<p>mom2…amen to that. My two cents… Outside the crazy salaries for some CEOs and Board members of major corporations and some Wall Street investment bankers, I think, generally, incomes are fair. I look at people sitting in jobs that require a high education or a tough education that have ALWAYS paid poorly and I ask…so when did you reach the understanding that this job that has ALWAYS paid poorly would pay poorly? Sometimes poor pay does not reflect societal value, certainly, but it does reflect economic value. I had an econ professor in grad school who explained it well. Look at a teacher in classroom. That teacher might have 30 students and might be paid 50k a year. That student is costing each student 1666.66/yr. You have an NFL player who might be making 5 million a year, but there are millions and millions of viewers getting value from his play, but contributing pennies a week to watch him on TV. Which one “costs” more? The teacher, obviously. What creates the difference is how MANY users are benefitting from that product. It is the reason why an insurance broker who has thousands of clients contributing a little bit per contract earns more than the physician who actually does work on the patient. Once you really understand markets, it starts to make sense. It is a choice people make freely. It is NOT unfair.</p>
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<p>For many people, maybe even most, making this kind of money was never their goal. Do you really think someone making $1M on Wall Street is somehow better than a college professor?</p>
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<p>I’m not sure if I have an opinion about how they should correlate, I look more at how they do correlate and I don’t have a problem with it. Some people who don’t finish college become very wealthy and some people who spend a lot of years in school don’t become rich.</p>
<p>I’ve never seen an education as being only about job training, there is value in an education in and of itself. But I also think it is a good idea if an education has some aspects that will translate into the working world. A person wants to be a bit practical.</p>
<p>debrockman - interesting post. The thing is though that people don’t really make the choice freely always. Many want really badly to be super wealthy but aren’t able to reason through the power of markets as you just described. Intelligence does play a role. If we want absolute equality we will have to do something about intelligence inequality, I guess.</p>
<p>^
Read Outliers. Apparently, luck has a much bigger role.</p>
<p>Small Business Owner Here. I will never live in a million dollar house not because I can’t, but because I would never take money that the people who work for me generate and hoard it for myself. When cash flow gets weird (and in the industry I am in, it has periods during the year where weird is the only description I can give it) I don’t lay in bed at night worried about my family, because I have built a fluffy next egg, but I do worry about my employees. If the work is not there, I just can’t have people standing around looking at each other, but I will do everything I can do create work to make sure they keep working. My income is not much better than theirs because at the end of the year, what ever is left I profit share with my employees. I do admit my share is more, but I also assure you that when they leave after their 40 hour work week, my job really never ends. If the phone rings at 9:00 at night and a customer needs immediately attention, it is me or my husband that leaves my home to make the call. I will sit in my office until midnight working on marketing, payroll taxes, business projections, etc. That is my job. I am basically married to it. I appreciate everyone who works for me, but I assure you they will never be financially wealthy. But many have worked here for 20+ years. They must stay for reason. </p>
<p>On a side note. I don’t shop at Walmart. As a business owner I find their business practice, not aggressive as their supporters say, but unethical.</p>
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Why such a fixation with the vague concept of “better”? Better in what way? Aren’t there many, many ways in which individuals could be compared? It seems like you are totally defining yourself by how much money you make (or could make). Society has more than one measure of worth. Why are you limiting yourself to this one measure?</p>
<p>Excellent post sewhappy and debrock.</p>
<p>If we just take the highly intelligent and educated, we’ll see what many would call inequality. Contrast an investment banker and an MD. In most cases, both could have become either. So choice is responsible for the inequity. Both were smart enough to assess their likely incomes. I would assume both were comfortable with the likely outcome.</p>
<p>As I get older I find myself having conversations like the one here with many peers who have all worked very hard but with different financial outcomes. What I realize is that youthful assessment is often naive and that luck is a big element, even for the highly educated.</p>
<p>One friend followed his environmental/ green passion and has done very well, but not as
well financially as many of our elite college peers who are able to retire very young. He assumed he could both do good and the state of the art companies he worked for would go public making him wealthy before long. Many did, but his timing and luck unfortunately Weren’t the best. H has days when he wishes he chose finance, but realizes he spent much more time with his family and on his hobbies than those who cashed out young.</p>
<p>I have college prof friends who got tenure young and live wonderful lives in bucolic college towns. Others with virtually the same education never got tenure and have to live in high cost of living places where they can piece together full time teaching. Is this unfair?</p>
<p>Then investment banker friends who’ve worked such incredible hours they look 10 years older then their peers. They sacrificed family time and have typically gone through a divorce or two. Most are totally honest by the way. They made the choice to do this and they have fat bank accounts. Unfair?</p>
<p>And CEOs. Working as a consultant, I’ve helped hire many. Companies are desperate to hire a good one because they work for shareholders. If shareholders aren’t making profits, they’ll sell, and the company will be in trouble and have to cut jobs. Public companies can only keep the doors open if shareholders want them to. Hence CEO salaries. Who’d want those jobs you can never leave at the office without high pay? More lose sleep constantly over keeping employees employed than most understand.</p>
<p>Remember Ben and Jerry trying to pay the CEO no more than 7 times the lowest paid employee? They almost went under with the type of top management they could get! shareholders can complain if they don’t think the CEO is worth their pay. Some do and they should when appropriate, but note there are not too many stories of this happening, and senior execs are most often hired by committees who have what the competitors are paying at their disposal.</p>
<p>I had an econ professor in grad school who explained it well. Look at a teacher in classroom. That teacher might have 30 students and might be paid 50k a year. That [teacher] is costing each student 1666.66/yr. You have an NFL player who might be making 5 million a year, but there are millions and millions of viewers getting value from his play, but contributing pennies a week to watch him on TV. Which one “costs” more? The teacher, obviously. What creates the difference is how MANY users are benefitting from that product.</p>
<p>Not only that, but there are far fewer people who can do what that NFL player (or actor or whatever that highly paid person does) than there are people who can be teachers or other similarly paid people. </p>
<p>A surgeon can charge a lot for his services, because not may can do what he/she does. Your lawn maintenance guy can’t charge the same amount as the surgeon because more people can do what the lawn guy does. </p>
<p>I remember when someone complained that engineers were getting paid a lot more than other college-educated people at the same company. The bottom line was this…many people (including many of the engineers) could do what those other college-educated people could do (report status to the customer, write up proposals, keep track of budgets, etc), but not the other way around. Therefore, the engineers were more valuable to the company.</p>
<p>
Alright - either you aren’t paying attention to any of the responses here, you seriously just don’t get it, or you’re just messing with the posters. </p>
<p>Maybe you’re just no writing well. You continually define whether a person is ‘better’ in terms of income. Do you really mean to define the person as a ‘better person’ if they happen to have a higher income or do you simply mean they have a ‘better income’? If it’s the former, answer directly - do you think a high income defense lawyer who defends rich criminals is by definition a ‘better person’ than a low-paid minister who devotes her life to helping people?</p>
<p>You also seem to want to blame society somehow. If you actually want to succeed financially and have the good fortune to live in a country where one can succeed in this way then quit focusing on blaming society, take some ownership, and put yourself where you want to be. The more you focus on the idea that being in the top 1% income bracket is an entitlement (which by definition it can’t be) the less chance you’ll ever have of achieving it. If you can embrace the idea that you have ‘no’ entitlements and thus need to work to achieve what you want you’ll have a better chance of getting there.</p>
<p>*If we want absolute equality we will have to do something about intelligence inequality, I guess. *</p>
<p>And, that’s true as well.</p>
<p>Smarter people (and I’m not talking IQ…I’m talking “walking around smarts”) will likely earn more money. </p>
<p>My FIL owned his own business for over 50 years, but he never earned nearly as much as his line of work should have earned because he had ZERO “walking around smarts.”</p>
<p>Maybe you’re just no writing well.</p>
<p>Better fix that before the 20 minutes are up…LOL</p>
<p>Maybe you’re just no writing well. You continually define whether a person is ‘better’ in terms of income. Do you really mean to define the person as a ‘better person’ if they happen to have a higher income or do you simply mean they have a ‘better income’? If it’s the former, answer directly - do you think a high income defense lawyer who defends rich criminals is by definition a ‘better person’ than a low-paid minister who devotes her life to helping people?</p>
<p>You also seem to want to blame society somehow. If you actually want to succeed financially and have the good fortune to live in a country where one can succeed in this way then quit focusing on blaming society, take some ownership, and put yourself where you want to be. The more you focus on the idea that being in the top 1% income bracket is an entitlement (which by definition it can’t be) the less chance you’ll ever have of achieving it. If you can embrace the idea that you have ‘no’ entitlements and thus need to work to achieve what you want you’ll have a better chance of getting there. </p>
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<p>You didn’t understand what I wrote. I wrote as if there are two cases. </p>
<p>Case 1 (good society): </p>
<p>I’m just as good as the person making $1M. If that’s the case then I should be making $1M. I’m not making $1M because I’m not as good. </p>
<p>Case 2 (bad society): </p>
<p>I’m just as good as the person making $1M. However, I’m not making anywhere close to $1M. </p>
<p>It’s hard to know which case is more accurate for the current society. There are two variables, my ability and the society (good or bad). Not enough equations to solve for them. </p>
<p>I don’t view it as an entitlement but I am devoting most my efforts to getting there. However, my most immediate family members have been extremely successful relative to their circumstance and abilties. I want to continue that legacy and hope that my children will be at least as equally proud.</p>
<p>What does society have to do with whether you get paid the same as those who are as “good” as you? I don’t get that. To a great extent it depends on the field and situation. If you play basketball and are as good as Lebron James, probably you will get paid as much as Lebron James. If you are an engineer in a small backwater town in Arkansas, you will probably not get paid the same as your peer equally good engineer in San Jose.</p>
<p>I work in the financial markets and yes, people work hard and many make a lot of money, but…do people who work in the financial markets need to be taxed less too?</p>
<p>And finance is about 25 percent of profits in the US…do we really want that sector to be making so much money? </p>
<p>Many years ago, finance was a much smaller segment of the economy, and manufacturing was a much larger segment of the economy. And more people were better off.</p>
<p>There was this discussion about the 5 million dollar football player. I hope the economics professor talked about the tax breaks the sports
teams get. The sports teams get subsidized by the government, that’s us, and the owners do well, and the owners want tax breaks. I don’t know. There is a disconnect for me.</p>
<p>Why are we subsidizing these guys? If we didn’t subsidize these teams, guess what? The 5 million dollar football player wouldn’t make 5 million.
I hope the econ professor talked about this, and if he didn’t he needs to
take an economics course or two himself.</p>
<p>This relates…</p>
<p>[Does big-time college football deserve its big tax breaks?](<a href=“USA TODAY - Breaking News and Latest News Today”>USA TODAY - Breaking News and Latest News Today;
football-deserve-its-big-149737.html)</p>
<p>You can’t pay these coaches these salaries without the taxpayer
subsidizing thesse programs.</p>
<p>And for those who are so sure that the economic system works so
correctly, i hope you get a chance to see the documentary, “Inside Job”.</p>
<p>Check out the trailer for the movie.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/[/url]”>http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1645089/</a></p>
<p>There is a reason why Washington is flooded with lobbyists…and it is not because those that work the hardest are rewarded.</p>
<p>So what’s the answer? How do we bring back manufacturing?</p>
<p>Do we get other industries to become more profitable or engineer financial firms becoming less profitable? Should we engineer the profitability of any industry? All industries?</p>
<p>Information is the commodity being paid for. We will never return to a manufacturing based economy.</p>
<p>Well…we give plenty of tax breaks to the financial industry…</p>
<p>If we didn’t, the industry would not be as lucrative and people would work in other industries. The financial industry did not always dominate the economy like it does now.</p>
<p>We could also subsidize manufacturing more…or subsidize job creation in this country, if that is what society wants.</p>
<p>This country taxes capital at lower rates than labor. That can be changed.</p>
<p>The financial industry also uses more leverage than other parts of the economy. Rules can be set in place to limit leverage, making the industry more stable, but less profitable. This would get rid of some of the gun slingers. This would also limit the “privatize the gains---- socialize the losses” issue.</p>
<p>Case 1 (good society): </p>
<p>I’m just as good as the person making $1M. If that’s the case then I should be making $1M. I’m not making $1M because I’m not as good. </p>
<p>Case 2 (bad society): </p>
<h2>I’m just as good as the person making $1M. However, I’m not making anywhere close to $1M. ~ Nicole12</h2>
<p>You are learning a valuable lesson, “Life aint always fair.”</p>
<p>It stings, but you get use to it. Life aint fair…no truer have ever been spoken.</p>
<p>Bad things happen to good people, people earn less than others, some get lucky, others don’t. Some are born into wealth, some are born into poverty. Some work their fingers to the bone just to get by, others hit cruise control and happily sail through life.</p>
<p>That’s all it is. Nothing deeper, no conspiracy, no Good Society V. Bad Society. People choose different paths in life, some lead to financial wealth, others don’t. Some lead to personal fullfillment, others don’t.</p>
<p>Greater networth doesn’t = better. You need to shake away from this belief, because if you don’t, it will eventually consume you - then destroy you. Perhaps financially, perhaps legally, who knows, but as sure as the sun rises…it will erode your soul.</p>
<p>I don’t have it figured all out, I struggle with greed, selfishness and envy - I’m human. Like everyone else, I want more…and just like everyone else I rationalize my greed. I deserve it, I work hard, I follow the laws, I follow the rules, “That person didn’t, so why do they get what I want?” It’s innocent and harmless for the most part, but it’s still greed. </p>
<p>The OP stated that she comes from a family of “success” and she wants to continue the tradition. Well, good for her. As long as she does it with ethics and morals, I hope she gets what she can, I wish that for everyone.</p>
<p>However, the reasoning for living isn’t to chase paper. I don’t know what the actual reason is, but it’s not that.</p>
<p>Why should we subsidization anything?</p>
<p>As for manufacturing, we need to move forward, not backwards. Much of the world can and is owning this in economies where it makes sense. It’s no longer a viable role for the US which is why we experienced the mas exodus.</p>
<p>Seems like Obama has a firm grip on Wall Street. You think he’ll allow any rogue tax breaks?</p>
<p>Maybe, we shouldn’t subsidize anything. We subsidize many things now…</p>
<p>I think there are areas where society might want to subsidize. Alternative energy. The fight against diseases. </p>
<p>The government subsizes the financial markets. I wonder where the Dow Jones Industrial Average would be today without government programs to get stocks up? I wonder what the bond market would look like? And maybe these programs were a good thing.</p>
<p>nicole - you need to quit using the term ‘good person’ since it makes no sense unless you really think wealth is what makes a person a ‘good person’. You’ve still not answered this point most of us have responded to.</p>
<p>Throwing out the definition of ‘good person’ meaning what most of us except possibly you take it to mean - in your hypothetical situation if you do everything exactly the same as someone who makes $1M then you too will make $1M which should make you happy. The fact that there are so many people who have managed to succeed financially in the USA and many other countries then you can discount the idea that ‘society’ is what’s preventing one from achieving it. This is especially true in the USA which is one reason why so many in the world view it as the land of opportunity and so many have succeeded here.</p>
<p>However, you need to understand there are a lot of variables that enter the equation of whether one achieves financial success or not. These variables go beyond intelligence and formal education as has been proven by thousands of people. Other variables include the desire to focus on the goal of financial wealth (which many people purposely don’t do - instead they may be focused on being happy, helping others, raising their kids, pursuing some dream), willingness to work hard, willingness to take some risk, ability to work with people, ability to recognize an opportunity, initiative to follow up on that opportunity, experience, and even luck as well as other variables. It’s a complexe equation that I think you’re trying to simplify into two variable - how ‘good’ one is (whatever that’s supposed to mean), and ‘society’ (by which I assume you mean society not affording the opportunity). You can’t just throw out the other variables of the equation - it’s not valid.</p>
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Are you proud of their net fiscal worth or are you proud that they worked hard, overcame obstacles, seized opportunities when they saw them, made correct decisions, and took good care of the family? You can’t quantify these latter points by their fiscal net worth. It’s these latter points that’ll make your children proud of you - not a pile of dollars. I think there are a number of examples of parents who have become wealthy whose children are NOT proud of them because the parents spent no time with the children, perhaps sending them off to boarding schools and camps and being taken care of by nannies for most of their lives or who have become alcoholics, abusive, swindled people and are in jail, etc. It’s not the money that’s the sole attribute to make one proud or determine one’s true ‘value’ as a person.</p>