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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Was your intention here to have just a big, warm, sloppy group hug about how "wealthy" we all are because we have life, health, a nice family, enough to eat, and so on?
Isn't that Webster's definition of 'Kumbaya'?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Yeah, we're ALL wealthy, because we're ALL winners. And we're all special.
We're all just awesome.
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Banquo
climber
Amerricka
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Topic Author's Reply - May 4, 2015 - 08:24am PT
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Rottingjohnny:
“Wealth is nothing unless you've experienced poverty.”
Ksolem:
“Most successful people create wealth, meaning they grow the economy,”
Locker:
“Wealth in a monetary sense = BIG BUCKS!!!...
Wealth in another sense could = Having a great family...”
Dave Kos provides a link to an article which defines poverty:
““Poverty” describes two quite different phenomena: utter penury, of the sort experienced by the billion or so souls who subsist on $1 a day or less; and the situation of people in rich countries who are less well off than their compatriots.”
Scottnorthwest points out:
“Some of my richest days were when I was penniless.”
Studly quotes Kahlil Gibran:
“A man's true wealth is the good he does in the world.”
WBraun provides:
“Wealth is eating out of the jar
Poverty is licking the outside of the jar .....”
tolman_paul
“To me the great poverty is the moral poverty that permiates our Western society from top to bottom.
To become wealthy one must first free themselves with the obsession with material posessions and the aquisition thereof.”
Dave:
“Poor? Not here (largely). Large differences in income? Yes. Separate issue.”
Roger Brown may be the wealthiest one of us:
“I am Happy.
That makes me as wealthy as anyone, probably wealthier.”
Survival states:
“Poor is what poverty is.”
And adds:
“Poor people are some of the hardest working in the world. It's the filthy rich who don't do much work.”
Ruppell, after sharing a description of a period in his life filled with travel, people and experience but little money, asks the rhetorical:
“So, during that time was I poor?”
I think I like Roger's answer the best. A person probably can't be happy unless they recognize themselves as wealthy in some way. I googled the popular old saw "money can't buy happiness" and the first result was to a paper published by The American Psychological Association:
http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/07-08/money.aspx
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Banquo
climber
Amerricka
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Topic Author's Reply - May 4, 2015 - 10:00am PT
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Thanks for that DMT.
To the list above we can add Mae West:
“I've been rich and I've been poor, and rich is better.”
And whoever said:
"Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure makes misery easier to live with."
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bobinc
Trad climber
Portland, Or
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"Whether you're rich or poor, it never hurts to have money."
"If the rich could hire the poor to die for them, the poor could make a pretty good living."
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Gary
Social climber
From A Buick 6
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I'd love to hear the economic principles employed to justify "wealth redistribution."
It's called capitalism. People create wealth through work, and it is redistributed to the capitalist.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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People create wealth through work
Work is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of wealth.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Socialism is the new capitalism for the lazy.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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People create wealth through work, and it is redistributed to the capitalist.
People create wealth through work, and it is redistributed to the people who don't work.
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Gary
Social climber
From A Buick 6
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johntp is correct. The genius of capitalist propaganda is the way it turns the world upside down. Those who produce are takers, while those who do not produce are the givers. Redistribution of wealth is when those who produce keep what they produce rather than having it appropriated by non-producers.
Work is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the creation of wealth. Neither is capital.
Labor + land = capital. Work creates capital, capital does not create work. As a famous Republican president once said:
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.
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Tobia
Social climber
Denial
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In monetary terms, wealth is realized, for me, on the third day of each month. Poverty sets in shortly before the 25th of the month, + or - a day or so.
I will have to say I am thankful for that.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Which republican president said that (supposedly)?
He's wrong, at any rate. That quote says nothing about ideas, insights, or the mechanisms of efficiency.
Ideas logically precede labor, which is PRECISELY why some work smarter and produce capital/wealth, and other work harder and longer to produce very, very little or nothing.
A famous story is told (almost certainly apocryphal) in many variants. One or another variant might even be true. But the story illustrates a true point (and to a lessor extent, my own company practices this philosophy).
A new hire at a large firm found himself walking past a particular office almost every day. Often the door was open, so he could glance in. He always observed the same thing: the guy behind the expansive desk was laughing, talking on the phone or to a couple of friends there in the office, or maybe even playing video games. Sometimes the guy was even taking a nap.
The size of the office with its lavish furnishings, coupled with the obvious lack of productivity of its occupant, began to gall this hard-working new hire. He started carefully asking around: "Why are we working so hard in the trenches, while this guy obviously just fools around? How is he getting away with it?"
The response only added to his shock and horror: "Actually, it's worse than you think. The guy makes a huge salary. I heard over a million dollars a year."
Shocked, and not getting any satisfying answers, the new guy kept his mouth shut and looked for opportunities to find out what was going on.
His opportunity came at a company lunch where he was actually approached and welcomed to the firm by the company president. During the bit of small talk, he found a way to work some "performance" questions into the conversation and then "jokingly" said, "Maybe someday I'll have contributed enough that I can get paid to play some videos games now and then, like the guy in 2b."
The president stopped and got very serious, replying, "I would love it if you would turn out to be like Sam in 2b. Sam is a unique sort of thinker, and he thinks best completely apart from pressures and deadlines. He often gets these wild ideas in the wee hours of the morning that wake him up out of a sound sleep. He writes his ideas down and goes back to sleep.
"Three times he has reconsidered our processes and products in such significant ways that he has revolutionized a particular process or product. His latest idea has made us $200 million in the last couple of years alone! And he doesn't just 'have' an idea. He sees the implications and can outline for us exactly how we have to move forward.
"So, we pay him a large salary just to keep him here on staff, and we would do so indefinitely just in the hopes that he has even one more revolutionary idea. He's already 'earned' what we'd pay him for the rest of his life. Those few and far between revolutionary ideas are his value to this firm, and I only wish we had more such thinkers here!"
It is yet more "downtrodden proletariat" crap to so elevate labor in the creation of capital/wealth that the logical priority of IDEAS is minimized to the point of not even being mentioned.
I WISH I had more employees that had the IDEA-value one of ours does, and I would pay them absolutely as much as the company could possibly afford just in thanks for their contributions! Trust me, we are not hounding this guy about "production," and he has a very casual work-day for us! We've even made him a minor partner. But MOST (by FAR the vast, vast majority) of labor is DRONE labor that literally does not give a rip! And companies are forced by the government to pay that "labor" MORE than it is worth, which actually hurts capital/wealth in the company.
There are drones that are doing WELL to get a Taco Bell or Walmart wage! THEIR labor is NOT a significant factor in producing capital/wealth, and the companies have to think through how to get even the value they pay for out of these drones, forget about ADDING to capital/wealth!
The lame idea that "an hour is an hour" is flatly ridiculous, as anybody who has managed a successful company in a competitive market can attest. Some people's "hours" are worth a LOT more than other people's "hours".
Let the proletariat start thinking of ideas to ADD VALUE, rather than how "downtrodden" they are, and their wages will reflect that added value in the vast majority of companies. Most companies WANT to reward and keep loyal their valued employees! But that means that they recognize as valuable something that logically precedes mere labor.
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Dave
Mountain climber
the ANTI-fresno
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"Let the proletariat start thinking of ideas to ADD VALUE, rather than how "downtrodden" they are, and their wages will reflect that added value in the vast majority of companies. Most companies WANT to reward and keep loyal their valued employees! But that means that they recognize as valuable something that logically precedes mere labor."
And that, Sir, as they say, is that.
Here, here.
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Gary
Social climber
From A Buick 6
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Which republican president said that (supposedly)?
Abraham Lincoln.
Let the proletariat start thinking of ideas to ADD VALUE, rather than how "downtrodden" they are, and their wages will reflect that added value in the vast majority of companies. Most companies WANT to reward and keep loyal their valued employees! But that means that they recognize as valuable something that logically precedes mere labor.
What world do you live in? I'm at the age where I see my contemporaries being let go after 25+ years with the same corporation as they near retirement age and replaced by someone with less knowledge and experience, but also a smaller salary.
You story is cute, and I'm sure it sounds reassuring. Here's another side of the story:
[Click to View YouTube Video]
How come they never wrote songs praising John D. Rockefeller?
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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What world do you live in?
Easy....
I live in a world where I can't get a burrito bent to order.
I live in a world where the checker THROWS bananas into a bag on top of the tomatoes that were THROWN into a bag on top of containers of yogurt.
I live in a world where the customer service droid reads me a script that literally ignores what I called in about and that then forces me to step through the script with them point by point until finally the script is exhausted and the droid is reduced to: "I can't help you with this problem. I'll have to get a supervisor."
On and on.
The UNSKILLED now own the workforce at every level, and while they are perpetually complaining about being poor, downtrodden proletariat, the FACT is that they just don't give a crap to do a good job at any level. There is rarely any striving for excellence.
By contrast. There was this kid at the car wash I frequent. This kid was not just friendly but knew off the top of his head all of the options and costs. Then he would do that initial scrubbing with the brush before the car would go into the tunnel, and he did it WELL. He really scrubbed, and he didn't send the car in until he had gotten the bugs off already. Then he'd RUN back to serve the next car in line, always cheerful and friendly. Rinse and repeat. Again and again through the day. Great kid!
I tipped him a lot repeatedly, and I observed the same thing with him time after time. I called the attention of his manager to his stellar performance, and the manager started taking notice. Next thing I knew, the kid was thanking me because now he the assistant manager, and he'll probably manage the next car wash the company opens.
FEW excel like that. MOST are drones that don't care to bend the correct burrito. Then they moan about how underpaid they are.
Look, DO a stellar job, and you'll usually be noticed and paid more.
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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My caddy , Smithers , does a superb job and i reward him handsomely ....rj
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Gary
Social climber
From A Buick 6
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^^ Old, but still true!
I live in a world where I can't get a burrito bent to order.
I live in a world where the checker THROWS bananas into a bag on top of the tomatoes that were THROWN into a bag on top of containers of yogurt.
I live in a world where the customer service droid reads me a script that literally ignores what I called in about and that then forces me to step through the script with them point by point until finally the script is exhausted and the droid is reduced to: "I can't help you with this problem. I'll have to get a supervisor."
On and on.
You get what you pay for, my friend. Or rather, what the Waltons pay for. When somebody has a job, works steady, yet still qualifies for foodstamps and Section 8 housing, while the corporate owner rolls in taxpayer subsidized billions, yeah, that might give somebody a screwed up attitude.
The real problem is that there is no respect for the work ethic in this country. We believe only paper shufflers and Wall Street con-men deserve to be enriched for what they do. Somebody who does an honest days work can go pound sand.
Turn to petty crime to try to feed your kid, you're going to jail for a long time. Steal the life savings of a widow and you're heralded in the Wall Street Journal as a visionary.
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couchmaster
climber
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My answer to Banquos first post question which was: "What is Wealth? What is Poverty?"
Poverty was what I was born into. Wealth is what I worked up to.
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Norwegian
Trad climber
dancin on the tip of god's middle finger
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when we lean into poverty
and into struggle,
our soul aspires.
an absolute, endearing
and essential expression
is available only thru
hard times.
with material wealth,
this soul-sigh
expires,
and our wellness
stumbles down
the asset mountain.
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