Because They've Earned It
 

Weell, that seems fair:P

You would think they took the numbers from the top of a boom and the bottom of a bust or something.

Well, duh. The more money you have, the more money you can make. This is not rocket science.

I wonder what those figures are for the mother country.

Probably very similar :P Whilst living standards have improved in recent years, the gap between rich and poor in the UK is on a par with that during the time of Dickens.

:eyebrow: I thought it was "the more money you have, the more politicians you can by (in order to reduce your taxes)." :eyebrow:

Same difference...

Not really, it does take money to earn money. Those with the money to gamble will strike the big payoffs, and the more you invest the bigger the return.

Of course, because for the top earners in the U.S. at least, they are paying 35% of their income in taxes (more than 1/3 of what they make), while the bottom earners are only paying 10%. I know that if I were in that top tier I would want to get that lowered! :eyebrow:

It's just extra taxes for selling their soul. ;)

Yeah I guess you are right... I mean, anyone who is successful is evil:rolleyes:

kind of sucks for people in the low end of that bracket.

Also, I'd be interested in seeing what the data shows for the missing 8.9%. The chart shows growth for the bottom 90%, and the top 1.1% only...

Only National Security knows for sure, and they ain't talkin'.

I was retorting to "they earned it." Those of us who work but choose not to climb the corporate ladder and instead help others also earn our money. We just don't earn as much.

I have nothing against people who earn good money! In fact, I have some family members in that category. I just get tired of the old "if you worked harder you'd have more money" when I have worked hard my whole life (started working on a produce farm every summer at 13, and most of my adult life have carried a second job.) Can't you understand how hurtful that might feel?

:)

ha ha ha I seriously may create some bullshit charts to post, when you're least expecting it, just to see UT go to work de-bunking them.

working harder makes you more money. working smarter or better makes a lot more money.

people that make the kind of money on that chart are making more for other people, too. big earners not only spend more, and therefore create more wealth for those below them, but very often employ people, and directly effect their wealth. don't knock the filthy rich. we need them more than they need us. ( can you tell i just read atlas shrugged)

Working on this, it's really hard to find specific data on personal income broken down by income sector, but what I've found so far suggests that this chart is either built to be specifically misleading or entirely incorrect.

The Census Bureau has some detail on household income through 2001 and the raw data does not like what this chart suggests.

remember, 57% of internet statistics are made up.

Some of the hardest working people get paid some of the lowest wages.

i know. in fact, i would posit that most of the hardest workers make the least. to me, working hard, and being honest is admirable. working hard, and smart, and better than your competitors (for jobs or in business) is more admirable.

I'd rather work hard for $30,000/yr than rely on state support, but if i have the ability to make $300,000/yr by working harder and smarter? pay me.



ps. i don;t make $300,000



yet

It isn't always a matter of choice though. Some people simply do not have access to the opportunities which wuold allow them to earn $300,000 a year.

in the US, at least, everyone has access to the opportunity. many do not have the vision to see it, the intelligence, skill, luck, etc. I have the opportunity to make that kind of dough.....i just haven't realized it yet.

I wanted to find a hole in your logic, but couldn't. But I sense no empathy. No concern for those being left behind. There's millions of us former blue collar workers who used to make a living wage who are (not) now. People who like being active. Like working with their hands. But through the rapidly changing demographics of the global economy are finding choices narrowed to an extremely uncomfortable margin.

In other words...Is there room left for the people who don't have the dog eat dog mentality?

what? rapidly changing demographics?

i think what you were saying is that there are people that have lost blue collar jobs because companies have moved their manufacturing outside of the country? well, yeah. that's true. these people did not aspire to be factory workers, though. they did not go to school to learn how to join a union and get paid too much for menial, mindless labor. they got jobs. it was enough. they made a living. bills got paid. everybody's working for the weekend.

who ever told them that they were entitled to an income commensurate with a middle class standard of living for doing a job that could be performed by lower class talent? the jobs that have been outsourced are those that CAN be. trades and skilled labor are as secure as ever, if not more. In my personal experience, i have had difficulty getting a plumber, an hvac service, a general contractor....... it seems like the 'blue' collar worker has a gun to the head of the 'white' collar worker when it comes to service that the 'white' collar worker needs to have done. and they are very well paid for having the skill and knowledge that they have to do the work they do.

you ask if there is room for those that don;t have the dog eat dog mentality? sure. at the bottom, there's plenty of room. this is a free country. do what you want.

if you are happy eating, breathing and sleeping for 80 or so years, it doesn't require a whole lot of effort in america. if you want more, you'll have to earn it.

remember. in other countries, not having the dog eat dog mentality means that you will probably get eaten.

If you can find a good HVAC guy, marry him. If you are a guy, gay marry him.

(for once it's ok not to use the she pronoun. there are no women in HVAC)

My ex used to work with an illiteracy program, teaching reading to adults. She quit. The last guy who came around to our house to learn to read would drive up in his Corvette. He had his own home refurbishing company and made huge bucks.

Sorry about triple posting. I am on LJ's side in this; it's not dog eat dog really, it's about motivation. Jacquelita's kid, without any math abilities, is 19 and has a high school degree. Did not make it into the Navy, he will wind up working with his hands somewhere. I can see clearly that there is nothing "dog eat dog" about his situation; it's merely about motivation. Nobody is clutching and grabbing at his shirt so they can get up over him to succeed. It is all up to him. Nobody wants to see him fail so that they can succeed. If he gets out of bed in the morning, goes out and finds work, and works hard at it, and doesn't do anything stupid, he will get along in life pretty well.

"Dog eat dog" may apply in organizations and companies where people are competing. But to live and succeed in this country you are only competing with yourself. Right now there is an almost permanent labor shortage at the low end, especially in the north where it isn't also addressed by 10 million Mexicans. Labor costs are now the top drag on the economy. It's true that you may not be able to do exactly the work you want, but that's the price we pay for having the sort of economy that relentlessly grows. Permanent change is required; lagging industries must close, succeeding businesses must be allowed to succeed and failing businesses must be allowed to fail.

It may not be dog eat dog. But the idea that everybody has equal access to opportunties is a fallacy. The playing field is not level. If you begin life encumbered with disadvantages you are likely not to end up doing well. There are of course xceptions to that. If you start life unencumbered with disadvantages you are likely to do well. There are also exceptions to that.

The only jobs that can't be outsourced are service-oriented ones, but they could be done some day by vending machines or other robots. Government and military jobs (and associated contractors) are pretty safe, too.

The playing field never can and never will be level. But it seems to me that one of the biggest disadvantages you can be encumbered with is the belief/excuse that it's going to be tougher for you because of your other disadvantages -that's a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever I saw one.

From the BBC, a news item which shows that children from poor backgrounds are half as likely to succeed as those from more comfortable homes
I don't know if the situation is the same in America as it is here. But the reality is, certainly in the UK, if you are from a poor home, you are more likely to suffer a poor education, be brought up in an environment which doesn't promote learning and leave school with fewer qualifications than you otherwise might. You are also more likely to be brought up in an environment which has a culture of low expectations. That some people have low expectations in life is not merely an indication that they are too weakwilled to succeed.....it may be a factor of their upbringing. There are a good many hidden ways in which the poor are disadvantaged from a young age.

if you apply statistics about the masses to your individual expectations you will probably achieve a state of averagosity. yawn.

each of those kids, as soon as they realize the importance of it, can educate themselves in preparation for life. if their school is substandard, they have to work a little harder than the rich kids. I'd say that that prepares them better than the rich kids.

I don't disagree that the well off children have a head start. It would be silly to discount the environment that people live in. There is nothing stopping someone willing to work hard to improve, though. it's not quite survival of the fittest...more the prosperity of the fittest.

Dana, i hear your message, though. you are sympathetic to the masses, and feel compassion for those less fortunate. fuckin communist ;)

How difficult is it to break thru the class system in the UK?

There are areas of poverty in the Uk, where expectations are frighteningly low. Parents pass along those expectations to their children. In the area I represent, low expectations, teenage conception, domestic violence, drug and alcohol abuse and unemployment are all major facts of life. In an environment where neither parent works, where brothers and sisters are involved in petty crime, family life is fragmented and housing poor and cramped, the odds of the kids making a connection between their actions and their future prospects are seriously reduced.

Not very difficult. The class system isn't the problem. The problem is the enormous gap between the haves and the have nots. It is very difficult to break out of the mindset one is raised with. If one is raised to expect little from life, then only the exceptional break through that.

The reason I ask, Dana, is a prof of mine, guy from Scotland (also lived in Newcastle) told me it was difficult to break thru the class system--but maybe he meant Scotland.

When was he referring to? The class system was much more entrenched before the 80s.

Well, he's younger than I and I'm 42. The reason we were talking about this was because of a Tony Harrison or Philip Larkin poem...maybe Tony Harrison. About his mom's death...Long Distance or Marked with a D? I can't recall...anyway, that's how we got to talking about it.

I wouldn't say that class is no longer a factor in Britain, but it has been somewhat superceded by income. We still refer to Middle class and working class, upper class and underclass, but the reality is, your accent and manners, which once would have set you apart from another class has taken a backseat to your income. Certainly that is the case within most areas of life. The exception is of course the upper class. You don't get to be upperclass with income.

But all you're doing is proving lumberjim's point, you're just adding on that it's not fair that these kids can't seem to get it through their heads that they can succeed if they work at it. You can't make someone "make the connection." Either their drive to succeed will be enough to overcome the philosophy they were raised with, or it won't.

Then it doesn't seem so much a problem with the economic status of the home as with the attitudes and expectations. I agree with that - my husband's parents were immigrants who arrived right after WWII with literally nothing. All his father's money was stolen on the boat. He saved pennies for a year, working two jobs and walking everywhere to save tram fare, before sending for his fiancee. They always had a very low income (and had grown up in poverty, I might add). But they expected their kids to get educations and do well. All three sons went to university and became professionals.

You don't need a high income to have high expectations for your kids.

Even where the expectations are low, in this country kids can break out of that mold. They have to want to - but it takes that for anyone to really succeed, not just low income kids.

But, here again is the attitude that if you make less money you do not work hard and smart.

Also, there is an underlying theme in other's posts that says, basically, that success is defined by wealth.

SO not true, and such a sad way to view what life is all about.

I think they are only refering to the amount of someone's economic success, but yeah there are lots of different ways you can view success.

As far as how hard you work tied to how much you make, it is unfortunate that people that can work hard, tiring, and difficult jobs are not making more for their efforts. I know that it can seem frustrating sometimes, and the reasoning behind it is complicated at best. Financial compensation isn't just tied to what your job is, but also how effectively you do it, how easy you are to replace, how much time and money the company already has invested in you, the level of your skills, your drive to learn new skills to expand your usefulness to the company, whether you can lead, innovate, adaptablilty to change, etc....

This is very true of many who are in jobs similar to mine, but most any other institution I could go to would pay more for less work. So, why don't I move on? I love my boss, love my coworkers (most of them), I have very flexible scheduling, I'm very close to home, and I feel I have invested so much of myself in this job and this place I have a certain degree of loyalty. We went through a radical change a couple years ago, and I can't go into to details but it almost killed all of us from stress (these are changes we ourselves implemented because it was the right thing to do) so I feel very woven into the fabric of my job.

So, you all have a point: I COULD move on and make more $$ if I chose to, but the other factors are very important to me, for now anyway. How many people can say they love their jobs?

But, I wish I were paid what I'm worth, so that's hard too.

Shawnee you make a lot of sense.

On the other hand, if you hate your job, dread dragging your butt in every day, can't wait to leave, it won't make your life longer but it will sure seem that way. :lol:

Seriously though, if you have a job you love going to.....or staying home at....you would be nuts to leave, unless financial or social pressure made it a necessity.

Can anyone here say ''social capital"?

I can say it but I'm not sure what you're talking about.

I think that rather answers Ali's unspoken question

Google it 9th. It refers to the advantages some students have over others because of not only wealth, but the knowledge of their parents and likelihood of them being introduced to different forms of 'culture'.

There is a massive amount of research on this topic, and it's something worth familiarising yourself with as a student yourself. Might help you understand where you got some of your ideas about right and wrong.

Edit: because I'm expecting a negative response to this idea, I'll find some links later on and post them for you.

That some have to work harder than others to get the same things is not wrong, it is nature.

Nature can't be wrong?

Nature and society, are two different things. To a large extent, society acts as an ameliorating force on nature.

All things are nature, in nature... no such thing as un-natural. You cannot be out of nature.
I am dyslexic and got very pissed when I hear others who are whine about not having things given to them when in school. I graduated on the Presidents list and on the national honor roll, as well as Gold Key. Just hard work. Some think that is too much to ask of them.
Just work harder... that is all.
Everyone has to at something... it is the way of things and is correct. Builds character.

Why should a young einstein be withheld from the world at large simply because she comes from a poor black family who don't realize the potential of their daughter because they're not educated enough to see it?

There is no "why", it just happens.

Everyone has the right to believe and accept what they want, but reality doesn’t discriminate. Reality is not different for different people. Not once has reality excused anyone for good intentions, ignorance, or stubbornness. Reality shows no mercy, accepts no excuses, and issues no pardons. Reality does not “turn the other cheek.” This does not mean that reality is cruel, it just means that reality is. - Gary Ryan Blair