTING RICHER?!?!?!

Seriously though, at what point is someone earning too much money? Once they've passed 500K a year are they really doing anything useful with their money???? It's either just accumlating in some bank account or being used to buy pointless crap! ACK.......

Sorry this may not be the right place to vent my frustration on this topic, but I've no where else to go. And the voices in my head won't shutup until I've expressed myself. Grrr......:dead:

[Zvoiture]

>>>Seriously though, at what point is someone earning too much money? Once they've passed 500K a year are they really doing anything useful with their money???? <<<

Hmmmm. I've heard this before. I heard someone once say, "CEO's make too much money! There should be a limit to how much a person can make!" Does a more ignorant concept exist? Tell me Craig, what socialist institution--errrrrrrrrr--college are you graduating from, so I can add it to the list of those who do not promote capitalism. I want to make sure my children never attend there. By and large--ok except for a few Hilton sisters and Kennedy's and the like--people who are wealthy are so because they have WORKED THEIR BUTTS OFF. They have taken chances in free enterprise others overlooked. They have said, "This will work. I'm gonna do it." They deserve it. Class distinction (as it supposedly 'doesn't exist' in America) is visible because if the differences in individual character. It is why there will always be employees and employers. Somebody has to do it. Well, somebody has to lead too, and his time is worth every cent he is compensated for it. When you drive through those houses up on the hill and you think, "I'm never gonna have this." And are tempted to think, "These people don't deserve this." Remember we live in America. Anything is possible. Get out there and DO IT! You can! Anyone can! A college education is a huge head start! If you head down the 'deserve' path, you are dangerously treading on economic principles which have been proven to NOT WORK by numerous societies.

steve77

[MikeW]

Let's see, who's at the top of the list? Oh yeah, Bill Gates. I develop software for a living and I'm not a big fan of Microsoft. On the other hand, the revolution they created made many, many people rich. More than one thousand lowly Microsoft employees became millionaires by taking advantage of stock options. That doesn't come close to including the wealth generated by other services and industries going along for the ride of the PC revolution.

Contrary to popular opinion, most businesses are barely getting by. Entrepreneurs start companies, hire people, and often end up bankrupt - not rolling in money. It's nice to see that some are successful; that's a good way to create more jobs. Doing something to penalize those who are successful is a sure fire way to lose even more available jobs.

[Zedman]

Steve, I'm sorry, but I kind of disagree with you on some points. While I admit it is great to see someone adequately compensated for their hard work, in corporate America today, the ones that are working the hardest are the little guys, and they (we) are the ones that are starving and/or worried about losing their jobs. The big guys are ruthless and for the most part have earned (?) their ridiculous sums of money by stepping on the little guys, abusing them, and then throwing them away when it looks more profitable to cut some more off the bottom. I know about this, because where I work we are in the middle of negotiations, and while the company is more than profitable, the CEO, who has accumulated about $167,000,000 in stock options during his time with the company, is trying his hardest to make us take as many concessions as he can shove down our collective throats, and he has only earned his 'wages' by chopping the guts out of the company, to the point that if we don't get rid of him soon, there will be no company left to revive. Sorry about the rant, since I'm new to the board and all, but due to the present state of my job, I felt compelled to vent. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for capitalism, I just get sick and tired of seeing CEO's who don't need the money amassing huge fortunes just to keep score in the big game, when there are other people out there who are barely scraping by. Sorry for the long read.

-Mikey

P.S. Mike, one sad thing about entrepreneurs is that a lot of new businesses get started by people that think as soon as they open their doors for business they can buy a new car, etc., without waiting to let the business get established. I'm sorry about this, I hope I'm not making any enemies by speaking my mind.

[tanny]

The words "deserve" and "fair" I think were invented by Mary Poppins. It is assured that if you expect fairness in life you are going to end up a bitter and disillusioned person. Furthermore, the only person who might really care that life has been unfair to you is your mother, and I'm not being sarcastic. As for rich versus poor, it is in homo sapien's nature to be extremely selfish (read: become as affluent as possible to ensure maximum mating success and maximum survival of your children, thus guaranteeing survival of your genes) and to accumulate wealth at other people's expense. There always has been and always will be a battle for resources between the powerful and the less powerful. The trick is to find a balance where the innovative risk takers are rewarded well enough to continue to innovate and stay in business, while at the same time rewarding the workers well enough to where they don't want to destroy the innovator and take what he has by force The workers must have enough money to buy the very products they are producing. This is where unions serve a useful function: they help the less powerful pry some of the rewards away from the owner/CEO whom otherwise wouldn't voluntarily give them up. Without the ability to join together, workers have absolutely no bargaining power and must rely on the good intentions of the owner/CEO, which is of course absurdly wishful thinking. Just look at the pay and working conditions before workers were able to successfully form unions. It was criminal. If the worker were put into the CEO position, he would be equally as selfish, so there is nothing good or evil about a worker or a CEO, it simply is human nature to be selfish. The elitist notion that infers that workers have not been able to accumulate wealth because they don't work hard enough or are too stupid is the height of ignorance and stupidly narrow-minded thinking. It takes much more than just hard work to be able to be successful in a business. It takes various personality traits, growing up in a family that encourages education and a good work ethic, being in the right place at the right time, being lucky enough to have some helpful mentors (who can say they were able to be financially successful without a ton of help from other people?), and not least of all, blind luck. My father, who was an extremely successful entrepreneur, always said that no matter how hard you worked and prepared, if you didn't have that 10% luck (why 10% I have no idea) you will not make it. The fantasy that if you work hard you will succeed is just that. Hard work may increase your odds of being successful, but is certainly not a guarantee. Be careful of those words "deserve" and "fair", they might make your life disappointing. Victor.

[DatsunZGuy]

As time goes on, I do see a greater divide between the rich and poor. I live close to 60 miles from where I work. Why so far do you ask? It’s the only place where I can afford a decent home. I see the middle class, the backbone of our workforce, funnel into the city from north and south. At the end of the day, we all begin the exodus back to our homes many miles away leaving our work behind. Every year school enrollment goes down in the city, a sure sign that the middle class with families are being driven away by the high cost of living.

The only people left in the city at the end of the day, are the wealthy who can afford to live and enjoy themselves in this playground, and the poor who cannot afford to leave the city and end up waiting on the financially blessed tables in restaurant and landscaping their yards.

I know this situation is not unique, which makes it all the sadder.

[MikeW]

Part of the problem these days is the desire to live beyond your means. While it may be true that in your location that the only affordable housing is many miles out, where I live it's common for people to commute long distances because of the perceived value of those homes further out. If you've just got to have a 3,000 sq. ft. house in a swimming pool community with more bedrooms than you need and two new SUV's then you're liable to get yourself in trouble. People run up tremendous credit card debt while still trying to pay off huge student loans. Homes are getting bigger and bigger in the U.S. while families are typically smaller. Previous generations managed to get by with less. Eating out was an occasional treat. Today we all have the highest standard of living ever but we still want more and we want it to be easy and we don't think it's fair when it's easy for others but not us. Visit a typical home in the UK or elsewhere in Europe and you'll find that an automatic dishwasher is considered somewhat of a luxury.

[blitzkraig]

Before I start my second rant, I'd like to thank Victor for that wonderful post. It's a very well written observation of the world and I agree with everything in it.

Ok, time to explain myself a little further. I'm majoring in Business Management (I take more economics classes than the Economics majors!) at UC Santa Cruz (probably the most liberal of UCs, so there's the reason for my views). I will probably get a decent job that will provide me with at least 45K or more per year. I believe in a hard work ethic, and I also believe that the people earning the big bucks really do deserve to be well compensated. Heck I don't want doctors or leaders of huge companies to have to live the same as me, they work HARD! However, there are also people who work hard but are WAY over compensated. Take the CEO of the NYSE for instance. He apparently was getting paid over 100 million a year! What exactly does one do that deserves that much money? To me, that man should be sweating all the time and be mentally dead everyday. But I'm sure he just sits in an air conditioned office and goes over data, talks with people, makes critical decisions, yadda yadda. Seriously, how much stuff can you really buy to make up for all that hard work done? Can you buy 100 million dollars worth of stuff? I don't think I could buy more than 10 million dollars worth a year.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a marxist. I know socialism has failed repeatedly, and capitalism has been keeping our nation at the top. I just think what we have is raw capitalism in need of major refinement.

We have one shot at life, why should some people who work ridiculously hard (either physically or mentally) get paid millions upon millions, while other people who work just as hard have trouble paying for their next meal. Seems like such a waste.....

I'm sorry if I've angered anyone with my views, I just need to air it out. Hopefully our love of Zs can keep us from taking this too personally

[Zvoiture]

I know us 'trickle-downers' get a certain amount of unjustified scorn in the post-Reaganomics era, but if you have some time for some serious reading that will either make you look at things differently of embolden what you already believe, pick up some Frederic Bestait. Try Economic Harmonies or Econimic Sophisms .

No worries Craig...I know the acheivment of goals can seem daunting and horribly uphill in this society of have's and not's. I just get this horrible twitch every time I hear a young person say something almost straight out of Das Kapital .

steve77

[Zedman]

I'm not a young person, and I'm not a Marxist either. I believe that Doctors and other professionals should be getting what they get for the most part, but it's the big business guys that kill me. I think yes, that people who head corpoations, being the ones in charge, are worth more, no doubt, but HOW MUCH MONEY DOES ONE NEED? Hell, if they want to have extra to lord it over us, fine, but like you said, Craig, there has to be some sort of an upper limit-how much is too much? Let's say for the sake of argument that an average worker in a corporation is earning say, $40,000 a year, and the CEO of the same corporation is earning $4,000,000 a year (which I'm sure is FAR LESS than most of them earn with all the other perks these days). That means that the CEO would be earning 100 times as much as his average employee. Is this is justified? Especially when the men at the top these days tend to be bean counters that know very little about what kind of manpower, ideas and programs are required to run the businesses at the ground level. Too many corporate decisions are made to impress only the shareholders without listening to the 'frontline' employees who see how the decisions affect business operations in the real world.

For instance, when I phone my bank for assistance with a problem, I get someone on the line that lives about 5 or 600 miles away from me, even when I dial the local number! Do I want to talk to this person? NO, I want to talk to someone in my own branch in my own town, but this is a system set up by the big guys to cut costs, and it in fact makes customers less satisfied with the service they are getting.

I am rambling now, I have to rest my brain, but I hope somehow in all of this I have made my point.

Bye for now...

-Mikey

[Zvoiture]

Come on Chris...Tell us what you REALLY think!

Oh, and datusnZguy...I can't afford SB either....

steve77

[Zedman]

Ummm...Chris, I'm having a little trouble following you-who are you ranting at here?

-Mikey