How The Rich Are Winning

[WhipperSnapper]

Actually America is a profoundly poor country. Millions of Americans will have wasted their lives seeking acquiring or coveting wealth in the form of money. We will die having never lived.

When you consider the huge amount of bullshit that we have to put up with, you are correct.

For example, if you want to have a middle class job you have to spend countless hours doing all sorts of BS for which you won't be compensated, such as seemingly endless job hunting and networking and perhaps even spending 4 years in college to obtain a job that does not objectively require any special training. The amount of waste--both monetary and temporal--that we have in our current system is probably unacknowledged and staggering.

 

[BoberFett]

If merely having a positive attitude created jobs and economic opportunity--then we wouldn't have any problems in this country.

Do you really think businesses and therefore jobs are created by people who don't have positive attitudes?

"Hey, I have an idea for a product that nobody wants. I should start a company and pay people to fill a warehouse full of them so that we can throw them away."

 

[BoberFett]

When you consider the huge amount of bullshit that we have to put up with, you are correct.

For example, if you want to have a middle class job you have to spend countless hours doing all sorts of BS for which you won't be compensated, such as seemingly endless job hunting and networking and perhaps even spending 4 years in college to obtain a job that does not objectively require any special training. The amount of waste--both monetary and temporal--that we have in our current system is probably unacknowledged and staggering.

That much I'll agree with. But the rich didn't do that to us. Not entirely anyway. We did it to ourselves. Discontented with having enough, Americans wanted more. Well we got more, for a while anyway, and now we're seeing the end results.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

The middle class is shrinking because we do everything we can to prop up the poor.

It's shrinking because we are merging our labor market and our economy and thus standard of living with that of the third world. Millions of jobs of have been sent overseas, foreigners were imported on H-1B and L-1 visas to displace Americans domestically, and then we imported tens of millions of poor immigrants via immigration (legal/illegal) to displace yet more Americans from their jobs.

It has nothing to do with welfare for the poor.

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

When you consider the huge amount of bullshit that we have to put up with, you are correct.

For example, if you want to have a middle class job you have to spend countless hours doing all sorts of BS for which you won't be compensated, such as seemingly endless job hunting and networking and perhaps even spending 4 years in college to obtain a job that does not objectively require any special training. The amount of waste--both monetary and temporal--that we have in our current system is probably unacknowledged and staggering.

boo-fucking-hoo. cry more.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

That misses the entire point of the OPs post. How many people have "studied hard, picked the right classes in college, on course to graduate with honors"? More importantly, how many people can do that? If everyone were to do that, would everyone be successful in life? Of course not, there is a limit to the resources. It is the distribution of resources/wealth that the OP was talking about.

A lot of people DO study hard and even obtain advanced degrees and end up poor! They worked hard and trained to better their productive ability but because millions of other Americans had the same idea, there just aren't enough knowledge-based college-education-requiring high-value-added jobs to go around for everyone.

For example, we have a huge oversupply of PhD. scientists. See:

http://www.miller-mccune.com/science/the-real-science-gap-16191/

“There is no scientist shortage,” declares Harvard economics professor Richard Freeman, a pre-eminent authority on the scientific work force. Michael Teitelbaum of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a leading demographer who is also a national authority on science training, cites the “profound irony” of crying shortage — as have many business leaders, including Microsoft founder Bill Gates — while scores of thousands of young Ph.D.s labor in the nation’s university labs as low-paid, temporary workers, ostensibly training for permanent faculty positions that will never exist.

Were those people not hard-working and responsible? We also have huge oversupplies of MBAs and JDs, almost all of whom are hard-working, ambitious people who possess the virtue of personal responsibility.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Even if everybody did everything right, a certan % of the population would be poor. Someone has to do things like pick crops for minimum wage.

It would be possible for everyone to be at least lower-middle if not middle class class if we had good economic policies (more wealth produced, less of it going to the rich) and if we had a high rationality factor (no crime, no drug use, no children born to parents who cannot afford to raise them, etc.).

 

[WhipperSnapper]

you keep your earned income and I'll keep mine.

One of the big issues is whether or not people have actually earned all of the income they reap and whether some people deserve higher compensation.

For example. Did the CEO who drives a company into the ground yet receives a $20 million severance really earn it? If you have a high income because your company's management is irrational and discriminates against worthy competitors willing to work for far less money then have you really earned it? Etc.

 

[BoberFett]

It would be possible for everyone to be at least lower-middle if not middle class class if we had good economic policies (more wealth produced, less of it going to the rich) and if we had a high rationality factor (no crime, no drug use, no children born to parents who cannot afford to raise them, etc.).

That simply isn't true.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Luck didn't get me into College. Luck didn't take the LSAT for me. Luck didn't get me into Law School. Luck didn't pass the bar for me.

But did it play any sort of a role in your finding your lawyer job and then not getting laid off when you were a lowly associate? You do realize that the vast majority of JD graduates today are unable to find work in the legal profession?

According to one study, only about 54% of all lawyers produced from 1969 on work in the legal profession (and the rate for graduates of the past two decades is probably significantly lower than that since the legal job market was presumably better in the '70's and '80's) and the law schools have been overproducing lawyers to support having one lawyer for every 172 people since the 1970s.

My point is that investing 7 years in college education and working hard to graduate from law school and pass the Bar Exam is no longer sufficient to attain career success or to even have the opportunity to learn how to be a lawyer (which requires working as an associate apprentice under other lawyers for a couple years after law school, which means finding a legal job after law school).

How many "informational interviews" and networking attempts do you receive each week? How many unsolicited resumes do you get? Are you under the impression that all of those hard-working job seekers who didn't want to rely on luck are finding career-building positions in the legal profession?

Hard-work and personal responsibility is no longer sufficient in today's society and hasn't been sufficient for a decade or two. Luck and the avoidance of back luck also play a large role even though we might not like that fact.

For another view of the legal profession that you may have missed and/or for entertainment purposes, come visit the law school scambusting blogs. A group of malevolent lawyers want to close 80% of the law schools. This blog is a good place to start:

http://lawschoolscam.blogspot.com

Here's a fun discussion forum:

http://www.JDUnderground.com

Here's an interesting blog entry that might shed some light on the relationship between hard work, luck, the avoidance of bad luck, job/career security, and economic success:

Laid Off Lawyer Applies to 1000 Jobs and Gets Zero Interviews

 

[SammyJr]

That simply isn't true.

Only if you follow the Free Trade religion and believe that the wealthy are entitled to import shitty Chinese goods tariff free.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Suffering? Really? You think that many people (there are some who are truly destitute, but it's an extremely small percentage) are suffering? Christ, this is the only country where cable TV is a part of suffering. I bet the rest of the world wishes they had it this badly.

Is it possible that you have constructed a stereotype about the poor and lower classes that is simply not true? Did you know that not everyone has cable TV? (Guess which class of people don't have the cable TV?)

Did you know that hundreds of thousands of Americans are homeless and that many millions of them are losing their houses and don't have health insurance? 1/4 kids are on food stamps and 1/8 Americans are on food stamps.

I agree with you that we don't have third world suffering yet, but you're wrong to downplay the American lower classes' suffering. You almost sound like the common caricature of Marie Antoinette. Let them watch cable TV?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Poor people can get free college education

Can you please tell us more about this alleged free college education? What do you have to do to get it? Is this available for everyone who is poor or lower class?

For that matter, how is getting a college education a guarantor of economic success, even if you work hard? Right now we have millions of college graduates who are either unemployed or who cannot find work in their fields and who end up having to work poverty-wage jobs while being burdened with student loans (that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy).

 

[BoberFett]

Only if you follow the Free Trade religion and believe that the wealthy are entitled to import shitty Chinese goods tariff free.

Apparently the average American felt entitled to purchase imported shitty Chinese goods cheaply. Don't pin this all on the rich.

 

[SammyJr]

Apparently the average American felt entitled to purchase imported shitty Chinese goods cheaply. Don't pin this all on the rich.

Who decided to compete on price until going to China was the only real option? Who laid off the American workers, forcing them to buy the cheapest items possible? Who bought the politicians to make it all possible?

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Why do people who claim there's no class mobility in this country focus so much on getting wealthy? Why does someone have to move from poverty to riches to be considered successful? Isn't it enough to go from poor to middle class? Maybe if more people concentrated on that rather than hoping and praying that they get immediately blasted into the ranks of the rich and famous, we'd have more success in this country overall?

Oh, I am interested, very interested in the ability for people to become middle class or to simply remain middle class. However what you quoted was a response to a guy who specifically talked about the opportunity for people to get rich.

The reason why there is so much angst over this subject is not because people are complaining that they can't become multimillionaires but ultimately because people are having great difficulty maintaining and attaining a mere middle class standard of living.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

Do you really think businesses and therefore jobs are created by people who don't have positive attitudes?

I don't have a problem with a restrained positive attitude and confidence. However, I do think that having a sense of realism is important. The guy who goes out and buys a house for investment purposes during the housing bubble in part because he has a "positive attitude" and is certain that only good things are going to happen is a fool who creates no jobs.

A positive attitude is nice but it won't exert control over reality. See:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo

 

[BoberFett]

Who decided to compete on price until going to China was the only real option? Who laid off the American workers, forcing them to buy the cheapest items possible? Who bought the politicians to make it all possible?

At the first hint of offshoring, Americans could have chosen to ignore those goods in favor of locally produced goods. We chose not to. The rest of the manufacturers had no choice but to follow once price was the only factor that mattered at retail. The American consumer made their bed, now we're lying in it. To deny that just means you're deluded. From what I've read of your drivel, I'd say that's a guarantee.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

boo-fucking-hoo. cry more.

Brilliant response. You did an impressive job of responding to the substance of the post. (Actually, you demonstrated your intellectual bankruptcy by showing that you cannot address it.)

 

[WhipperSnapper]

That simply isn't true.

I'm not convinced that some people would absolutely have to be poor. I think that our society could be much wealthier in total than what it is now and that that wealth can be distributed in such a way so that the worst anyone would be is lower middle class and maybe even middle class.

The amount of economic waste that we have in this country, in various ways, is just staggering. Also, a large amount of human potential is wasted. Eliminate all of that and actualize people's productive potential and we could live much better.

 

[BoberFett]

Oh, I am interested, very interested in the ability for people to become middle class or to simply remain middle class. However what you quoted was a response to a guy who specifically talked about the opportunity for people to get rich.

The reason why there is so much angst over this subject is not because people are complaining that they can't become multimillionaires but ultimately because people are having great difficulty maintaining and attaining a mere middle class standard of living.

Perhaps I missed that part, my bad. If this was a Spidey induced discussion, then I can see where it came from. It just seems like whenever I see a discussion about class mobility the discussion quickly degenerates into how it's impossible for someone to get rich if they were born poor, when that's not the point.

You are right though, that trade imbalance with poverty stricken countries is one of the major factories in destroying US wealth, and I'm 100% in favor of using tariffs or even flat out trade restrictions to even that out.

 

[WhipperSnapper]

At the first hint of offshoring, Americans could have chosen to ignore those goods in favor of locally produced goods. We chose not to. The rest of the manufacturers had no choice but to follow once price was the only factor that mattered at retail. The American consumer made their bed, now we're lying in it. To deny that just means you're deluded. From what I've read of your drivel, I'd say that's a guarantee.

I agree that Americans in general are responsible for this. Really. We have the politicians that we want. We elected all of these bozos and if necessary the people could just revolt against the government. We only have ourselves to blame for our problems with foreign outsourcing, H-1B and L-1 visas, and mass immigration. I have seen the enemy and he is us.

 

[SammyJr]

At the first hint of offshoring, Americans could have chosen to ignore those goods in favor of locally produced goods. We chose not to. The rest of the manufacturers had no choice but to follow once price was the only factor that mattered at retail. The American consumer made their bed, now we're lying in it. To deny that just means you're deluded. From what I've read of your drivel, I'd say that's a guarantee.

I agree with you on this point. What do you propose to do about it, aside from denying that the situation is actually a problem?

 

[BoberFett]

I'm not convinced that some people would absolutely have to be poor. I think that our society could be much wealthier in total than what it is now and that that wealth can be distributed in such a way so that the worst anyone would be is lower middle class and maybe even middle class.

The amount of economic waste that we have in this country, in various ways, is just staggering. Also, a large amount of human potential is wasted. Eliminate all of that and actualize people's productive potential and we could live much better.

It's simply statistics. There were always be someone at the bottom, even if that bottom is very high. Oh shit, that guy has last years model car. He's the poorest person in the US. Better fire up the welfare machine to get him a new car. The problem is envy. Some people would rather see everyone poor than see some with more. I think we could be a far more wealthy nation as well, I just disagree as to what will create that wealth. Apparently to some all it will take is tax increases and redistribution to do it. I don't believe that will change anything.

 

[SammyJr]

It's simply statistics. There were always be someone at the bottom, even if that bottom is very high. Oh shit, that guy has last years model car. He's the poorest person in the US. Better fire up the welfare machine to get him a new car. The problem is envy. Some people would rather see everyone poor than see some with more. I think we could be a far more wealthy nation as well, I just disagree as to what will create that wealth. Apparently to some all it will take is tax increases and redistribution to do it. I don't believe that will change anything.

The bottom is a lot lower than having last year's car. I hope you realize that.