Tech Rich Get Richer 830
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."
Oh well.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I just hope when i finish my degree i'll be one of the richer!!
Salary decline (Score:5, Insightful)
What we need to combat this... (Score:2, Insightful)
A tax cut for the rich! That's a swell plan for redressing society's woes!
News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this news that the top dogs are getting even richer?
Class warfare (Score:3, Insightful)
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!
Article Doesn't Really Support Headline (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
While I remain unemployed.....since January. (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds pretty bad to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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
Re:Class warfare (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, while I have no problem with capitalism rewarding those who take the risks (and often screwing other risk takers), the scale *is* a bit off.
It's just a bit disgusting when these guys will get a few million dollar bonus for keeping the salaries of the people who helped made them rich down for example. Or get millions of bucks even if they run a company into the ground, bankrupt it, and screw all of the stockholders and employees.
Rich get richer, poor get children (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before.
Really? Are you sure? The socioeconomic seperation that existed in the 60's and 70's wasn't nearly as pronounced as it is today. Have you seen the unemployment rate recently? Millions of jobless people. Declining benefits, declining salaries, shaky job security, citizen's apathy for the declining political system. I can't say I'd agree with you.
Re:What we need to combat this... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:But but but (Score:1, Insightful)
Anyway, its all nonsense. Clinton was not responsible for Enron getting rich, Bush was not responsible for them collapsing. No one noticed what they were upto properly under either office; thats the really sad thing about it.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, actually yes, he was always rich. His parents were lawyers. Do you think he just got an academic scholarship to Harvard and decided to flunk out? Now, he probably wasn't super-rich like he is now, but most of us would kill someone for $1 million. With the right investing you could live nicely on that for the rest of your life without working.
Re:What we need to combat this... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Oh well.... (Score:4, Insightful)
True enough, until you account for the cost of living in America.
They did it, why can't you? (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:What bothers me (Score:1, Insightful)
Stolen from the shareholders? What if they *are* the shareholders?
The only way I'd agree with you is if you were talking about the amounts of money CEOs are compensated. Like the $30 million salaires and $50 million bonuses and such... those are so far out of proportion that I would agree it's unjust. But that's not how they made their billions.
two IT jobs to have a life? (Score:5, Insightful)
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"
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's capitalism at work. World wide statistics are show the top 1% holding even higher % of wealth. Not that there is anything wrong with it. US is the most unequal of the OECD, followed by Switzerland and socialist Canada.
Re:What bothers me (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure they can. They've provided work for a lifetime for thousands of people.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the USA as a whole is richer in capital, and poorer for it (Canada too). That's news.
Re:What bothers me (Score:1, Insightful)
Look, some corporate types got some of their money through devious and immoral means. Just look at the Delta executives who asked their employees to take big pay cuts while the executives themselves were ensuring that their pension plan could never run out of money. That was legal, but wrong. Some executives at other companies straight-out broke the law (take your pick).
This said, you can create wealth that exceeds the dollar value of all the work you could possibly perform in your lifetime and THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT STEALING. If you get rich by cleverly trading stocks, like #2 on the list Warren Buffett, you have used the money you previously earned (not stolen) to buy a thing of value (stock in a company). At some later date someone else OFFERED TO BUY IT FROM YOU FOR MORE MONEY. You did not force them to give you that money! You did not steal it! This is neither illegal nor immoral!
But wait, you say, the value of that stock was increased by the toil and labor of that company's workers, not by you. That means you stole that value from them! I quote from your post:
"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?"
That is bologna. Those employees signed an employment contract when they started working for Apple. They knew it was a publicly traded company. They knew what their salaries were and they decided to accept them. They could have bought company stock at any time. Many did, I'm sure. It's all about who accepts the risk of owning the business; if they wanted a bigger stake in the fruits of their labors they could have started their own private company.
These are all legal, voluntary agreements between adults of sound mind. None of it is theft!
Re:What bothers me (Score:4, Insightful)
What remains is the question of whether or not it is right that these people do so well out of founding a company and making it successful. You can look at it two ways. some would say the success of these companies was due not just to the founder, but also due to the hard work of the other employees. Others will point out that the risk and effort taken by the company founder is what enables all these employees to earn a living in the first place. Whatever the case; these company founders are not particularly productive, not to the tune of billions of dollars anyway. But they founded their respective companies and own them... that's where their fortune derives from. Should that ownership be taken away from them when the company takes off? I think not.
Just remember that one of the best ways to become rich yourself is to start your own business and make it successful. Even a moderately successful small-scale company can be worth a nice deal of money; not billions, but enough to keep you comfortable.
You don't even have to start the company yourself. I've been invited to help with a startup... and if I am going to pour my sweat and tears into the company (and with a startup, I can expect to have to), my efforts will be a large contribution to the success of the company. That means I want to have a stake in the potential success as well: not in the form of a large salary, but in a part ownership of the company.
Re:What bothers me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:You too can be a millionare (Score:4, Insightful)
Somewhat related is how amusing it is to hear people talking about "tax cuts for the (rich | poor | etc)," when they're actually talking about "tax cuts for the (high income | low income | etc)," which is more accurate. Just because someone has a high salary or a low salary does not mean they have a high net worth or low net worth.
Re:Sounds pretty bad to me (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus, that 10% average return figure is bogus -- or at least has been for a few years now. Just being non-negative has been a goal for a lot of mutual funds of late. Also consider, if you have $5000 to invest, it's a lot easier to get a better percentage return that if you have $5 billion. You would need to get a decent return on every last dollar of those billions -- not an easy task, especially when a lot of it will be tied up in safe investments like bonds or cash.
Re:Oh well.... (Score:2, Insightful)
No, you're thinking of the mean. The median is the income that exactly 50% of income earners exceed, and 50% of them fall below. Thus, 50% of all Americans make at least $27,000 per year.
Re:What bothers me (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're failing to recognize is the difference between net worth and salary. Salary is generally recognized as a compensation for labor.
Gates and Jobs, for example, were founders of their companies. They took risks, they had good ideas, and they had the leadership to drive their companies to financial success (you can argue amonst yourselves about the technical success of their products, but the financial accomplishments of their companies is pretty evident).
Most of their net worth came about through equity that they have as the founders of these companies, NOT through their salaries. Yes, their salaries are high, but not $40 billion high. Most of this net worth was accumulated through the appreciation of their equity.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Mod the parent up. Very perceptive. Rich people get richer because they buy income producing assets and use the income to buy more income producing assets. An asset is like the crystal harvesers in starcraft - each one costs so much, but produces income over time. Over time the income from your SCV pays for itself and lets you buy another one, and so on.
Here is why the poster is right about the middle class shrinking:
I think the real problem isn't a vast conspiracy against the poor and middle class. The problem is education. Simple concepts like the difference between assets & liabilities and income & expenses are taught. People don't understand debt beyond I get money today for giving you more money tomorrow. People don't understand taxes. Things like capital gains, income tax shelters and corporations are all foreign to most middle classers. It took me 32 years to figure it out, and I'm now on my way financially.
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, so 50,000 people buy tickets to a baseball game.
1,000 of those people bought box seats for $300.
9,000 of those people bought really good seats right near the dugout for $150.
15,000 people bought average tickets for $75.
25,000 people bought nosebleed tickets for $25.
Well, wouldn't ya know it, the game gets cancelled. The owners of the stadium are Democrats and pass out refunds the same way Democrats want to hand out tax cuts:
The 25,000 people get a refund of $50. $25 more than they actually payed for a ticket. Awesome eh?
The 15,000 people get a refund of $100. Hey, they get $25 more too...
The 9,000 people get a refund of only $125. What? They don't get all of their money back?
The 1,000 people? Well, they don't get a refund. Instead, they pay $475 apiece.
That folks, is the math of democrats.
Yes, its overexaggerating and silly, but its also a bit serious. Of course the rich are going to get more money back out of a tax cut. They paid more in the first place.
Re:What bothers me (Score:3, Insightful)
And yet the shareholders, who were "duped", make money in the end because their stock values rise. The employees make money from their jobs. The executives make money from guiding and directing the work of the other employees, thus making creations like the automobile, and large complicated operating systems, and department stores possible.
All of your posts reak of a deep-seated hatred for everyone you consider "rich". Someone who is "rich" took chances that nobody else took, and gets to reap the benefits. Per capita, no socialist or communist country has EVER been nearly as well-off as the capitalist societies. Every experiment in socialism and communism, as far as wealth goes, has failed miserably. Socialism and communism don't work. Capitalism does work. The problem you're seeing is jealousy of those people who were willing to take risks that you weren't, and now you have to watch them grow into examples people point out at parties.
I really would like to debate with you the pros and cons of the capitalistic society, but until you give me specific examples of where wealth was "stolen" or who the victims were, your posts have little in common with reality.
Outsourcing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts? (Score:3, Insightful)
The money will most likely make no immediate difference in the lifestyle of the upper-class.
Re:What bothers me (Score:2, Insightful)
Most new businesses fail. It is a risky thing for your own personal livlihood to start your own business because if it fails, you don't have income to fall back on and you are likely deep in debt. The owners of the company absolutely deserve the right to reap the benefits of the risk they took if their business becomes valuable. Don't trivialize it by portraying it as a meer steering job - they built the boat and created jobs for the whole crew.
I think you really don't understand how the people at the top of the list got there. They did not get there because they are "paid more" as you said. Think about it for a second - the exhorbitant salaries that you hear about executives getting are in the $30M range. That's going to be somewhere under $15M after taxes. Even if an executive worked at such a job for 10 years (which is unlikely because such salaries are a very recent occurrence), that's only $150M he could have made. The people on the list are worth tens of billions of dollars. That's two orders of magnitude higher. They could not have gotten where they are because they are overpaid for name recognition. They got where they are because they built a very valuable company from the ground up. That is absolutely not something that just anybody can do, particularly not people who don't grasp that the toil and risk involved is incomparable to a regular job.
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The fake Gzip Christ isn't not user number ~0xA6CA7
Re:They did it, why can't you? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't believe that an honest and hard working person can become a multimillionaire.
Yes, maybe people who found multinational companies deserve more than what they actually put in in labour, but a lot of people who are CEOs are not founders. How many people are CEOs because they went to business school and managed to bullshit and pass-the-buck, their way to the top? Do they deserve $1m bonuses because they work harder than everyone else? Because they have more responsibility than everyone else?
Neither is true. A CEO can run the company into the ground and still make sure their own pension is safe and they leave with a multimillion "golden parachute" of severence pay.
The US indoctrinates everyone with this attitude that anyone can make it. Nobody realises that it is only at the expense of someone else. Work hard, go to college, get a job, buy a house, a car. Your still just a wage slave like everyone else.
So Bill Gates manages to sell someone elses quick and dirty OS to IBM and eveyone else. Does that make him deserve to be the richest man in the world? Just coz he was in the right place at the right time with the right connections? It's not like he started from nothing anyway. Why does he have a much bigger share in MS than Paul Allen? Coz his parents were richer.
Don't we live in the best country in the world. The only place where people have the freedom to screw everyone over on their way to the top. Where only the rich can afford medical care or a decent education. Where the government solution is less funding and more "Compassion" and "Faith Based volutary groups". Sure I wouldn't have it any other way.
Honest, Hardworking, Rich, choose 2
What a @#%!*ing myth. (Score:5, Insightful)
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.)
This is Sick (Score:2, Insightful)
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!
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Re:News for Nerds? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ummm.. (Score:3, Insightful)
You and a few thousand other investors come in, then. He tricks you and the other investors into agreeing to invest 10 million dollars into the stand, with Mr. G retaining a 30% stake in the company. You have been stolen from
I'm sure the investors who bought during Microsoft's IPO feel really shafted. I mean, they only saw a 500-fold return on their investments (assuming they bought at IPO and sold at the 1999 peak).
You still don't understand how this works: When the investors put in their $10 million, the lemonade stand had already grown to be worth $5 million, so it was entirely right and proper for Mr. G to retain 30%. Then, as the company became more and more successful, it's value increased. Massively.
Later, when the company is worth, say $100 million, all of the stockholders vote to raise some more cash by issuing some more stock. Issuing more stock dilutes the ownership of the current shareholders but also brings in more cash; in an ideal world, the inflowing cash would be precisely enough so that the value of the original stock remains unchanged, even though it represents a smaller piece of the (more valuable) company. In one jump, the company goes from a $100 million company to a $500 million company, with Mr. G's ownership declining to 6% (but staying at $30 million).
With the influx of cash, the company then hires more employees produces more products and sells them more effectively. Stock market speculation plus more retained earnings eventually drives the stock price up to the point that Mr. G's stake is worth $55 billion.
Now, at what point, exactly, did someone get screwed? And who? The *only* candidates, really, are the employees. With respect to Microsoft in particular that's a bad angle to attack, because hundreds if not thousands of Microsoft employees became multi-millionaires off of their own stock options and stock purchases. The same is true of most high-tech firms.
Tech Poor Get Poorer (Score:3, Insightful)
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..
Re:which taxes? Income taxes? Social Security tax? (Score:5, Insightful)
So why would rich people stop hiring just because they have to pay taxes? So far, given the millions of jobs that have disappeared over the last few years, I'd say cutting taxes for the rich does not create jobs.
I find it very interesting that we're told we must all sacrifice and work extra hard in this tough economic environment. We don't need extra money, we're just happy to have a job. Yet this sort of thing doesn't work with the rich; they need cash for motivation.
Re:They did it, why can't you? (Score:5, Insightful)
Even you say that Gates got lucky. He not only was lucky enough to find a hastily put together OS that he could buy for $80,000, but he was also lucky enough that IBM was in such a rush that they screwed up their contract with MS. If not for that, MS would probably have been just another software company that made programming languages.
A lot of people start from nothing, work hard, make sound choices, and still fail because of the various random factors surrounding them that they have absolutely no control over.
I can assure you that if I took $1,500 and started a business with it, the likely outcome (no matter how hard I worked or how wise my decisions were) would be me going out of business in a very short amount of time.
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.
People think of that all the time. However, the chance of taking that idea and turning it into a fortune 500 company is slim.
Re:Yes, the way to help the economy is cut taxes. (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow! Who is on a roll here? Obviously you haven't done your research because the VAST majority of Tax payers and revenue is from the Middle class and NOT the tiny minority of rich folks. (Do you really think Bill Gates pays $387 Million in taxes, which is the tax on income he should pay assuming that he earns 3% on 43 Billion net worth) The reason for this is that investments provide tax shelters and its easier to focus your time and money to look for tax loop holes or keep your money in a foreign bank account when your rich then when your not.
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.
See, here is the problem with investing by the poor, they can't invest as easily because they ARE poor. This does not mean that they should be punished by high taxes, or that rich folks are better then they are. Of course one of the problems with being poor is the fact that you become less willing to accept risk for the obvious reason that you don't want to end up on the street, but it is that willingness and ability to take risk that can make you rich. If you don't take the risk there is very little chance that you will become rich, much in the same way that you can't win the lottery unless you play the game.
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.
I'm a firm believer in capitalism, but not without checks and balances. There is a reason why the spread between the rich and the poor is much smaller in Europe then in the US. It is because when you get too rich in Europe you get taxed up your ass, which might not be such a bad thing after all. We should remember that alot of conflict in our history has resulted because either a rich nation wanted to exploit its underdeveloped neighbor or because the poor got sick and tired of being exploited and revolted against their rich exploiters.
Of course in the US the situation will never change for the simple reason that almost all top politicians are also rich and they would be really dumb to undermine their own positions by taxing themselves and those who pay for their campaigns.
Funny little factoid: Bill Gates' wealth equals the combined wealth of the poorest 120 million Americans, or 45 percent of our population.Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mostly, wealthy people give their money away. Heard of Carnegie Hall?
Think *wealth*, not *dollars* (Score:5, Insightful)
> > "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.
Re:What bothers me (Score:3, Insightful)
First, who are you to decide what is within the bounds of reason? How did what you earn per year become the measuring stick? If it's not you, who decided? Does the average or the mean income determine what is "in bounds"? How about the lowest income? What's the rule I should follow here?
Second, to apply your thinking, I bet there is some guy in Bangladesh, Liberia or the Sudan who makes less than $100 a year. ShooterNeo, if you have an entry level IT job you make 300 times what this guy does. Mid level IT job at 60K is 600 times more. That sounds WAY out of the bounds of reason to me. There is no way your labor is worth 300 to 600 times that of a farmer in the Sudan. The bounds of reason seem to be a mere 50 times ($5000 a year) his earnings. Tens of thousands is an entirely different matter.
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What bothers me is dolts. (Score:3, Insightful)
We do. It's a "+5 Insightfull" from other blithering idiots.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful)
Can you tell me why people in middle class can by nice home entertainment systems and computers but not be able to buy income producing assets? One wealthy person I know of drives a rusty old Toyota truck. He can easily buy a nice new mega sized truck, but instead, he invests his free money.
Take a look at the gaming articles on slashdot. There are plenty of slashdotters who spend $$$$ on high end gaming machines, yet bitch because rich is getting richer. When you spend $50 a pop on games, aren't you the one that's making the rich richer?
"Rich" refers to net worth, not income (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts? (Score:3, Insightful)
But doing the hand-outs so arbitrarily does nothing to guarantee their success. Do people in government really think they have mastered economics so well that they can change the face of society with a poiticially-motivated tax system? The current tax system is insane and is so politically-trashed that it cannot possibly reflect ecnomic reality. Its almost as bad as subsidizing housing for people who would be much better off moving to a different city with a lower cost of living.
Why prop up something that is simply unsustainable? Why should I pay for someone's $900 two-bedroom apartment in LA when they get $6.75/hour at a grocery store? Propping up the status quo with legislation will only cause our nation to collapse with money flowing nowhere it should leaving millions of people stranded in places they have no hope of surviving. What then?!?
Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I don't know how everybody involved in these kinds of debates manages to ignore *payroll* taxes, which are just as surely taxes as any other kind of tax, and which fall disproportionately (meaning, a larger fraction of income) on people with the lowest earned incomes. Those taxes have not gone down, although they are in many cases the *majority* of the taxes paid by people with lower incomes. And that's really just the federal taxes. State income taxes, in the states that have them, often have a top bracket at some pathetically low amount; those taxes have not been going down, either.
And then there are sales taxes and gasoline taxes, which end up being a higher marginal rate on lower incomes for reasons that I'm sure should be pretty obvious.
You can agree or disagree with the reasoning behind the Bush tax cuts, but because they were cuts in income taxes primarily for the very highest brackets, there is very little way in which they could not have been tax cuts for the wealthiest.
In a similar vein, the plan to eliminate the estate tax by definition only affects states that are quite a bit larger than the vast majority of estates. By your reasoning, it would be unfair to say that this is a tax cut for the rich because it's a tax cut for the only people paying any estate tax. But those are the rich people. Hence, the point stands.
Re:Not even true in the way YOU mean it (Score:2, Insightful)
Without that knowledge spouting off "the top X% pay Y% of the taxes" is meaningless. If the top X% make 80 % of the money, but pay 39 % of the taxes then they're hideously undertaxed... if the top X% make 10 % of the money, but pay 39 % then they're getting shafted.
The fact that these studies always seem to ignore the issue of what percentage of money this top 1-5% make certainly makes me suspicious of the findings... but there's no hard evidence either way that I know of, and without those other figures the statistics you're quoting are meaningless.
Re:What bothers me (Score:3, Insightful)
So-called "risk" is a privilege of capital, not a real risk. Incorporation shields the investors from personal liability in the even of a failed venture (barring criminal conduct, and even that's iffy. How many Enron muckymucks are in jail? How many have even disgorged their ill-gotten gains?)
If one fails at running a business, one "loses" relative to what one would have made had one been successful. Even if an executive has mortgaged their house for startup capital and are forced into personal bankruptcy, they won't lose their home. Of course, the peons at the company they ran into the ground probably don't own their own homes, and therefore bankruptcy won't keep them from being turned out on the street when they can't make their rent. (see Donald Trump)
I'm not saying someone who starts or runs a successful business doesn't deserve rewards for it, but I hate the bullshit argument that exorbitant executive compensation is justified by risk.
-Isaac
Re:A lot of the world still lives that way... (Score:3, Insightful)
>
> 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, [
Aren't you contradicting yourself here? If it was about scientific progress and not capitalism, wouldn't those people have fridges by now?
I don't have a fridge because someone discovered the Ideal Gas Law. I don't have a fridge because someone discovered that the Ideal Gas Law could be applied in such a way as to create a heat exchanger, and stick one side of that heat exchanger in a box, and the other side of the heat exchanger outside the box.
I have a fridge because some capitalist decided he could build heat exchangers and boxes for less than what I'm willing to pay to own a heat exchanger and a box.
You're correct that capitalism is about capital, not progress, but progress is a necessary outgrowth of capitalism. And it's a Damn Nice outgrowth. It's sufficiently Damn Nice that it's why I think capitalism makes the world a better place, wherever it takes root.
> Frankly, though, even if you are sincerely interested in the welfare of other people,
(For the record, I'm not. I just think it's a neat side effect. The only time I'm interested in their welfare is seeing it get high enough that people like me can start selling stuff to them, (or buying shares in the companies that will sell stuff to them. Same thing, really.) I'm in the software business, not the grass hut business. So I'd like to see everybody on the planet decide they Really Really Want a cell phone, gaming console, and a few computers. :)
> 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.
The anonymous people who build my computers don't live like my grandparents did. If for no other reason than that someone living without running water wouldn't be allowed within two airlocks of a fab's clean room.
The anonymous people who make my shirts are flocking to the cities and the "sweatshops" and living like my grandparents, yes. Because living on $5/day is a damn sight better than living like my grandparents' grandparents, who were subsistence farmers with a life expectancy of 40.
> 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.
Which is fine by me; I'll make a pretty penny by buying 1000 shares of Beluga Farms Inc, and another 1000 shares of Sturgeons 'R' Us.
Re:Think *wealth*, not *dollars* (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Oh, like in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union and its satellites where the nomenclatura became insanely wealthy and the poor became worse off than under communism.
It might also explain why the census bureau has a section entitled "Historical Income Inequality," which is an interesting read: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/ineqtoc
In 1970, the bottom 10% earned $8,276 In 1970, the top 10% earned $90,209 In 2000, the bottom 10% earned $10,877 In 2000, the top 10% earned $149,273
Figures in 2001 dollars.
So, the bottom increased 31% over 30 years. The top increased 66% over 30 years.
Doesn't sound entirely "linear," does it?
Of course, you also ignore the fact that if not for all those progressive liberal marxists, none of the social policies necessary to make your statement even remotely true would not have occurred and we'd still be living with child labor, no minimum wages, no maximum working hours, no occupational safety and health controls etc. etc. etc.
Your pride in technological advance does not have any relevance. I can just see the comparison in a turn of the 20th century sweat shop -- "but, hey, we have electric lights and flush toilets, when used to crap in the woods with a candle, so it's all good."
No, it wasn't and it is not.