<p>
I started choking from laughing so hard.
The question is: useful to whom? IBankers may earn their salaries in the eyes of corporate shareholders, but that doesn’t indicate usefulness to society. There is a difference. If I pay you $50 to loot $100 in goods for me, you are well worth that money to me. However, you have not improved society by looting.</p>
<p>Jason, you can’t link to blogs so I’ll just give you the name and you can look it up yourself. Look up weaselsjourney. </p>
<p>This is a blog by a woman who has a master’s degree (though not from a top school - the horrors) and was a teacher but is now home with her children, one of which has special needs (is mentally handicapped) and just got out of the hospital after a month-long stay in PICU. </p>
<p>I want you to read all the posts of this family’s stay in the hospital. I want you to pay attention to the people who helped her and her daughter through their acts of kindness. Some of these were “big shot” people that you’d respect (like doctors) – some of those were “littler shot” people that I doubt you’d respect as much (like nurses) – and some of these were just friends / family who did kind things to help a family in a time of distress.</p>
<p>I want you also to ponder this: Now that the ill daughter has come home, this woman’s days are going to consist, in large part, of caring for her. She is fortunate in that the family appears to be reasonably affluent, can hire help, etc. but nonetheless – this is a big undertaking to deal with the convalescence of a 16-yo who does not function as most 16 yo’s do. </p>
<p>I want you to reflect upon the fact that she won’t get paid one penny by society for any of these.</p>
<p>And then I want you to come back and report on why she’s not “useful” because she’s not a doctor / lawyer / i-banker / CEO.</p>
<p>I hope you have the humility to realize that money isn’t everything.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Useful people don’t get delight from causing others to lose their jobs. </p>
<p>Anyway, I’m wondering if the real story that you’re not sharing is that your parents value the making of money quite highly and have passed on to you the expectation that if you don’t become a high-earner, you’re worthless. Because you talk a lot about your “nice suburb” and all that. You didn’t earn a penny of what it takes to live in a nice suburb. That’s your parents’ accomplishment, not yours.</p>
<p>Is your mother at at-home mother? If so, is she “useless”?</p>
<p>OP,
What is a real problem? What is bothering you? You need to come down from your hill and explain in plain English.</p>
<p>OH, and Jason, while you’re at it?</p>
<p>On the front page of the blog, if you scroll down a bit, you will see the oldest son in the family, who is going off to college this fall at a college that’s probably around #100 or so. Certainly not a school that would impress you, or most of Wall Street.</p>
<p>He is holding his sister’s hand, even after she tried to kick him, because she doesn’t know any better and she doesn’t understand why she’s in this scary place with funny tubes.</p>
<p>The picture nearly brings me to tears and I suspect it will to many of the parents on here as well. A young man like that? Standing by his sister’s bedside and showing her love? His top 100 degree and his compassion is of infinitely more value than a top 20 degree and an attitude that income=value. Unless you have a change of conscience, this young man is more of a man than you’ll ever be.</p>
<p>@Noimagination: To society. If the income is legal, it is useful to society. Ibankers earn alot of money. You might not think its useful but that money is taxed very very heavily (50 cents on the dollar taking into account all of our numerous taxes including property, sales, and state taxes). The countries who depend on ibankers to structure debt and the companies who need merging would also be benefited. In short, useful to society. Your example is a non sequitor because no reasonable person would accept such a deal. Risks for the transaction are very high and needs to be properly awarded. In any event, that is a black market event that we will not consider.</p>
<p>@Pizza: She works. If the mother with the 16 year old earns enough money, it makes more sense for her to hire a nurse to care for her daughter.</p>
<p>
Let’s break it down:</p>
<ol>
<li>You argue that salary is indicative of usefulness to society.</li>
<li>I’m saying that salary is purely representative of the added value given to the employer.</li>
<li>You have not presented any evidence indicating that profit for the employer is good for society.</li>
</ol>
<p>It doesn’t matter whether my hypothetical would ever actually happen. The point is that an action is not inherently useful to society solely because profit is generated for the hiring party.</p>
<p>70% of profits are paid out in wages and benefits. Around 15% is invested.</p>
<p>investment ultimately benefits society while wages directly benefit society. Fact: most of the research and development money in the USA are from companies that are making a profit (except the biotech industry, which is heavily investing in the red without promise of return). If we stopped getting paid for 1 month lets see how much chaos there would be… im sure you can find the source. Ill go look for it. It was in a college intro economics book.</p>
<p>The way i see it, the more corporations earn, the more society gets to consume, the more taxes get paid. </p>
<p>@pizza girl, i dont see the brother. Its not on the first page.</p>
<p>You seem like half a person to me. Like you’re desperate to deny the emotional side of the human condition. I wonder what kind of parents you had, that would have prompted you to ask such a thing and that they would answer your question as they did. I hope someday you will find the other half of yourself.</p>
<p>
By that logic it is in fact good for society if I break into your house and steal your TV. I can sell the TV on the black market producing profit for myself which will be dispersed as I spend, and your family will buy a new TV.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with this scenario?</p>
<p>"The way i see it, the more corporations earn, the more society gets to consume, the more taxes get paid. "</p>
<p>What’s so great about society being able to consume more and more? Do you equate consumption with happiness?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Scroll down to the Sat July 24 entry and you’ll see it.</p>
<p>What is important about money to you, jason? What does money buy that makes it so important for you to have massive amounts of it (beyond what is reasonably needed to live a safe and pleasant life)? </p>
<p>Why do YOU value the i-banker making $10MM more than the nurse making $50K? Not society. YOU.</p>
<p>Jason I like how you ignore all the real issues in this thread…</p>
<p>I suggest everyone just ignore the OP. He is just doing what he says he does to his parents - arguing and bolstering his own sense of superiority. Remember his own self-assessment. He is a “very very scary person with superb intellect.” And he is <em>proud</em> of it.</p>
<p>I sure hope no one here actually believes they are making a single dent in the OP’s narcissistic assessment of himself or that they are capable of shifting his world view. He is laughing at everyone and is completely convinced he is a genius of staggering proportions. His parents have tired of him and thus he has come here to toy with us as stand-ins for his parents. Don’t do it.</p>
<p>Everybody should do something exceedingly useful and kind.</p>
<p>DNFTT.</p>
<p>Jason, why does your definition of “useful” exclude being “kind” ? You can accomplish a lot more by working WITH people instead of against them…being kind IS useful.</p>
<p>This thread brings to mind an image of a ■■■■■ holding up a strawman. Not a pretty sight. And it makes me wonder why a “useful” person would spend any time doing this. “It’s a puzzlement”. (10 pts to the musical theater geeks who recognize the quote.)</p>
<p>The question presents a false dichotomy between the adjectival forms “useful” and “kind,” which the OP recognizes yet prompts others to take a side while noting it’s a hypothetical scenario. Other posts refuse that invitation and take up the problems of defining “useful” and we might say the same about what it means to be “kind,” but we could also approach the post through the phrase “superb intellect in my immediate surroundings.” What does that mean? What is superb intellect and how does it differ from intelligence, knowledge, insight, or even just plain intellect? It’s an odd phrasing to characterize the self, and it implies a certain arrogance and/or it’s a rhetorical strategy to inspire the cc crowd to jump down his throat. It’s superb intellect in the immediate surroundings, which could be the school or neighborhood or most likely the home because that line is followed by a sentence about this person’s parents and their supposed inability to mount counter-arguments. If we go with the OP’s premise that the parents cannot respond to this so-called superb intellect, then we must come back to the parent’s original point about the importance of being “useful” as defined in the OP, which included putting people out of work. So we could say that those who do not have superb intellect are the same who make a case for a form of usefulness that involves personal financial gain through harm to others. The OP answered the question.</p>
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</p>
<p>Maybe your dad is your problem. Presumably you love your dad, so it’s hard for you to see that he’s fallible and might be wrong about something.</p>
<p>Is your dad kind? If he is, is that useful? If he is not, is that useful?</p>