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Tech Rich Get Richer
theodp writes "The economy is improving, at least for the super rich. After two years of declines, the aggregate net worth of the U.S.'s wealthiest 400 citizens leapt 10% in the past year to $995 billion, according to Forbes' annual ranking. The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the East coast to the tech-centric West. Bill Gates capped off a decade in the top spot after his fortune increased by $3B to $46B. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held onto 3rd place, his net worth rising $1B to $22B. Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who saw his fortune expand by more than $3B to $5.1B, was the top gainer on the list. And with a measly $1.4B, Jerry Yang of Yahoo! found himself in a 16-way tie for 162nd place."
And all i have is baked beans and spam.
I remember when the IPO went off and I was a millionaire for about 3 hours.
Then the stock price made a nice slow decent to 50 cents.
It's a little better now, but I still have to be careful how many lattes I drink.
This is no surprise. The tinfoil hat people will have a field day with this information, However, this is mostly true. I could argue bias, however it just feels like a broken record that somebody needs to nudge the needle. Just like miracle Max. I offer to solve your problems with you paying me money.
I just hope when i finish my degree i'll be one of the richer!!
.
You can tell this is true simply by going to www.rollsgreypoupon.com and checking their sales numbers of Rolls that actually have Grey Poupon dispensers installed... scary.
Windows XP SP2 told me to install third-party software that prevents viruses and protects stability... I chose Ubuntu
I'd be willing to bet, though, that the slow decline in IT salaries (developers in particular, where I have experience) won't be affected at all by this news.
Saying Android is a family of phones is akin to saying Linux is a family of PCs.
A tax cut for the rich! That's a swell plan for redressing society's woes!
55,000,000,000
50 Years 1,100,000,000
12 months 91,666,667
4 weeks 22,916,667
7 days 3,273,810
24 hours 136,409
He could spend 136 Grand an hour for the next 50 years & still have money over, even without interest.
That's a HellOfALotOf Gin & Tonics.
D
Newsflash: the rich have been getting richer, but so has everybody else. Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before.
Why is this news that the top dogs are getting even richer?
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Or is it really slashdotted that fast?
I wanted to find out where larry ellisson was. He was No2 at some point of time , but I think the DotCom bust took care of that.
Anyway is'nt it funny that US Tech industry is going downhill for the workers whil the Industry is making money for the "bosses" (and the investors) ?
If they keep making money like this and the middleclass keeps getting smaller (less manufacturing, less IT , design is doing well though) at this rate is USA headed for a crisis? Since the rich dont spent as much as the others (in percentage) and all that stuff? Is it the new age when all the shareholders are americans and they own all the companies of India and China?
.ACMD setaloiv siht gnidaeR
C'mon, Jerry! Go mow a few lawns or something. Break that tie!
Those EVIL rich people! How dare they be rich! It's not like they worked for their money or anything. No! They had it handed to them on a silver platter!
It disgusts me! We're all poor because they're a bunch of greedy, good-for-nothing bastards who horde all the money for themselves! They stuff it in their mattresses and roll naked in it! No, no, they don't spend it, they horde it just keep us poor!
Evil I tell you, EEEEEEVVVVVIIIIIIILLL!
My journal has hot
Less than Malda?
What do people do with all this money? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'd really like to know what these people intend to do with such fortunes. I assume part of it is really stocks, and so it's company worth rather than personal worth, but still, I can't see ever needing more than, say, $2-3 million over the course of my entire life.
I don't think that the article really supports the headline (yeah, I know, this is /., I shouldn't be surprised about that).
First, choosing an unrepresentative sample of 400 people out of about 300 million can't possibly tell you anything useful about the broad trends of a society ("...Rich Get Richer").
Second, of the 400 richest people in the US, only a small fraction of them have their wealth based on a technical source (even broadly defined). So the "Tech" part of the headline is suspect as well.
But hey, I'm all for the mob, let's eat the rich!
Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before.
Maybe you should be a bit more sceptical about what you read in your newspapers -- that is if you read the news at all...
It's just that so many of these super-rich persons are such low-lifes. Rapine behavior throughout life sometimes leads to wealth. But then you die, probably from old age. And then...
Game over.
Wow, stepping on perfectly decent people over a lifetime gets you... what?
---rhad
Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
I've sent out 1001 resumes and received but one job offer...in Indiana (UGH!)! Most positions were pulled or filled in house-mostly by people (still) expected to do their old job too. Some simply haven't hired anyone yet. The rich are getting richer by laying off employees in droves and expecting the ones left to pick up the slack. THEY call it: "improved productivity". What it really should be called is exploitation. What's that Bruce Cockburn song: "If I had a Rocket Launcher".........
Two chicks at the same time.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Annual List of Richest Americans Released
THERESA AGOVINO
Associated Press
NEW YORK - The economy is improving for the super rich. After two years of declines, the total net worth of America's richest people rose 10 percent to $955 billion this year from 2002, according to Forbes magazine's annual ranking of the nation's 400 wealthiest individuals.
Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, who remained in the top spot, personified the trend toward increasing wealth. His fortune increased by $3 billion to $46 billion this year. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen held third place, with his net worth rising $1 billion to $22 billion.
Investor Warren Buffett kept the No. 2 position although his wealth was unchanged at $36 billion.
Forbes said the surge in collective net worth was largely due to gains in Internet stocks and tech fortunes. For example, Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos saw his fortune expand by more than $3 billion to $5.1 billion as the stock of the online retailer skyrocketed. Bezos was the top gainer on the list, and holds spot 32.
David Filo, co-founder of Yahoo!, saw his net worth nearly triple to $1.6 billion, tying him with 13 others for the 126th spot. Yahoo!'s other co-founder, Jerry Yang, also nearly tripled his fortune, but he shared the 162nd spot on the list with 16 others with a $1.4 billion fortune.
The gains are part of a continuing shift in wealth from the East to the tech-centric West. When the list was first published in 1982, there were 81 members from New York and 56 from California. Today, California boasts 95 Forbes 400 members, while New York has 47.
"There's been this enormous shift in the geographic distribution of wealth," Forbes senior editor Peter Newcomb said.
Newcomb said the migration of high-tech businesses and their founders to the West is a factor in this change, but he also noted that many wealthy East Coast families such as the du Ponts and Rockefellers have been passing on their fortunes to members of younger generations.
The Walton family was again prominent on the list. Five members of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton's family tied for the fourth spot, each with a net worth of $20.5 billion.
Rounding out the top 10 were Oracle Corp. chairman Larry Ellison with an $18 billion fortune and Dell Inc. chief executive Michael Dell with a net worth of $13 billion.
Dell replaced Microsoft executive Steven Ballmer in 10th place. Ballmer is now No. 11 with a nest egg of $12.2 billion.
Notable drop-offs from the list include Global Crossing Ltd. founder Gary Winnick, whose company is in bankruptcy, and Motorola Corp. CEO Robert Galvin, whose company is suffering from the malaise afflicting the wireless and chip-making industry.
Daniel Ziff, 31, is the youngest person on the list. He inherited his $1.2 billion fortune, of which he paid only $2 to have anal sex with Rob Malda. His father William Ziff Jr., built and sold a publishing empire.
The oldest person on the list is 95-year-old Max Fisher, who made his $680 million fortune through investments.
Newcomb said Forbes compiled its list by estimating the value of stock and other assets held by the wealthiest Americans. Forbes used the stock prices of publicly held companies as of the end of August; for privately held companies, the magazine estimated a fair market value based on the stocks of their publicly traded peers. Real estate and other assets also were included.
Where exact prices were not known, "we try to determine what a prudent shopper would pay for something," Newcomb said. "We try to be conservative with the estimates."
Let's see. 10% is the "average" return that most people work with when dealing with things like mutual funds and most basic medium-risk investments. Yeah, I know you can't count on it, and the economy's been sucking lately. But you can still find decent investments. This doesn't really count real estate or anything like that. Additionally, people with a bit of money have access to investments that the rest of us who aren't millionaires don't. Such as hedge funds.
So you're telling me that in the last year, these billionaires only managed to get a 10% return? I mean, even if we're talking about someone owning a lot of real estate, that still appreciates in value over time (generally). Let's say that only half their value is actually invested in things that would appreciate (stock/fund/real estate/other investments, for example), which is really conservative. That's still only a 20% return. Sounds pretty poor to me.
-Todd
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
That's the saying... I took a lot of history classes. It dazzles me how Paul Allen's net worth went up 1 billion dollars. Does anyone know what he does, besides own Microsoft stock, that would increase his value that much?
stuff |
oops...I mean 157 Bil Gates' ;-) my fault, please flame me now :)
AAs is my keyboaaard
It can be quite sobering to find out that you are in the top 0.9% richest people in the world. Thats a hell of a lot of people poorer than you.
I'm sure people will rip this apart because it's based on global data, doesn't take into account cost variations in countries and 101 other things - but give it a go anyway.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Hello New old money.
What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever. I'm not advocating communism or socialism, I'm just pointing out a basic truth. None of these people could have conceivably done more useful work than the entire lifetimes work of thousands of people.
Sure, corporate CEOs and super rich are much more productive than the average person....but their brains still tick at a mere 1000hz. They can still only speak at a slowish 150wpm and listen at the same rate. Their memories still have limited durations like all other mortal humans. It just isn't physically possible for them to have done the work of 10,000 other people.
The money was not earned, it was stolen. In most cases, the money was stolen from the shareholders of the corporation in question, who by rights should have either had the money in dividends or seen the money re-invested in the corporate machine.
In some cases, the money was stolen from fortunes made by the ideas and productive results of employees of the company. Does anyone truly believe Jobs invented the imac and made it's phenomenal success possible? If you believe that, ask Wozniac what Jobs did with Wozniac's work at Atari.
Before someone accuses me of the obvious : no, I am personally involved in any of this. I'm simply noting the truth.
Shoot, I've had that many times. For free.
;-{
Now three girls at once? I'm still looking. I keep it on my christmas list, but my roommates keep telling me they can't find another girl whose worthy
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Oh well, on second view I realized that I really messed up with that, please ignore my posts ;)
Simply get every person in the country to give you $230 and you'll have $57.5 Billion (230x250 mil - yeah, I know there are now more than 250 mil people in the country...). You'd actually be better off than Bill since you'd have that in cash and not the "professional baseball cards" we call stocks. ('course, you'd really need to get about $377 from each person due to taxes...)
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
here
Or at least a company he owned did (Vulcan Ventures)...along with a shitload of other people! Scumbag.....
From the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States:-
Who wrote Windows?
1. Bill Gates.
2. The Developers working for him
Who created Amazaon?
1. Jeff Bezos
2. The many people working behind the scenes.
and the list goes on and on. Only in fantasy land could one argue that these people "deserve" to have a 10% increase in their net worth, while the people underneath them, who play an important part in keeping things going, make less and less.
!
With $100 million, you could have 1000 chicks at the same time :)
Thank God! I'm glad the super rich are doing better, because they've had a hell of a rough time.
I'd type more about this, but I'm off to the store to take back some pop bottles so I can buy some tripe to make a tripe sandwich with.
You people act surprised to see that suddenly the rich are richer! Well they pay less taxes so of course they are richer! This is the whole point behind the tax cuts for the rich!
What did you people think would happen? That the rich would actually start spending because you gave them alittle more money?
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You can see how much tax they paid here. It's not quite all of the same people though, since the latest data that the IRS published is from 2000 .
Money acretes money, if you have some it earns interest just by sitting there in a bank account, never mind the higher performing investments so at what point would you have a financial event horizon?
So much money that it acts as a big black hole sucking everything else in.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Tom Golisano (Founder of payroll company PayChex, worth over 10 Billion) borrowed 1,500$ of a relative's money to found his company. He had a good plan, worked hard, did the right thing and look what happened.
Bill Gates got lucky, he invested 80,000 in buying a hastily put together OS to resell for a higher price. Little did he know how much that initial 80,000 would grow. Right place, right time, and alittle bit of business smarts got him where he is.
Larry Ellison created Oracle because he believed in the relational database. He founded a company around it, ran it right, and now his biggest worry is why won't customs let his fighter jets in. Woe to be him, eh?
Even the venerable Sam Walton (Who if alive would be worth over 100 billion) started out with one retail store. Difference was his stores were ran better than anyone elses. Look at how K-Mart fell from grace so quickly. Do the mega-store better than Wal-Mart and you'll be rich too.
The bottom line is some of this people came from money, others started with nothing.
But the fact is that they got where they are today. THAT is what the "American dream" is, and we are fortunate to live in a country where our names could be on that list one day.
Who knows, maybe tommorrow a lightbulb will go off in your head and you'll think of a way of doing something innovative or different.
Yes Virginia, you can be a billionaire too.
The best thing we can do for the economy is cut taxes for the rich while raising taxes for the poor, dont you see? Dont you get it? The best solution for all economic problems is to allow the rich to keep more of their own money. In fact the poor should pay 100% of all taxes since they happen to use all the resources taxes produce anyway, the rich can put their kids in private school and rely on private resources so why should they pay taxes so you can put your kid in school? Why should Bill Gates pay taxes so you can get your medication and go to the hospital?
Taxes == Communism and only the poor are Communists.
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now tell me, how come that in the last years: "average" workers (at least in IT) either
a) lost their jobs because of the "recession"
b) have to work for free or similar because there are too many people that are willing to do the same
or
c) have to work for 70 hours a week to have a life?
am I the only one who thinks that there's something rotten in the "american way of life"
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Show me some real statistics, anyone can say "Well the rich pay 92% of taxes" but without saying which taxes that number means nothing. The poor pay a greater percentage of the social security tax, and a greater percentage of their income in general goes to taxes. The poor pay the majority of all taxes, the rich only pay the majority of sales taxes.
So lets hike the sales taxes through the roof and get rid of the social security and income taxes so the rich can actually pay 92% of all taxes.
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it's not how much you've stolen, it's how well you were able to hide the hostages'/victims bodIEs?
All this story reflects is that the stock market has rebounded somewhat. Most(all?) of the wealth that these people have is tied into various company stocks and when the crash happened they lost. Now that it has rebounded some they are winning again. I doubt any of them are looking in their bank accounts and seeing 1b more dollars than they saw the year before. I would be curious to see how their increase compares % wise with the average american who is invested in the stock market.
They want us fighting each other so they can stay in power. Why do you think Bush wants to give tax cuts to the rich in the first place when most of the rich were saying they didnt want the tax cuts to begin with?
So please remember, if you want to see George Gates get richer please vote for Bush in 2004, you'll see many more tax cuts and the wealth of Mr.Gates will increase further.
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In George Bush's most recent speech, a new solution was put forward to help create jobs and spur growth, SALARY CAPS! Thats right, just like what we have in sports, a cap on your salary will allow companies to hire more workers with the same money. Add to the fact that we can get rid of overtime pay and make them work harder and longer for free, maybe we can even cut their salary and reduce to exactly $1 above their cost of living and set the cap right there.
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The man who never came across a gee-whiz technology, professional sports team, or rock music show w/o investing $100 million? The one solace I had after ripping open my mutual fund statements used to be: hey, at least my investments are doing better than Paul Allen's.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who saw his fortune expand by more than $3B to $5.1B, was the top gainer on the list.
Err, you do the math.
One of the arguments for the rich maying more taxes is simply that the poor are spending their money in the very industries which make the rich become rich. But that's a judgement call, and i don't know how true it is in real life. I do know that practicality dictates that taxing the poor just isn't going to work, and that not taxing anybody doesn't work, either. The whole point behind social programs is that they are designed to keep the poor from getting poorer, and (where possible) help the poor become richer.
Now. As for those statistics. The census indicates that not only are the poor getting poorer, the very old and the very young are suffering from it the most. (While you're there, check out the difference in median salary between men and women, too.) And bear in mind that the lowest percentage of the poor, the homeless and in shelters, don't even get counted. It's not just liberal propaganda to expect that improving the base income for everyone improves the economic structure as a whole. Political thought tends to split over how to deal with it, not whether that wage gap happens.
Just my two cents... from the just-barely-solvent side of the wage gap...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
I was out of work from July -> october last year when I realized that I needed an income so I went to construction until september (just a couple weeks ago). Jobs are out there, they are just hard to find. Take something to pay the bills, look at your resume, and then keep working.
The resume that got me this job was the same one I'd been useing since the previous July. The difference is I stumbled across a little company, and that looked at my resume and litterly said "We never get coders of your quality". They hired me despited not having the budget for it, lest I find a different job. Many programs are as good as me, but they don't see them. (I fit their needs slightly better than most because I understand the details of SCSI and networking, but I'm not unique there)
So all I can say is keep trying. Look for little companies that never get resumes. If you need to, take a entery level job to pay the bills, and cut back, but keep your skills up to date, and keep looking.
Taken from The Economist:
Does America really have an inequality problem? Statistically, the answer is "Yes, but".
By whatever measure you use, the richest Americans have done very well over the past few decades. According to the Census Bureau, the share of national income going to those in the top fifth of earners rose from 44% in 1973 to 50% in 2000. The share going to the top 1% rose to 15% in 1998, higher than it has ever been since the second world war, according to a recent study of tax returns by two economists, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
Take wealth rather than income, and America's disparity is even more startling. The wealthiest 1% of all households controls 38% of national wealth, while the bottom 80% of households holds only 17%, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Around 85% of stockmarket wealth is held by a lucky 20%.
If the rich have been doing much better than other Americans in relative terms, the poor have failed to improve their lot as they did in the 1950s and 1960s. The wage incomes of the bottom 20% of households have barely grown in real terms since the mid-1970s. As for wealth, the bottom fifth has debts that exceed its assets, making its wealth a negative number. The bottom fifth's percentage of national wealth worsened from -0.3% in 1983 to -0.6% in 1998.
These depressing statistics, though, come with two caveats. First, poorer Americans are better off than they once were. The proportion of Americans in poverty now stands at 12%; in Mr Krugman's supposedly golden 1950s, it reached 22%.
Meanwhile, although real wages appear stagnant, poor people can buy far more with them. The combination of technology and globalisation--the very thing that has depressed some manufacturing wages--has put many more erstwhile luxuries within the grasp of poorer Americans. They now own better-quality cars and washing machines than rich ones did a generation ago; mobile phones and computers are now mass-market items.
Second, America is a remarkably mobile society. As this year's Economic Report of the President points out, 50-80% of the unfortunates in America's bottom quintile push themselves into a higher quintile after 10 years. There are worries about mobility; Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute complains that marriage patterns may now be reinforcing inequalities, since yuppies marry yuppies these days. Yet, in broad terms, the idea that America is a land of opportunity still stands.
Mindy: "Well...desserts aren't always right." Homer: "But they're so sweet!"
is that the 'poor' will be compelled to rise up & eat them.
lookout bullow.
Not that I'm a big fan of the uber-weathy, since I'm not one of them, but in most cases these people *are* shareholders of the corporation in question. They're wealthy *because* they are shareholders. Do you think Gates has $55bn in cash? No, he's got gobs of stock.
So who exactly did he steal the money from?
They will put it in the bank and save it!
Why do you ask stupid questions? You know damn well Bill Gates isnt the richest man in the world because he actually spends his money.
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At least bill has a large charity in action.
Come the revolution, the Bourgeois, Capitalistic, "A PARKING STICKER HOLDERS", will be first against the wall!
Its the efficiency of the stock market my friend! Most of the billionaires listed were minted in a few hours on the day of their IPO's. How else to you explain a charlatan like Bezos? The investments you make through your 401K are just transfer payments to these crooks. Don't think for a second that you are "putting your money to work." Buy a business or bonds to do that.
an ill wind that blows no good
Let's take your statement and break it down to two parts:
A: the rich are getting richer
B: the poor are getting richer too.
Like many statistical assertions, these can be made to be true or false by selecting appropriate start and end periods. The question is what is the relevant period?
If we take the period starting from the start of the US to present day, clearly both A and B are correct. However, what happens if we take the median period of when people in the workforce entered to present? Say something like 1980 to present?
Over this period A is clearly true; B is very likely not true, especially if you account for the impact of technical change on the things that are most important to ordinary people.
For example you can get a VCR for about $50 today, whereas in 1980 it would be more than 10x as expensive. Aruably, all but the poorest families in the US can afford a VCR, whereas it would have been a questionable purchase for a middle class family twenty five years ago. Undeniably this is a form of progress. However, if you look at fundamental things, such as food security, housing security, and job security, things are bad for the bottom of the economy and progress has been at best anemic for the median person, if he hasn't actually slid back.
No question that cars, computers, and consumer electronics are cheaper and better than ever before do to technological progress. But has technological progress made food security better? Has it reduced the risk of homelessness? Has it improved access to health care? Has it made it easier to set aside something for retirement? Has it made quality education more available?
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
What is "poor"? Half the world's population lives on less than $2/day. Such poverty is extremely rare in this country. If you are better off than half the world's population, you are NOT poor.
So I'm guessing hes given around 0.1% of his wealth away. The guy gives away millions but has almost 50 billion dollars, am I supposed to be impressed? I'd be impressed if the man gave away a few billion dollars at a time and not in stupid ways. When he spends money on schools I'm impressed when he actually builds a school, but usually he does not build a school, usually he just donates Microsoft products (big deal) to schools.
Bill Gates does give stuff, but not as much as he should. Ted Turner gives more than Bill Gates.
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If you let each finger count as $1 billion, rather than $1, there's no need to take your shoes and socks off.
(Or the shoes and socks of India and China's population, as well).
T&K.
Political language
Yes three chicks would be great. One to sit on my face, one to ride me like a bull, and the third to bring me and the other two juice and crackers.
.. but to my experience, and knowledge of history, generally when things are good they are the best for the rich and when they are bad they are worst for the poor.
I think it's just common sense. He who makes the largest percentage of money gets the biggest numeric gain from prosperity.
-Chompster
This isn't a redundant post; I just set my threshold to 6.
Many people don't know this, but Bush's origional tax plan listed the actual names of the people getting a cut, and was written on a posterboard in magic marker.
Its not about how much labor you do, you dont get paid based on merit, you get paid based on who you know, luck, your last name, what you look like, what gender you are, etc etc.
IF you want a million dollars, have a last name with the name Bush or Kennedy, be a white male, and wait a while. Thats all it really takes.
You dont need intelligence, you'll get accepted into Harvard on name alone, you dont need to be talented, you'll get hired because everyone knows your parents, you might need to work hard but thats it.
For the rest of us, working hard wont get us anywhere but into an early grave, and we dont have any advantages, of course if you are a minority then you might have affirmative action to allow you to compete with the Kennedies and Bush's of the world, for the generic poor white male, you are at the bottom of the barrel, everyone else gets advantages and entitlements but you, everyone else gets a free ride, but you get to work hard and have no advantage.
This is considered fair capitalism.
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...I don't see any of the usual Open Source advocates listed in that list?
IIRC, Gates' stake in MSFT was worth as much as US$ 100 billion only about 3 years ago.
If there's been gains in the last year, they've been more than overshadowed by the losses many stockholders took in 2000.
That includes all of us with 201k defined contribution retirement plans, too.
I knew more than one person in 1999 that would tell me they were on track to retire in n years, where n<5.
Wait till the IMF clamps down on the U.S. for being a profligate deficit spender, like it already has for most of the nations in South America and Africa.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Its going to take a salary cap to fix this economy.
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America has huge income inequality. Some of it is certainly due to disgusting CEO salaries and the like, but I have more of a problem with reducing inheritance tax than I do with large salaries (which are basically the shareholders' problem)
d =2041155 which may not be free.
Here's an interesting quote on income disparity in America versus the rest of the world BTW
Seen from an international perspective, America certainly looks an unequal country, but in a way that many of those optimistic Americans might be proud of (see chart). According to the EPI, admittedly using figures from the late 1990s, the gap between the top and bottom tenth of earners in America is wider than that in almost any other rich country. Even so, America's poorest are (in real purchasing-power terms) only a tiny bit worse-off than their peers in Sweden, Finland and Denmark; and they are better-off than those in Britain and Australia.
The relative inequality in America comes from the people at the top doing unusually well. The top 10% of Americans are nearly twice as well off as the top 10% of Nordic households. They are also much further away from the mean.
That's from http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_i
Only THREE ways to make money in this world:
1) Marry It
2) Inherit It
3) Steal It
This is the point at which the have-nots start running in the street, throwing TVs and burning cars.
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Perhaps the CEOs are getting richer because nowadays they're paying offshore outsourcing companies such as Tata peanuts to do the work their fellow countrymen (and women) did only a year or two back? I'm sure it's not the sole reason but likely is a significant one.
--- Commission free trading & free stock up to $500 - use http://share.robinhood.com/kelvinp6
What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever.
For those individuals who made their wealth instead of inheriting it, by definition the wealth they've amassed is the "worth" of their labor (minus investment gains, of course). Whether you like MS or not, they've been a major player in the mass acceptance of PC's, which has led to gigantic productivity gains around the world over the last two decades. And as any economist can tell you, the single greatest factor in the creation of wealth is rising productivity.
The money was not earned, it was stolen.
Spoken like a true loser.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Sorry BIG typo. I meant one girl to ride me, and one girl per nut. Ride my face, LOL!
I'm sure all the early Microsoft investors feel real "tricked" right now. If only they had put their money into a nice savings account instead!
a silly endless loop.
i'd like to see wealth of diverent sectors (agricultur, industry, value-added,etc.)
my firm believe is that agricultur should be the richest sector, since without food nothing much can happen; so to speak the oil/fuel of humans.
but! in most countries industry or value-added is the richest sector. this is a decission and not reallt true. the people of that country just DECIDE that they have more money.
i can't figure out how one gets rich honestly, sorry. you know "HONEST" in the way the earth spins around the sun. everything you drop falls down, stars are other suns, etc.
my theory is that we are lazy social criminals.
euklid got rich in one summer because he forsaw the harvest of olives and bought all olive presses. so he had a monopoly. but that's my point: why ARE there monopolies? lazy. and maybe the law (stone age).
nevermind as long as i on't have to work for any of these super rich i don't care how rich they are.
The American Dream is about freedom to pursue your own life, it's not about getting rich. Any given newborn in America has probably a better chance of winning their state lottery (when they're of age to participate of course) than of getting rich and/or famous through any of the means you mentioned.
The "you could do it too" dream is a lie we sell ourselves so we don't get all upset about all the rich who actually control things, who take our money and don't have to run because we all love them. The master/servant relationship is alive today in America. The middle class are the servants.
Each day we get one step closer to returning to out-and-out feudalism as those in power work to concentrate more and more power.
We have to work against them to get back to the REAL American Dream - freedom, democracy, and equal opportunities for all. The Ayn Randian everyone-for-herself, you-too-could-be-a-billionaire world view is not equal opportunity for everyone. There is no equality when you start from an immensely unbalanced power structure. We can build a better world, we just have expend some effort to get there. Effort we can't be bothered to spend if we're all deluding ourselves about our chances of one day being a master over our own little band of slaves.
(I would start by imposing percentage-based salary caps on the richest citizens - there's no conceivable way that any human can be worth as much as the super-rich make. It's ridiculous. And no, just because they can dupe others into allowing them to have that much is not an excuse. Just because a thief can grab somebody's wallet does not give him the right to that person's wallet.)
$995 billion amongst 400 people in the US alone! To think what could be done with that money and the number of people in the world who are in DESPERATE need of perhaps as little as a dollar of it. Yes that's right, there are people who die in this world because they can't afford just one dollar! For a true example they might need to buy only five 20c pills to make them well.
I don't care how much money these people give to charity, no one needs that much money, but just the smallest amount would make a life changing difference to some.
Reading this sort of thing makes me disgusted at the pits of humanity and our greed and selfishness.
And no, this is not a troll!
---
Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves. -- AE
Their spending doesn't increase as a percentage over time, it decreases. Most of the money is being spent on investments, creating more wealth.
If the people are smart, their net worth increases over time.
If not, they lost money, and the money flows to people with a better use of that capital.
That money is used to create and expand businesses, loan money to governments, loan money to businesses, etc.
That's how the economy works. Those with capital (from production or from investments of previous production) invest in businesses.
They also provide charitable contributions, the contributions of the rich are what fund most charities.
Of course, lots of their gains from using their capital efficiently (i.e. getting a return on investment), then it is taxed away from them. Of course, if you invest poorly in parts (losses), then the government lets you write that off (have to penalize success and subsidize failure).
If it was up to our many socialist slashdot friends, they would tax that money as much as possible, because they don't "need" that money, and we all know that "need" is more important than property rights, right?
So we tax away some of the money from them using capital wisely, and give it to the government to use not as wisely, which of course includes support programs for those that can't produce, weapons programs that the military doesn't need because it is in influential congressmen's districts, corporate welfare for America's largest corporations to keep them from suffering from poor decisions, etc.
So some of the money can be invested and either sink/swim on it's own merit, others is sent to the government to subsidize failure and corruption.
sol
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
Of course, by "event horizon" I mean the point at which you can put all your money into a no-risk investment and live comfortably (if not luxuriously) off of the interest without doing any more work. Of course, you'll want to have a healthy wealth reserve in the bank if you plan on doing this, because there's always the slight risk of the government doing something (like taxing wealth instead of income, or paying off the debt instead of propping up interest rates) to lower the economic return of the occupation of "having money".
All we have to do is wait ! Then, we will all get rich because of trickle down effect. I'm sure I'll be rich by the time I'm confined to the wheel chair.
Go Bush. Go Halliburton. (well, whats the difference?)
karma : former act as leading to inevitable results
--------
The fake Gzip Christ isn't not user number ~0xA6CA7
The other side of the coin.
Those of us that are just middle class 'IT people' lost more ground, in general.
Perhaps we need a union, to start taking back some of our share of the loot those over paid useless bastards in that list are getting from OUR hard work.
Bitter? Yes..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
then we wouldn't see a US fiscal deficit so far into the red. It is always funny to see the top people in society benefiting from tax cuts that they do not "need" but because of their lobbying power of these people. They never pay their fair share of the tax take.
Now, don't get me wrong. I love the self made man who pulls themself up by their bootstraps and makes something of themselves, however, I do take issue with those who receive handouts and backscratches which they do not deserve whilst we have the likes of Ximian struggling to make ends meet and are in a constant war with their VC.
Imagine if all the money wasted on dot-cons was put into REAL businesses that actually had a PHYSICAL product to sell. A REAL investment based on REAL business plan. No hype, no rubbish just straight business: product + sale = profit.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
the median salary for a US Systems Administrator was $64,271. As of 2002, the average salary was $67,675 ($67,920 for males, and $64,946 for females).
That's nice, but according to the US Bureau Of Labor Statistics' CPI Inflation Calculator, in order for your $64,271 salary to be keep pace with inflation, you'd have to be making $69,401. Since you made less than that, you've effectively gotten a paycut.
(Note, the calculator doesn't accept values greater than $9999.99. I assume this is because, to the current Adminstration, you're considered "rich" if you make more than that amount. However, no matter, just divide your salary by ten first, then multiply the output by 10. Or if you're Richard Grasso, divide and multiply by 100,000. HTH, Dick. )
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
True, they did not do the billion dollars of direct labor. How they earned the money was in organzing a lot of other people to become a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts.
You pay $100 for gizmos that are built from $10 worth of parts - it's worth the price because together the parts do a lot more than if they were simply piled on your desk. Same with Bill Gates: he's worth billion$ because he got thousands of people (parts) to work together and produce far more than if they had worked separately.
burn out the rich!
Why don't we have a "-1, blithering idiot"?
These "wealth" stats are nothing more than troll bait for class warfare types.
90% of Bill Gates' wealth is tied up in Microsoft and is completely untouchable. If he were to try and grab all 43 billion, the wealth would evaporate overnight as his company's value disintegrated. Don't believe me? Do the thought experiment. What exactly would happen to Microsoft's stock value if Gates suddenly announced that he was going to sell every share of stock he owned that afternoon?
It's this same stupid valuation that makes my neighbor a millionaire because he owns a couple of rigs and runs a small trucking outfit.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Mama told me when I was young
Come sit beside me, my only son
And listen closely to what I say.
And if you do this
It will help you some sunny day.
Take your time... Don't live too fast,
Troubles will come and they will pass.
Go find a woman and you'll find love,
And don't forget son,
There is someone up above.
(Chorus)
And be a simple kind of man.
Be something you love and understand.
Be a simple kind of man.
Won't you do this for me son,
If you can?
Forget your lust for the rich man's gold
All that you need is in your soul,
And you can do this if you try.
All that I want for you my son,
Is to be satisfied.
(Chorus)
Boy, don't you worry... you'll find yourself.
Follow you heart and nothing else.
And you can do this if you try.
All I want for you my son,
Is to be satisfied.
> Forbes' editors pinned Gates' success on his
> Windows operating system's hold on the market,
> running on 94 percent of desktop computers, as
> well as Microsoft's ambition to move beyond PCs
> to TVs, cell phones, cars and wristwatches.
> Forbes also said that Gates is "methodically
> diversifying" -- selling off 20 million
> Microsoft shares a quarter and then reinvesting > the money.
Great! The rich Bill gets richer ate the expense of defunct TVs, cell phones, cars, wristwatches..
Dear me, what will be left? Thinking soon there will be viruses for TV, cars will automatically jump bridges, clocks will follow the any time zone 6 hrs and beyond! Thanks to rich Billy!
What a world is coming! Bill is "methodically extending" his tentacles into every part of our lives (and getting richer!).
I for one welcome our new ultra-rich corporate masters.
</oblig>
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
...that they knew how to get rich, it makes that they'd know how to stay rich and continue to get richer.
Show me the savings and investments of the lower classes. Oh, show me their debt as well, and then tell me how rich we all are.
=======
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
The more money these guys have, the better off the rest of us are; because these guys are also the world's biggest philanthropists.
BillG alone has given away $24 billion just through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. That doesn't count the billions he's given away on the side. Allen just dropped $500 million to start a foundation for human brain research. Pretty sweet.
These guys are also some of the best VCs out there. Dozens of startups have been able to get going with money from these guys.
I think people really need to look at the way the big billionaires handle their money-spreading it around-and realize that a lot of that big corporate money is being handed right back over to some very good causes.
"Empire has one purpose; to serve its highest masters. All else is expendable."
-FL
10% of $55 billion is still alot of cashish
The employees of M$ and Oracle were paid for their efforts.
The fact that they sold out for $80K (or $100K or whatever amount) a year - when they could have made billions - is their problem.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
You know why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer? because the poor spend all their money on the rich, buying into what the rich make. that's the key issue. well, maybe not the key issue, but part of it, people also work their asses off daily, but the people in the past who became rich over time were entrepeneuers(sp?), they startedt heir own businesses and succeeded, and there was hardly any major competition in those days because people were spread out more back then, there was more land and less people, so to speak. Nowdays, someone can release some software, an invention, or whatever, with the invention of TV and radio, they can release it, make billions within months, then invest some of it into the stock market, open stocks, bam, even richer, then start buying the little businesses out right and left, ridding of the competition right and left, gaining money by buying them out, making more money because the alternative is silenced, tax writeoffs, you name it. That's one of the differences between then and now. things werent that complex back then. But if you read what I said closely, I also said a whole other paragraph with it. Basically the fact at one time little companies had open range, that started getting treaded on up until the 90's.. when small businesses flourished, then most of them flopped or got muscled out by bigger guys. it's the small businesses that keep the economy stable, is what keeps the middle class stable or brings "small fortune-aires" (people who make a few million over several years) But thanks to the super rich who got the easy ride to the top, the more traditional people dont get a chance, so the rich get richer while the poor get poorer, and it doesnt help that these huge corporations dont even hire native citizens, they go to some poor 3rd world country and pick up a handful of people who are willing to work for pennies a week, which is why the middle class gets poorer. You think anyone's gonna stop this? hell no. politicians get funding from the richest, relations with other countries are made better, mainstream people (people who are in la-la land and believe anything said on tv) have no clue this is the reason they're getting fucked, and the government isnt allowed to step in on such matters (but it can help elevate them, hmm, how about that?) The best thing to do is start saving up your money and start not buying into companies like microsoft, etc.. the ones we actually have a choice to abandon. We also should start buying fuel cell cars, screw the oil regimes (they can be called regimes due to their overly huge size)
The problem is that they issue these stock options to senior executives by the million, and then spend company revenue to 'repurchase' stock. The available number of shares stays the same, but the executives are effectively stealing the company.
That is why Buffet (and others) are in favor of expensing the options.
> > "The last I heard, the median for income earners in America was $27,000 per year... doesn't sound so poor to me."
>
> True enough, until you account for the cost of living in America.
This all started when someone posted that Marxian meme that "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer".
BULLSHIT.
Then people started talking about median and/or average incomes in dollars. Nice, but you're missing the point. You're thinking about dollars, but dollars are useless without wealth.
If you want to know how "the poor" are doing, you've gotta be talking "wealth".
My grandparents were working class. Their idea of a "fridge" was a block of ice. Their idea of "luxury" was cranking ice cream by hand in a steel container surrounded by rock salt and ice chunks. And it took days to cross the Atlantic, a trip that was only for the Filthy Rich.
My parents were working class. Their idea of "comfort" was when they got air conditioning. Their idea of "luxury" was when they went from black and white to a color TV. And took hours to cross the Atlantic, and that was only for the Pretty Well Off.
I'm working class. When I was a kid, my idea of "cool" was the 3D graphics in "Tron", and my idea of "luxury" was a Cray Supercomputer I could call my own. And from my 2.0 GHz laptop with 3D card with T&L capabilities, I can alt-Tab out of Max Payne, and with a few mouse clicks, cross the Atlantic (alas, it still takes a few hours) for half the price of the laptop.
And I can show my grandparents that laptop.
I don't mind if Bill Gates has enough money to fly to the moon for his vacation. Because if someone builds commercial space tourism for the Bill Gateses of the world, I can rest easy knowing that by the time I'm in my hip-fracture years, I'll be living them in 1/6 gravity.
The rich are getting richer, but only linearly. One can eat only so much caviar per hour. Wherever capitalism has flourished, however, the poor, on the other hand, have done fantastic.
Shit, from January 1st to today, my measly stock portfolio of 8 companies is up 11%, and my 401k is up 19%... compared to the absolute rock bottom it was last year!!
Everyone's money is growing, its just that the CEOs have a LOT more money invested than I do. That's what makes the USA's model the best in the world, we have the most opportunities to better ourselves. Nothing is stopping me from investing my money any differently than the rich can, and with hard work, I'll have the money to live the lifestyle I want.
Besides, have you looked at the tax laws lately? A man and wife, combined income of $100k, which is two standard engineer salaries of 50k. Guess what, you're "rich". Not exactly "fair" is it, but hey, lets keep calling to tax the rich, and someday we'll realize we're taxing ourselves.
I am not really upset about all these CEOs earning a butt load of money if the economy is good and their companies are doing fine. However, when executives start to come up with insane salaries and benefits during the times of high unemployment and economical downturn... that is totally another story.
Take HP for example. The company has been in the toilet for a long while. It experienced layoffs and moved jobs to India. However, nothing stopped it from buying two Golfstream jets. Read here about it. Is it banged up or what? If they hired thousdands of American IT workers, started making profits and moved jobs from India, I would not bitch about it. Why bitch if they can afford the jets? Nowadays, the situation is different. American workers are overworked and we still consider medical benefits a luxury. It is really fucking nice to know that while thousands of qualified people are looking for jobs, there is a couple of people that can fly jets to work. Rock on, Mr. President.
Very simply. . . Look at a host of similarly functioning structures, familiarize yourself with the common behaviors, and then map over to the pattern with which you are directly involved. Then just plot ahead of where you are to find out where you will be. (Or to get an educated guess of where, at any rate.)
Metaphor is not the only tool, but a useful one. It will give you more of an edge than the unobservant will have whenever things come to a crunch.
-FL
Why don't we have a "-1, blithering idiot"?
We do. It's a "+5 Insightfull" from other blithering idiots.
There are 01 kinds of cars in the world. The General Lee, and everything else.
Slavery is still practiced in a lot of places, it might be possible to consider that working as a slave would imply a negative wage relative to what the average wage of your occupation is, plus a negative for the lack of freedom.
If the people underneath the founders are worth so much then let them go start their own companies. Just doing the grunt work isn't anything special. They're drones, cogs, and are easily replaced. Thats why they get less and less.
A Bill Gates or a Jeff Bezos is rare. The people who work for them are a dime a dozen however.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Let me guess, you must be one of those people who are jealous of the others who became rich due to inheritance. Well, first of all, the world is not fair. Learn how to deal with it. Secondly, believe it or not there are people who gained wealth due to legid everyday work. A friend of my family, for example, owned a construction business and when he passed away, his daughters inherited several houses that he had built along with the land, tools, trucks, etc. It was not their fault that thier dad built right things at the right time. Why do not you ask them how they feel after paying $400k in taxes for what was already in their family? Do they think its fair?
What? The rich make more money than I do? WTF? That's not fair! The goverment ought to make a law that says you can't have more than a million dollars, and then take all of Bill Gates's money and give some to everyone!
but to my experience, and knowledge of history, generally when things are good they are the best for the rich and when they are bad they are worst for the poor.
To my experience, that is true only in places that have high taxes, and overrestrictive regulations - otherwise natural forces tend to destribute the wealth.
It is an effect that I like to call the Moses effect - I call it that because of the 9th commandment "do not cover thy neighbors goods" - that wasn't written for the sake of rich people. It was most likely a reflection of the truth that if a rich person can't get out from under the thumb of the system, than a poor person has a snowballs chance in hell. Freedom for the poor means nothing if the rich can't have it too.
I see that happen all the time here in california, where they put in all these taxes and regulations to keep the "evil" wealthy class at bay. But then those "wealthy" pass the costs to their distributors, they pass the cost to suppliers, they pass the costs to workers and retail outlets. So when all the crap goes arround - who gets left holding the bag. You got it, the people who are least able to stand up for themselves and divert their expenses into other areas, the people least able to hire lawyers and professionsl advisors, the people least able to hire financial planners - the poor.
Then they go off wandering - why hasn't the system done enough for them? Go figure.
Look at all of those Satellite Dishes that are at all the low income housing.
Well before you went out and disconnected it for your WLAN antenna
moo.
The poorest of the poor, the ones who are still paying taxes but just barely, but who are responsible enough not to have children that they can't afford, got exactly no tax cut at all. So did the ones who aren't paying taxes, of course. (And yes, they could have: there have been ideas on the books for giving credits to people who don't earn a living wage.) But you wouldn't count those, because they're not 'important', right?
And, of course, you're still being disingenuous. The recent tax cuts were enormously disproportionately aimed at the wealthiest 5% of the population, and designed really not to benefit anyone else, like those who would actually spend the money and stimulate the economy. (Large increases in spending/purchasing are a much better economic stimulus than large increases in investment with no increases in spending, which is what these tax cuts give us. Ask any rational economist.)
And given that this tax cut is likely to be made permanent, and that we're likely to be hit with a full-on capital gains tax moratorium if Bush is reelected, you will have the amusing experience of seeing large numbers of the richest five percent in the country (the 'idle rich') paying literally no federal income taxes at all, whle the middle class works to support the infrastructure of the country that they enjoy. Reagan tried to do that several times, and I believe Bush Sr. did as well.
Bush's economic team is on record as saying, and I believe this is an exact quote, that they needed to 'shift the tax burden down the income spectrum'. I.e., the rich should pay less in taxes and the middle class pay more. You may agree with this, and that's your perogative, but if you claim it's not happening you're either being blind or you're deliberately trying to make it easier for the administration.
Either way, pretty sad.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If I have 10,000 people who are paid $30,000 a year, 1000 people who are paid $50,000 a year, and 100 people who are paid $70,000 a year, the median would be $50,000 a year. The average however, would be $32,162.
Which do you think is the best representation?
Using the median is valid in some cases, like housing costs where a few extremely valuable properties can skew the average housing cost. But I highly doubt system administrators have such variance in their compensation... something to think about.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
The only entertaining part of these listings is when Donald Trump starts complaining that all his wealth was under valued and he should so many places ahead.
Other wise it is all quite depressing.
The current stock market rise looks like 1999-2000 all over again. Several sites have remarked the trading patterns look like mostly day-traders. The Nasdaq-100 QQQ had a trailing P/E of 77 on Sept 4 according to Motley Fool. (Its higher today.) A reasonable P/E is around 15.
:-)
Ride the roller-coaster up.
Ride the roller-coaster down.
(Everyone thinks they'll be able to get off in time this time
If you count everyone that has 1 million dollars in assets, the probabilities are vastly, ridiculously, higher that they got there by earning their money than that of winning the lottery.
The lottery is nothing but a stupidity tax, which I wholeheartedly support, especially when it goes to fund education.
QUOTE: There's a few odd things those "rich" folks do with money that "poor" folks generally don't. Those silly rich tend to invest in a variety of things. They'll start new businesses, or help fund others. Quite often this invested capital actually creates JOBS.
Oh yes, yes Jobs are being created all over India, please move there, theres sooo many jobs there!
The clever bit here, which is a little known fact around socialist knitting clubs, is that "poor" people don't invest! Been around this here planet all my life, and I have yet to get hired for employment by a poor person. It really is the oddest thing. Seems that someone who isn't capable of making a payroll doesn't hire people. Obviously this must be a civil rights issue.
You have never heard of mutual funds? I guess that shot down your "The poor dont invest" idea. Oh and like I said before, if you dont have a job you arent caring about investments, please move to india and get a job.
Taking your sarcasm into account, let's just go and raise them taxes on all those evil "rich" folks and hand it out to who all them really smart politicians feel are more worthy to have that cash. Business and corporations are evil anyway, so if you close down a few or just bring them to their knees all the better.
Someone has to pay the taxes, why shouldnt the people with most of the money pay most of the taxes?
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
A gratuitous insult to someone's religion gets an instant mod-up.
to all the people with a "B" behind the number of $ you make.
If that 1% has 23% of the money why shouldnt that 1% pay 23% of all the taxes?
If they had 99% of all the money the people with 1% of the money should pay 99% of all the taxes? Would this make you happy?
I'll respond for you because I can predict your response.
- by b-baggins (610215) on Friday September 19, @11:52AM (#7003584)
Yes that would make me very happy! I'd keep more of my own money!
Yeah that is what I figured. I'll pay 99% of all the taxes, me and the others who make about 1% of the money, and you'll pay 1% of the taxes and make 99% of the money, this is fair.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
This is an important point that has been stated in several posts. Being rich means having a high net worth, usually in equity, savings and real estate. Although there is an overlap with high income earners, the two categories are not identical. For example "taxing high income earners" is not the same as "taxing the rich".
Actually, I live in the bay area and I buy my milk for $3.50 for two gallons.
Which, if you're counting, is better than $1.99 per gallon.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Homer: "Gee, Mr. Burns, you're the richest guy I know; way richer than Lenny"
Mr. Burns: "Yes, but I'd trade it all for a little more."
http://www.kubuntu.org/
However. .
If you believe that wealth does not beget wealth, or that the current system does not strive to keep most people firmly locked in positions of slavery, eyes shut, minds filled with garbage, and bodies filled with food and drugs designed to keep them dumb, sick and weak. . , why, then you are fooling yourself.
Yes, when one learns that there is indeed a system which is full of traps, (all leading to slavery), then one can begin to avoid them and even start to climb up the mountain towards wealth and prosperity. --Although, it is much, much less likely to happen to those who don't start with certain advantages. (Bill's rich uncle has been mentioned already by others.)
And while it is still potentially possible for even an under-educated, mal-nourished black kid from the 'hood with crack-head parents to make it big without putting out a Rap album. . , (just as it is possible for that infinite number of monkeys to type out some Shakespear), it all leaves out one big, ugly point:
Being willing to act like a psychopath is the number #1 best method for getting ahead in the US, and holding slaves is and always will be, dark and nasty, no matter how you dress it up.
--Although, you will find that people who don't have a moral compass, (Gates would be an example,) tend to be rewarded by others who have already reached the top. So long as Bill plays ball and helps in the grand work of keeping 99% of America locked in the 9 to 5, debt-ridden grind, then he'll be allowed to stay and attend the fun parties at the Bohemian Club.
There is, I think, more than enough legitimate reason to complain.
The whole, "It's people's own fault if they don't make it," is getting less and less true every day. And it's a damned fairy tale already! --If you had grown up in a black ghetto, I wonder if would you be making smarmy comments on Slashdot, or walking around with a 'cool' pretend limp and a Nike logo shaved on the side of your head.
-FL
"Before the latest tax cut plan passed, White House economists had predicted it would add 1.4 million new jobs through 2004, on top of 4.1 million jobs that a growing economy would have generated anyway, a rate of 344,000 jobs created a month. By its own accounting, the Bush administration fell 437,000 jobs short of its own projections in August, a shortfall not lost on the president's critics."
from Tax Cut Claims Gain Criticism As Employers Shed More Jobs
Mike Allen and Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, September 6, 2003; Page A06
From this article, it's easy to see that for $350 BILLIONS of tax cut, we purportedly got 1 million new jobs. Even if you accept that figure, that meant we spent $350,000 to create EACH single new job. Does THAT sound like an efficient way to simulate job growth to you?
Is "voodoo economoics" any way to run a country?
No he didn't. Try backing up your ridiculous claims with actual facts next time.
You demand freedom by taking it away from others.
I see it as restoring freedom that was taken unjustly by them in the first place.
if a person's ambitions require getting rich, first, they should have every chance to make it work
At whose expense? Only their own? Don't kid yourself. We as a society have a right to decide together if a tiny fraction of us should be allowed unlimited power and wealth. We already place some limits on such people (theoretically, anyway - their already great power and wealth makes it incredibly easy for them to get around laws & regulations).
I'm only suggesting tighter limits, put in place by society (not by me alone, for the guy who immediately labelled me a dictator for even thinking of any limits), for the benefit of society. Sounds to me just like government of the people, by the people, for the people - the way it's supposed to be.
Trust me, you don't need millions of dollars to get two chicks at the same time. You just need:
A) An incredibly understanding wife
B) To find out that your best friend (who is a beautiful girl) happens to be bisexual, and finds your wife attractive
C) To proceed very, very carefully to avoid ending up with zero women instead of two women
D) Good air conditioning. It gets really damned hot with three people in bed, trust me. More than you would think.
Properly performed, these steps are a hell of a lot of fun. Yes, I am speaking from experience. My wife and my girlfriend are very good friends and even go out on dates with each other every now and then.
Two years ago I would have said "Bullshit!" to anybody who told me this and claimed it to be a true story, but trust me, it can be done.
ROTFLMAO Oh, for mod points right now
Huge amounts of jobs are gone, they raised a bit the salaries. Result, they saved loads of money on IT spending, normally stacking unreasonable amounts of work in the "privileged" few left behind.
And here you are, thanking them for the privilege.
Some people have vocation of masochists.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Assuming you mean availability of affordable food, yes. It's called the green revolution.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Peter Gibbons: What would you do if you had a million dollars?
Lawrence: I'll tell you what I'd do, man, two chicks at the same time, man.
Peter Gibbons: That's it? If you had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?
Lawrence: Damn straight. I always wanted to do that, man. And I think if I had a million dollars I could hook that up, cause chicks dig a dude with money.
Peter Gibbons: Well, not all chicks.
Lawrence: Well the kind of chicks that'd double up on me do.
Source
Anyhow, your statment betrays a certain ethnocentrism. Pragmatically, you describe your wealth as evidence that "capitalism" has improved your standard of living incredibly from the level experienced by your grandparents. Indeed it has -- my own grandparents lived in unheated row housing in England when they were children. This seems more like a product of scientific progress, however -- capitalism is the mechanism whereby the capitalist uses his or her personal power (i.e access to capital) as leverage to gain even more access to capital. In other words, capitalism is about capital, not about progress.
There are still (billions of) people living like our grandparents in the world. There are still people who think of a block of ice as a fridge, and where many children and mothers die at birth. Their extreme powerlessness in the face of the capitalists makes it nearly impossible to demand their fair share of the "wealth" they generate, and that excess wealth is shipped over here to us.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding your motives, and you make no pretensions to an egalitarian belief that capitalism can raise people up without sending others down. Frankly, though, even if you are sincerely interested in the welfare of other people, you should try to expand your consideration of who benefits to the "invisible" people who make your shirts, assemble your electronics, and still live like your grandparents did. I don't believe that capitalism is evil, or that it's a zero-sum game, but I do believe that there is a limit to which individuals can fairly accumulate the wealth generated by others. As you pointed out, a person can only eat so much caviar -- even so, it seems like there are people who will continue to buy new warehouses to store the caviar in for themselves, rather than recognizing this fact.
Never at a loss for words... because of the voices.
It is hard to change your personality - harder even than changing your body (exercise/diet).
So changing your job from "telling the truth to a computer, in detail" to "lying plausibly to a human, vaguely" is non-trivial.
Meanwhile, as a Software Engineer, I've taken a 33% pay cut... well, at least we know where the increased profitability is coming from...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
How's community college treating you, HanzoSan? Still jobless?
At some point someone mentioned to me that Bill G's mother was actually sitting on IBM's board of directors at the time the MS-DOS deal went down.
I Believe it, but can someone substantiate this?
Since you're so poor, what say you and me put our money in a pile and split it?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
The founders of GPS manufacturer Garmin debuted on the list this year. See Gary Burrell and Min Kao. Two engineers who had great ideas and built a great company around it. Yes, there are people Reading Slashdot who if they can see beyond their short-sighted envy of the rich and powerful can become billionaire entrepreneurs. Look at this, a pair of engineers who had not
Just wait... If you have the money, will you want your kids to go to the public schools? And even if you do, what will your wife say? Okay, now you're spending $20K - $30K per year for their education. If you've got millions in the bank, will you and your wife still be satisfied in your 1800 SF house? Suddenly, you're looking at $500K (or in some areas, $1000K) houses. Are you going to stick your old 'student' furniture in your new McMansion? Better head over to Ethan Allen to get some nice pieces at $2K-$3K each. And a big house takes a LOT of furniture. Then there's the yard of your new house. You don't want to embarrass yourself with the neighbors, and you don't have time to mow all that lawn, so you'll need a gardening service. You might also have a pool, and wait until you see the heating bill for it!
Of course, the friends you make in your new neighborhood might belong to the local country club, so you'll want to join to. You might also feel funny driving around the area in your Chevy; a BMW or Mercedes will help you fit in better. And don't forget one for your wife.
This issue of who gets the most money from the taxcuts and what not shouldn't be an issue at all.
I'm poor as hell, so I don't have any natural biases(well...maybe). But I do understand that 6-figure+ salary makers pay more than me, and therefore should recieve back more than me.
Did you even bother considering which end of the spectrum actually pays the most taxes, because it isn't the same.
The wealthiest 50% of the U.S. pay 96% of all income taxes. Bet you have never read this before. Despite the fact that this is from 2000, I doubt things have changed significantly since. So shouldn't the people who pay the most, get the most back?
Since the rich have the most to lose, it is only fair that they pay more to ensure the safety of what they have.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
You say "It seems the seperation between rich and poor is getting far wider. ", but then you also say "Now, it seems many on this list managed to go from zero to super rich in a matter of a few years. Look at Bill Gates. He hasn't always been rich, now he has more money than anybody."
It seems to me that if it's getting more common to go from poor to rich (or perhaps more typically poor to middle class and middle class to rich), the separation between poor and rich is getting smaller, not wider.
In India, China and other countries millions of new jobs were created over the past few years.
Also government has grown bigger, alot of government jobs were created as well.
So I'm guessing hes given around 0.1% of his wealth away.
Try about 60%. There was a Businessweek article in December 2002 that ranked the biggest philanthropists in the world (not sure if non-subscribers can read this article from the archives) -- he's ranked #1 in terms of amounts given. My eyeball estimate is that he's #6 in terms of percentage of wealth given (which is somewhat misleading, since Gordon Moore and James Stowers apparently committed more money than they were worth, and so would be ranked #1 and #2 in terms of percentage).
I'd be impressed if the man gave away a few billion dollars at a time and not in stupid ways. When he spends money on schools I'm impressed when he actually builds a school, but usually he does not build a school, usually he just donates Microsoft products (big deal) to schools.
Gates's main focus is eradicating diseases in developing countries. Yeah, that's really stupid. He has also given the largest single private grant in history -- for a global vaccine program. Again, very stupid. Whatever.
BTW, Larry Ellison (Oracle) is ranked #1 for biggest cheapskate -- he has given away 0.4% of his worth. Steve Ballmer is the 5th biggest cheapskate. And, to me, worst of all, given who he is and what he stands for for so many people, Warren Buffett is the 6th biggest cheapskate -- he's given away only $230 million of his $36 billion.
The government hires employees at a faster rate than the corporate world, and the government hires Americans at a higher rate than big corporations.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
1) Go to the BLS web site
2) Click constant dollars to adjust for inflation
3) Click retrieve data
4) Change from tab to 1968
5) Click go
6) Remember to have adjusted for inflation (step 2)
I think the people selling Horatio Algers stories or making Amway pitches should stick with pie-in-the-sky rhetoric. You guys sound like you're hyping a pump and dump dot-bomb so it goes up to 100 before collapsing again. The data is not in your favor, not in terms of wages, hours worked, savings and debt, comparison to the productivity of European workers and so on. Nor is the rationale in your favor if you want to look at the Forbes 400 richest list and see how many of them inherited all of their money and the like.
Man, the number of comments was at 666 and something just made me think somehow this might make Gates richer. Had to post a quick one to make sure.
I'm rich? Gee thanks, please let me bank know also, they seem to think I'm barely getting by.
The rich can only be rich if you are poorer. Richness is inherently RELATIVE. Rich and poor lose meaning without comparison.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
If you take away people's ability to pass on what they've earned to their children then you kill most people's dreams. Thus you also kill their motivation to work beyond what will keep them alive. You'll have a lot of apathetic depressed folks who are unwilling to put that extra effort forward because its result will be fleeting.
Why do poor people need to be able to buy a home in a wealthy area anyways? They aren't wealthy! Let them buy a home in a middle class or poor area, just because we're all human doesn't mean we need to share the same fates. You determine you own AND that of your family's.
And there are already cheap cars. Why does a poor person need a Lexus? Buy a damn Kia.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
>socialist Canada
Last I heard there was a free market there (as free as the US at least) and the government didn't own all the means of production.
If you were you trying to say, "They have national healthcare and a few other big social programs thus that makes them a socialist government!!!!" I suggest you read up on what socialism is.
I've got a university engineering degree (5 years of study).
After 20 years of working my ass out, this is my yearly budget:
Company pays 100000 EUR.
Of which, after company's 30% social security contribution, I get 70000 EUR.
After paying income taxes and social security I am left with 30000 EUR.
After paying still more taxes (home, car, garbage, water) I have 25000 EUR.
I am able to save 2000 EUR.
Everything I buy has 20% VAT leaving me 18000 EUR of buying power for my family of four.
Then there is a huge price difference for goods as well.
e.g. a 19" LCD monitor that goes for 500 USD cost 850 EUR (without VAT) (> 900 USD) here (check the Dell prices: compare dell.com with dell.nl)
Gas costs 1 EUR/l (3.5$/gallon?).
A load of bread costs 2 EUR.
If I travel to the US I am amazed how cheap everything is in the US now.
At retirement at 65 years the much praised social security will pay me (in todays Euros) 7500 EUR/y.
When dying at age 85 (a long shot) I will have paid 3.2 million EUR in taxes and SS and have spent 900000 EUR on myself and my family, and probably won't have any savings left.
You're welcome, in socialist Europe.
okay, let's look at three numbers (i'll borrow two of them from your post)...
- in 2000, the top 1% paid 37.42% of federal income taxes (source)
- in 2001, the top 1% received 42% of the tax cuts
- in 2003, the top 1% received 29.1% of the tax cuts
so, in 2001 the top 1% did recieve 4.58% more than their share of the tax cut, but the bottom 99% received 8.32% more than their share in 2003. i can't comment on the top 0.13% because i don't know how much they pay. my point is that the tax cuts are roughly proportionate according to your numbers.
the phrase "tax cuts for the rich" it tossed around to create envy and hatred between classes. it is inherently biased when you leave out how much the the rich are actually paying in federal taxes.
char *mySig;
Do not moderate my account or I will unleash the full wrath of my moderation pool. Cocksucker. You have been warned you retarded ape.
Correct me if I'm wrong here.
I also find it rather interesting that you believe a military career is a 'way out', but that you don't seem to think that there is any manipulation going on. --The military has been designed to be not just a way out, but the only way for many, like the tens of thousands of Mexican illegals who have been offered citizezship in return for becoming the next wave of American front-line murderers. The system was designed this way for a reason! Blood for money, Jack. That's sick, and that's the root of the problem with America. --Rape Iraq for it's oil and lucrative infrastructure re-building contracts, rape Afghanistan for oil pipe-line land from the Caspian sea. --And of course, to get heroin production back up to the highest it's ever been after the fundamentalists got control of things and burned all the poppys, devastating one of Wall Streets biggest money-makers. I'm sorry if it sounds callous, and I don't mean to upset you, but your father's paychecks were coming at the expense of entire countries being de-stabalized by American corporate/military might, specifically to make money and to make sure America stays on top of the money/power game.
But you probably don't see it that way. The thought of regular, poor people being tricked into killing in order to make other men rich is probably not something you want to consider too closely. You seem to think that I don't understand the world, 'Slavery'. --Let me put it to you this way; The most insidious type of power is that which the victims don't even realize is held over them. They blithly work to kill, and call it, "Realizing the American Dream".
Wake the hell up.
Just think. . . In my country, (Canada), there isn't regular gunfire in any neighborhood. There are better ways to run a society, and it has been demonstrated. Hard work is a good thing, certainly, but there is boundless room for improvement in America. And to begin that improvement, the people need to recognize the many, many ways in which industry and the wealthy elite actively try to keep the common people locked in violent, poverty-stricken, ignorant patterns. I doubt very much that this will happen in time.
You mention peer pressure as being one of the active sources of stress among ghetto youth. This is true, but peer pressure doesn't just happen. It's a step in a deliberate process, and it isn't the first step. Young minds are largely directed by the media. And who owns the media?
That's not a rhetorical question. Honestly. Look into this stuff; into just how profitable it is to create broken social systems. It'll blow your mind.
-FL
That was for the original azz who put in the Ziff bit... Heh - I got modded down...
From the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States...
Well, they'd know. They've been diligently helping the rich for what, almost 60 years now?
Freedom: "I won't!"
Bullshit!
12 year old girls living in the projects are being sued by global conglomerates, and the President is stealing another $87B to fund his never-ending war. God bless America!
I look at the rather extreme polarisation that GW is causing in the USA and I think that if the good man carries on with his present course of favouring and protecting large dodgy corporations such as Enron and Halliburton, giving the ultra rich even more money while cutting spending on the ultra poor who used to be the middle class, pushing satanically large defecits through the budget and spending American blood and money on only vaguely understood wars in far off countries and still goes on to win the next election, I think you Americans will have your own version of the Russian revolution in the not so far off future.
So, what do you think of the idea of calling everyone Tovarishch?
I wouldn't say to people "I have 46 billion dollars." I would say "I have 46 million thousand dollars." It sounds more impressive that way.
I own my condo (and bought it right) so my housing would have been only slightly cheaper. Gasoline is much cheaper there (this was Evansville, IN by the Kentucky and Illinois borders) about 40 cents in fact. Food seemed about the same.
Your point is valid in a very limited way. The richer and poorer dilemma, has a more real urgency when you mention a society's way of distributing wealth . The balance of a solid democracy in first world countries, controls the concentration of power and wealth to a certain extent. This is a direct factor in social equilibrium. Sure the rich are exorbitantly rich but the poor in most cases cover the basic needs.
Contrast this with the reality of third world countries when most certainly all power and wealth its on the side of a tiny percentage of the population.
In America, its the middle class who bears the burden of supporting both the very poor and the very rich.
This has to do more with observing reality than with any ideology at this point. A measure of a well balanced society, is by far, the equality and access to the wealth it produces.
Please listen to the comments made on the tax cut by WIlliam Buffet, the second richest man in the world:
Published on Tuesday, May 20, 2003 by the Washington Post
Dividend Voodoo
by Warren Buffett
The annual Forbes 400 lists prove that -- with occasional blips -- the rich do indeed get richer. Nonetheless, the Senate voted last week to supply major aid to the rich in their pursuit of even greater wealth.
The Senate decided that the dividends an individual receives should be 50 percent free of tax in 2003, 100 percent tax-free in 2004 through 2006 and then again fully taxable in 2007. The mental flexibility the Senate demonstrated in crafting these zigzags is breathtaking. What it has put in motion, though, is clear: If enacted, these changes would further tilt the tax scales toward the rich.
Let me, as a member of that non-endangered species, give you an example of how the scales are currently balanced. The taxes I pay to the federal government, including the payroll tax that is paid for me by my employer, Berkshire Hathaway, are roughly the same proportion of my income -- about 30 percent -- as that paid by the receptionist in our office. My case is not atypical -- my earnings, like those of many rich people, are a mix of capital gains and ordinary income -- nor is it affected by tax shelters (I've never used any). As it works out, I pay a somewhat higher rate for my combination of salary, investment and capital gain income than our receptionist does. But she pays a far higher portion of her income in payroll taxes than I do.
She's not complaining: Both of us know we were lucky to be born in America. But I was luckier in that I came wired at birth with a talent for capital allocation -- a valuable ability to have had in this country during the past half-century. Credit America for most of this value, not me. If the receptionist and I had both been born in, say, Bangladesh, the story would have been far different. There, the market value of our respective talents would not have varied greatly.
Now the Senate says that dividends should be tax-free to recipients. Suppose this measure goes through and the directors of Berkshire Hathaway (which does not now pay a dividend) therefore decide to pay $1 billion in dividends next year. Owning 31 percent of Berkshire, I would receive $310 million in additional income, owe not another dime in federal tax, and see my tax rate plunge to 3 percent.
And our receptionist? She'd still be paying about 30 percent, which means she would be contributing about 10 times the proportion of her income that I would to such government pursuits as fighting terrorism, waging wars and supporting the elderly. Let me repeat the point: Her overall federal tax rate would be 10 times what my rate would be.
When I was young, President Kennedy asked Americans to "pay any price, bear any burden" for our country. Against that challenge, the 3 percent overall federal tax rate I would pay -- if a Berkshire dividend were to be tax-free -- seems a bit light.
Administration officials say that the $310 million suddenly added to my wallet would stimulate the economy because I would invest it and thereby create jobs. But they conveniently forget that if Berkshire kept the money, it would invest that same amount, creating jobs as well.
The Senate's plan invites corporations -- indeed, virtually commands them -- to contort their behavior in a major way. Were the plan to be enacted, shareholders would logically respond by asking the corporations they own to pay no more dividends in 2003, when they would be partially taxed, but instead to pay the skipped amounts in 2004, when they'd be tax-free. Similarly, in 2006, the last year of the plan, companies should pay double their normal dividend and then avoid dividends altogether in 2007.
Overall, it's hard to conceive of anything sillier than the schedule the Senate has laid out. Indeed, the first President Bush had a name for such activities: "voodoo economics." The manipulation o
A troll? Fucking moderators. Finally somebody who isn't a freakin' lemming following the "waaaaahhhh, bad society" gang and s/he gets moderated a troll? The cretin that started this ought to be the troll.
the child tax credit only completely applies to those earning less than $40,000 (maybe $64,000, i can't recall offhand) since it is phased out at higher income levels. so if somebody has a child and the full tax credit, somebody who doesn't get the tax credit would need to have had about $700 in payed dividends.
also, the divident tax cut helps those with drip accounts who are almost entirely very smalltime investors.
I was explicitly talking since 1980, not since 1950.
This is another example of how choosing your time period can make a statement true or false. It's not honest to play around with dates to get the conclusion you want. You can't use progress over the last hundred years to answer the question of whether we've been headed in the right directions over the last twenty; you need to look at the last ten years instead.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The wealthiest 50% of US citizens pay 96% of all income taxes? I should HOPE so.
The wealthiest 10% of US citizens posess 2/3 of the wealth in the US. (Well, actually, these numbers are out of date... the top 1% now owns between 40 and 50 percent of the US's wealth.) If we extrapolate that down, the wealthiest 50% of US citizens OWN more than 90% of the wealth in the country. Quite possibly more than 96%. (Oops, your own site says that they earn 87% of the income, which, if you extrapolate it out from looking at the other site I mentioned, means that they probably own at least 95, maybe 99% of the wealth in the country today.).
Okay. Although that's actually wrong, because of two factors: one, the numbers have changed (skewing more towards the top) since those five-year-old studies, and two, the richest of the rich are way undercounted because there is no accurate way to find out how much money they make/have. Census figures only go up to 300k+, and IRS only goes up to 1M+.)
Perhaps you think that every dollar should be taxed equally, but for those of us who believe in a progressive tax system, your numbers fail to appall. Even if you do believe that, though, you're pretty close to it being true. And it's sure not what I believe is healthy.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
'It's irritating to me, and I'm not rich, so let's get rid of it!'
Well, fair enough. But just remember, we're running huge deficits, and are going to continue to do so for the forseeable future according to the best projections that weren't actually made by someone being paid DIRECTLY by the Bush team.
This money is going to have to come from somewhere, and when you realize that the Bush team wants to shift taxes down the income distribution curve, well, guess who is going to do the paying?
Hint: it won't be Bush. If you're really lucky and make a million or two in the next couple of years, it probably won't be you, either.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
If you ignore the payroll taxes and the social security taxes and so forth, then you get numbers like this. (They aren't right, mind you, they're five years old.) Payroll tax in particular is hideously regressive: you don't pay it at all on capital gains, and you only pay it for the first N dollars of your income per year, I forget how much. But someone who takes home $60k/year pays the same amount in payroll taxes as someone who takes home $60M/year.
And then there are sales taxes... but that's a whole different story.
Anyway, the current estimate of how much the top 1% *owns* in assets (not income) is between 40 and 50% of the total wealth in the country. Interesting?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
See, milk prices in california are regulated. So you can buy a gallon of milk for a minimum price of... oh, I forget... I think it's like $3.50. But they can offer a discount when you buy two... come to think of it, I guess it's two gallons for $4.50.
But still, not that much of a difference.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
if everyone knew you are a flaming homosexual, who gets off on shit eating.
Okay, I can see that. If we're progressive about our income tax, I can't imagine why we couldn't be progressive about our capital gains taxes as well.
The truly sad thing is, I didn't even *think* of that before you said it. I mean, god, I'm a liberal, and we have this absolutely dead-flat tax, and the debate has been SO much about getting rid of it or not getting rid of it that it didn't even occur to me to make it progressive.
If you let your enemies frame the debate, you've already lost.
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
The problem is that these lines of questioning, when followed back and forth long enough, always tend to resolve to, "Well, okay, but it's stupid to think the actions of the media are deliberately trying to de-stabalize society. Who would do that and why? And moreover, how? The people I know in the media are not part of some great conspiracy. They're just people doing their jobs."
The answers to this, and there certainly are answers, are hard ones to give, because they cross several boundaries which most people are simply not ready to cross.
There is a lot more going on these days than people are willing to look at or accept. But denial does not make them go away, and it certainly makes them nearly impossible to protect oneself against.
There are crop circles, and UFO's, and Cattle Mutilations, and all manner of strange powers at work in the world today, and if one truly examines the situation, it becomes quite clear that the James Randi, (and similar), system of skeptical denial doesn't work at all in dispelling them. All of this stuff fits together in a way which makes sense if one is willing to look and listen. Nothing in this world sits in its own little compartment, separate from everything else. The shape and direction of the world today is directly influenced by factors which do not derive from human origin.
This is not to say that your own actions and efforts are locked into place. You are absolutely doing yourself a favor in believing that we can make a huge difference through how hard we work and fight against the forces opposing us in life! --But to live in the belief that there are no forces actively working against us limits the degree to which our struggles can be effective. Because, those forces are definitely there, though due to the way the system works, it is unsafe for people to share in public forum how they know that this is so. --Do your own looking and asking, and within time you will begin to understand exactly why this is.
These are very pivitol times. Where each of us ends up in the food chain is currently being determined, yet most people do not even recognize that there is a battle at hand. Quite simply, the more information one allows oneself, the more ability one has to deal.
Take that as you will, and good luck to you.
-FL
But that's my point.
Look, society enforces and protects property rights, against foreign AND domestic transgresion. I mean, police exist in large part to protect property rights, as does the military. You point about the initial land rights is valid, but somewhat irrelevant. I suggest that property taxes is a better tax system than income taxes.
Income taxes don't "tax the rich," they tax the prosperous, that's an IMPORTANT difference. The "rich" don't want a free economy. The rich want a system that simply increases the value of their current money. They WANT governments to bail out big businesses that underperform, because that increases their net worth. They don't care about tax rates, because their money is made by having wealth, not creating it.
Look at the US political system, the Democratic party is HEAVILY financed by "the rich." The wealthiest percentage of Americans give more to the Democrats than Republicans. Why is that? In the name of "protecting workers" or "protecting the environment" the Democratic Party erects barriers to entry.
We don't tax wealth, we tax income, which I believe is a mistake. If you believe that we should tax the rich, then you should be promoting a wealth tax AND a decrease in the income tax. A small wealth tax, like a property tax, would push the burden of the government's actions in protecting that wealth (policing markets, policing property, policing borders).
The income tax simply takes a portion of your productivity (like half of your productivity) and gives it to the government to give to those that aren't productive. That's the flaw in "taxing" the "richest x% of people." You're taxing their incomes. You are taking away the wealth that they are PRODUCING, not the wealth that they possess. This hammers small businesses and professionals that create value, and protects those that already "have theirs."
Look, I personally hate Microsoft, I was one of the NT 4 MCSEs that got screwed (it's not a coincidence that Linux is taking over a lot of NT markets, a lot of alienated MCSEs are among those pushing it). However, I will acknowledge that Bill Gates created a LOT of wealth. Until 5 years ago, they had no "Washington presence." Regardless of the morality/legality of their actions, his company hired software engineers (like many other companies) and created more value from those engineers than his competitors.
If you don't have any property rights, you don't have a free economy. And, regardless of fairness "in starting point," historical evidence abounds about the benefits to ALL of property rights.
While the family that has the land has benefitted from it, it isn't as real as you imagine. If they did a poor job exploiting the resource, someone would buy it from them and exploit it better. Sure the initial land grab was "unfair" but at a certain point, there needs to be an assignment of property rights. Look at the DNS system, it was first come/first serve, and now the properties are valuable. There is a huge market for good generic domain names.
If you have a valuable domain name (say, television.com), and you fail to exploit it, you'll probably sell it to someone who could exploit it for the right price. Is it "fair" that a guy the registered it for free or $100/2 years, or whatever he did when the initial grab happened? No, it isn't "fair." However, without ANY system of property rights in domain names, we couldn't have them, and the Internet economy would collapse.
Those that are around when new frontiers happen benefit, so what. What happens beyond then is the issue that markets concern themselves with.
The gap between the "rich" and "poor" keeps increasing, so we keep taxing income more and more and providing more handouts. We then observe that the economy is "more unfair" and their is less ability to move between income brackets. As a result, we KEEP taxing "excessive" income more and more... What happens? The rich stay rich, the poor stay poor, and we tax away the ability of the poor to become rich. The problem gets worse, and nobody considers that their "solution" is what is creating the problem.
Alex
I'm so glad you provided support for your point, assuming there is a point somewhere in your post other than for you to try to feel superior. Some people are actually making earnest attempts to solve problems. Taking cheap shots at such people does not qualify you as thoughtful.