To your quote of PLM:
I too don't know if I'll ever be able to aspire to such wealth, but I'd like to point out that I do come from wealth, and I still think there's a big problem with social, political and especially economic equality in this country. I think that everyone can see it, but the fact that the less well off say it and the better off rarely do is no excuse not to acknowledge it.
In short, it's not just about envy, especially if those from the top recognize the problem too.
Okay, but then what is it? Why are you concerned about a problem that has nothing to do with you? Obviously, human decency is a part of it. But you still seem rather concerned about this.
But if you got something unfairly, why does that still make it yours?
Depends what you mean by unfairly.
What I've already brought up. They take more for themselves, simply because they're in a position to do so, not because they've objectively earned it.
Or lobbying and getting a 16% tax rate on capital gains, so that they can pay less than anyone else in taxes... and then, lobby to make sure it stays that way. While they're at it, lobby and buy off a whole bunch of loopholes and regulations that can benefit them personally.
I'd like an argument for why that's fairly earned money - and keep in mind, I'm not saying we just take that money back, but that we let this knowledge influence our fiscal and social policies.
None of that is necessarily fair. I agree that, yes, you should be paid relative to how much you're worth to the company. I also think that, yes, the super-low capital gains tax is awful.
But, like it or not, those things were earned. The CEO got that job, and the rich were able to lobby for it.
To establish a new system that prevents this in a workable manner, you'd have to fundamentally change how this country approaches economics. I would even say that's a good idea. But how? I hated the NFL lockout. I believe it was an act of the owners essentially stealing from the players. But what kind of regulation to prevent it wouldn't cause more problems and be more unfair?
Good discussion here. Decided to check out the CEO of my company’s parent company and found this:
In 2009, he earned $7,201,110, which included a base salary of $880,000, a cash bonus of $2,206,116, stocks granted of $3,618,481, and other compensation totaling $496,513.
Now, I am not really sure what he does on a daily basis, so it would be easy to argue he didn’t ‘earn’ a 2M bonus. He took some heat (pun intended) for not doing enough when one of his Captains ran his ship aground and fled for a lifeboat like a little bitch. Apparently he offered some words of consolation, without even actually traveling to Italy. Of course he was a target for the media and probably had to pop the antacid like they were gum drops, but I don’t know if he will or has faced any noteworthy repercussions. Granted, it wasn't his mess-up.
None of this is to say I'd want his job, but my daddy didn't start a multibillion-dollar company either.
I am more concerned Barto's sentiment more than anything, about what the future holds nature of labor and employment.
You work for Carnival Cruises?
Because it's trying to show you how much of your argument is irrelevant. Rich people make it out as if they're special, worked harder, did something greater than anyone else, when it's mostly, as you later admit, fortune and good luck.
Here's the thing though. Everyone can have fortune and good luck, at least in a country like this. It's what happens when you get it. When you meet people who take a genuine interest in you and your success, which you will, do you blow them off or form a relationship with them? If you have a specific talent, do you become an emotionally unstable tortured artist or do you develop a stable work ethic and a taste for satisfying your employers (who pay you) and your audience (who pay your employers)?
How is it that in the past, when there was LESS opportunity in this country, people were more willing to make a life for themselves? Just in the last five years, the fundamental nature of the way we live has shifted at least once. There's always some new technology or angle to exploit and profit from and find success in.
Now, I'm not sure if you've noticed, but I think I only brought up the government once so far in this discussion. At no point was it about using the government to stop you from doing anything. It's about the ethics and the morality of the kinds of concentration of wealth that exists in this country. And this probably doesn't even apply to you. What I would in fact advocate is just the change of business ethics in this country, where it's acceptable for a CEO to pull in such unproportionate income. It's a mentality, one that started in the 80's, and it has become acceptable. We started training people to become CEO's, pretty much specifically because they want to get rich, and we ignored teaching them socioeconomics, or anything close to relating to that.
Yes, business ethics in this country are horrible. But not for the reasons you're saying. CEO's should have some sense of social consciousness, sure. Toxic waste dumping is horrific. But the real problem is CEO's, at least the ones who make headlines, aren't loyal to their customers or even their own companies.
Like Scheavo said, there are tons and TONS of people who work every day of their life and don't end up anywhere near where you are. What about them?
Life is an almost absolute meritocracy. With the exception of those with extraordinarily bad luck (such as Steve Irwin being stabbed to death by a manta ray) or extraordinarily good luck (a lazy kid with super rich parents), people get exactly what they deserve. If someone works really hard and isn't successful, it's probably because their work isn't very good.
I see this a lot in the film and music industries. The supposedly brilliant but under-recognized local musician doesn't have a sufficiently tight performance, a unique thing to say, or even a nice hook. The indie filmmaker ignored by the system is probably making movies that only art film fans would enjoy.
I don't think it's a question of whether one is *deserving* of what they have or don't have, but rather if not having and the absence of opportunities for upward mobility are a result of the system increasingly conferring such benefits to some at the expense of others, namely those who would seek upward mobility opportunities. In other words, it's a matter of determining whether the widening gap between rich and poor (and the economic and/or governmental system's failure to close that gap) is due to efforts that didn't achieve their intended effect, or if through their efforts, relevant actors sought to maintain such a gap for whatever reason (whether directly or incidentally).
What does any of this have to do with income inequality? In theory, if more money flows to the top, then there is more money to be invested in labor/entrepreneurship/etc. If money is flowing upward and staying there, perhaps it is for a different reason then simply rich people making money. For instance, just from knowing a small bit about entertainment, I could say the following social policies are problematic:
- Companies with interest in stronger copyright laws trying to hinder the ability of independent filmmakers and technology companies to innovate and find their own way.
- Technology companies inserting anti-lawsuit clauses into their contracts so they don't have to pay for abusing the terms of their legal agreements.
- Comcast basically having a government monopoly that allows them to provide awful service with no meaningful repercussion.
This means the following government policies could be implemented to correct these problems:
- Relax copyright laws so remixing/posting a video of your kid dancing to Prince is unquestionably legal.
- Prevent end-user agreements from inserting mandatory arbitration clauses.
- Get rid of policies that give Comcast a competitive advantage.
Boom. Are these a bit vague? Yes. I'm not a lawyer or a policy expert. But these are real solutions (or at least the foundations of real solutions) that don't just come from resentment toward people of wealth. Income inequality isn't the problem. It's a symptom.
My grandfather came to this country with literally nothing: nothing of monetary value, no education beyond the 2nd grade, and no useful peacetime skills. He is a genuine example of self-made man, a multimillionaire just now settling into retirement. My dad grew up poor, and when my mother met him couldn't even afford to replace his shoes, which he'd had for three years. As most of you are well aware, he too pulled himself up by the bootstraps.
I mentioned this earlier, but it's worth repeating. Making something of yourself in your grandfather's time was HARDER than it is now. Why was he able to do it? With probably less of an education than people have now?
What PLM, myself, and others are concerned about is a system that no longer affords that opportunity as readily as in the past (note that the self-made men in this thread did so around the same time period as my father), or one in which such upward mobility now has a plateau, or worse, a ceiling. Furthermore, what if the reason for this is because sociopolitical trends and policies of however-many-years deliberately or accidentally cause this to take place? There's nothing wrong with saying that one will have to work for upward mobility, and there's nothing wrong with being rich; what's wrong is if in order to stay rich, you have to (not individually implicating anyone of this, just speaking of the socioeconomic state of affairs as a whole) make sure that others stay poor or at least are unable to change their situation from whatever station they currently possess.
Why? What's holding people back? Rappers like 50cent and Jay-Z come from some of the worst conditions in the country, and have turned themselves into rich and powerful men.
Naturally, in order to become rich or to "have," or simply to even gain some wealth, one has to do so at the expense of someone.
Wealth and private property are rivalrous and excludable; by making one person richer, you make one other person poorer.
STOP WITH THIS BULLSHIT.It's unbelievable to me that someone could possibly think this. Yes, okay, because Mark Zuckerberg invented Facebook someone else wasn't able to. That makes sense. But Eduardo Saverin was thrown under the bus because Zuckerberg lacks basic morality, not out of necessity. Wealth is not gained, it's created. And there's a huge difference. Even someone who opens a casino, a glorified means of shuffling money around, is employing workers, improving the image of the city it opens in, and providing work for the companies that supply its furnishings.
How does acquiring wealth necessarily mean someone else loses it? Seriously? How?
Society and individuals alike simultaneously benefit from growth however, and growth is both a necessary condition and a consequence of an increase to the welfare of the whole. Again, the aspiration to wealth is a relatable and admirable thing, but at what point does it surpass the point of both individual and collective utility? Is there not perhaps a point at which maintaining or increasing one person's happiness/utility/wealth/whatever-you-want-to-call-it results in damage to collective welfare? Or to put it another way, is there not a point at which one can trace some or part of the cause(s) for decreased collective welfare, a damaged or crippled society, or even one that is showing signs of collapse to the fruits of that collective welfare being concentrated into ever-fewer hands?
None of what you just said there is wrong in-and-of itself, but what's that line? Is Bosk crossing that line? Is the CEO of PepsiCo crossing that line? Did Bill Gates cross that line? Steve Jobs?
Society works because it forms a communal wealth/utility baseline that allows for the collective aspiration and accomplishment of personal fortunes. As unintuitive as it may seem, the only reason individuals or groups of individuals within the whole can achieve the measure of wealth/utility they can today or at any point in time since the beginning of civilization is because collective efforts allow one to specialize rather than having to provide entirely for one's own survival/personal welfare. There's nothing wrong with trying to work within that system to accrue a measure of personal benefit, a slice of the pie; abusing that ability however can undermine the entire framework of the system. After all, in a purely theoretical sense, the only reason the less-well-off agree to make you rich is because they can expect at least some measure of benefit will accrue to them, or because similar opportunities are open to them. At the very least, they can and ought to expect that helping you isn't essentially a conscious decision to make you rich without accruing anything in return, thereby resulting in a net personal loss; nobody wants to work for free. Take those away, and you take away the factors that stabilize the implied social framework.
In that sense, I can't disagree. Clearly, you can smell in their air that people think they're being locked into some form of feudalistic servitude to rich people and corporations. I can't blame them.
But I would argue that this is what happens when you make people more dependent on the government for fairness. If your life is in your hands, you know that where you are is because of you and you're okay with that. When you don't have control is when you really get angry. Basically, an over-abundance of social policy is the problem. Your implied suggestion of more/different social policy is not the solution.
Topic: PepsiCo to cut 8,700 jobs (Read 14584 times)
