Why are the rich always protrayed as hard working?

Aazadan
People can push themselves physically, and exert themselves. Mental exertion is a little different, people can't force themselves to think faster. You also can't hurt yourself from straining too hard mentally.

Oh really?
What is concentration? It's the ability to focus and either slow things down or speed your thought process up as required by the situation at hand.

Using the examples I gave earlier:

1. That ER doc who is in hour 25 of his shift just got notice that a trauma is coming in with 3-4 patients. Tell me again how they are not speeding up their progression checks in prep or slowing down their thought process to make sure nothing gets overlooked.

2. That UC engineer that is in hour 14 of an outage just got notified that their was a fiber cut which brought down 25 toll free numbers, tell me again at what pace I am thinking during that time frame.

Lets add a new one..

1. A SEAL or Delta Operator that is just about to enter a hostile environment, tell me again how their mental exertion is not part of the whole package they bring.


It's ridiculous to even imply that physical labor is somehow more challenging or harder then mental labor at their peaks. The only statement that is valid is they just use different skill sets.

Aazadan


Oh really?
What is concentration? It's the ability to focus and either slow things down or speed your through process up as required by the situation at hand.

Using the examples I gave earlier:

1. That ER doc who is in hour 25 of his shift just got notice that a trauma is coming in with 3-4 patients. Tell me again how they are not speeding up their progression checks in prep or slowing down their thought process to make sure nothing gets overlooked.

2. That UC engineer that is in hour 14 of an outage just got notified that their was a fiber cut which brought down 25 toll free numbers, tell me again at what pace I am thinking during that time frame.

Lets add a new one..

1. A SEAL or Delta Operator that is just about to enter a hostile environment, tell me again how their mental exertion is not part of the whole package they bring.


It's ridiculous to even imply that physical labor is somehow more challenging or harder then mental labor at their peaks. The only statement that is valid is they just use different skill sets.

The only people who actually claim that manual labor is harder than working with your brain are those incapable of using their brain to work smarter, not harder.

There is a known correlation between working hard and getting rich, although it generally also includes a lot of working smart, and having good luck. If you're working hard and you're stupid, then chances of you getting rich are slim.

Of course, the best way to be rich is to inherit it from somebody else who worked hard and smart and got lucky.

reply to post by LDragonFire


Every "rich" person I have ever come across, has made it due to hard work. Like, I don't know, working 18 hour days, weekends and such.

SO, the whole BS pitch of the wealthy not working hard is about as out of touch as it gets.

People get rich not by working hard (physically or mentally) but by convincing others to work hard for them. You move up not by how good you are, but by how good the people you know are, and how much they happen to like you. If hard work was the key to financial success, then the Mexican ladies I worked with at my old cleaning job would be successful middle class matrons by now. Yet 7 years on from when they started, their pay is barely above minimum wage, have not gotten promotions, they have no benefits, and are working second jobs and are worried about the rising cost of rent and taking care of their kids. Whereas two other women, both whom the owner liked, worked only a year and are now field managers. And they didn't work nearly as hard as many of the maids. They just knew the manager's niece.

I've never seen anyone move up or get ahead by hard work and competence alone. Hell, there are many times where hard work simply means your superiors see you as the willing work horse, and will continually load you up with more and more work, while seldom upping your pay or benefits. And someone they like, their golden boy/girl/whoever will get fast tracked around you.

You definitely don't become rich through hard work. You build wealth through understanding the system, the game, and learning how to manipulate it or make it work for you. In terms of knowing how and where to invest, what to buy and sell, how to work around laws and regs in your own favor, how to persuade people to do buy something or back you. How to get more for less. In other words, "working smarter".

Either way, I could care less. I value people for the kind of people they are, not how they work or what they accumulated. I admire people who are ethical, visionary, moral, long term thinkers, and who are thinking outside the box and truly seeking to revolutionize life and knowledge. These type of people are rare in any class, whether poor, middle class, or rich. The poor seldom think beyond immediate gratification or the next pay check, the rich can't think beyond their bottom line and next quarter's profits. The middle class can't think beyond what piece of Chinese made overpriced crap they want to buy next.

I have found the only thing worth putting any hard work into is something you truly believe in. That gets you ahead in ways your bank statements can't measure.

opethPA
Oh really?
What is concentration? It's the ability to focus and either slow things down or speed your thought process up as required by the situation at hand.

Someone can concentrate 100% of the time, it's not difficult, I've done it for years and if the claim that people are working hard is to be believed most other people do too. Someone cannot physically perform at 100% non stop, physical exhaustion takes over.

Aazadan
Someone can concentrate 100% of the time, it's not difficult, I've done it for years and if the claim that people are working hard is to be believed most other people do too. Someone cannot physically perform at 100% non stop, physical exhaustion takes over.

Mental fatigue is very real.
2nd.

reply to post by Aazadan


Speaking as someone who has done both physical labor - I worked the harvest every year when I was in high school, and I worked the physical side of a print shop for a couple years when I was in college - and as someone who now does pretty intense mental labor. You really don't know what you're talking about.

Trust me, with either one, fatigue plays a factor. After eight or more hours of either one, you are risking getting sloppy, you just aren't as sharp. In my current job, it leads me to risk missing things like from/form, brain/brian because both are valid words, and your brain sees that and wants to pass them off as fine because it also knows what was intended to be in that space for the context (i.e., it knows the writer really wanted from but wrote form, so it tricks you and tells you everything is fine).

I'm guessing you are aware of what kinds of sloppiness can creep in on the physical side - cutting safety corners, playing fast and lose, not paying as much attention what you're doing or where your hands are going, etc.

To downplay either one is nonsense, the fatigue factor in each is very real and can cause real problems.

In either case, what it takes to succeed is someone who can do the job and rise above and does the job better and longer if needed than everyone else because they see the job and do the job until it's done and done right. It's not the ones who see the time and leave, job done or not.

Aazadan
Someone can concentrate 100% of the time, it's not difficult, I've done it for years and if the claim that people are working hard is to be believed most other people do too. Someone cannot physically perform at 100% non stop, physical exhaustion takes over.

Guarantee you being mentally tired can and will lead to as many mistakes as being physically tired.
You can also use your mind to work through and or past physical fatigue , look no farther then Hell Week.
You can't use your body to work through mental fatigue.

As I said earlier, both are equally as taxing just using different physiological components.

Please though tell me again how someone that does physical labor deserves more than I do because you have concentrated for years.

After 5 years of struggling and not even having time for a breather or gf (barely have time to post here once a week), I do not believe hard work, or smart work, is what gets you into the 99th percentile.

Here is my story (my childhood was nonexistent and irrelevant, so skipping that part):
I graduated with a bachelor's degree at 19, won an undergraduate research expo (1st place) in social science, and had a very strong work ethic and academic career. After many months of putting in my resume, I couldn't get a job and tried dozens of places. I once showed up to a job interview to be a cashier (rock bottom) at a local store and was the only person in a suit and the only person who gave an appropriate interview (it was a group interview). They never even called me back despite promising they would call everyone. They eventually hired the girl who literally didn't know what a manhole cover was.

At 20 I found a lumber liquidating facility and purchased floorboards in bulk from them, after getting a loan from my uncle, and then resold them on Craigslist and other forums for a 400% markup. It was back-breaking work but drew in several hundred a week. However, it wasn't enough to support myself beyond the absolute minimum. I then got into drop shipping from Amazon to eBay and that involved being on top of things on an hourly basis, very stressful, and still a very unreliable cash flow. I then went back to university for a Master's degree in management information systems, but I had to drop out because my parents were very elderly and I needed to be on call for them for months. Consequently, all my student loans went towards them too.

At 21-22 I taught myself Forex, which went well (still do it), but then got involved in a penny stock scam that crippled me. It was during this time I tried looking for a steady, normal job again but it was even more difficult due to the no-working time gap in my resume. I also realized why I didn't get a job before - it's because I don't use social media and have no online presence (on top of having a very "eccentric and different" appearance/personality - which in the Southern U.S. is very bad). Employers nowadays want to be able to look you up on Google. I then authored a few eBooks for Kindle - hoping for monthly income while I continued with Forex. "Greatest book I ever read, brilliant, just amazing," was the typical response from everyone I gave it to. However, the problem was I never got anyone to actually write a review for it online. They were people who read it in person and told me on the phone, so my Kindle sales never took off (reviews move it up on rankings). Since I have no connections, I could not share my work either with hundreds and had no platform. I also didn't want to be unethical and pay firms to write reviews for me (MOST top sellers do that). The little money I did make from being an author went into America's Cardroom. Yes...I was so desperate that I learned Texas Hold'em and gambled online. I shoved all in on a 98% winning hand on the flop and lost it the river. I would have been a fool not to do that move, but got shanked anyway.

At 23 (my current age) I built off my knowledge acquired from self-publishing and created a publishing company. I taught myself how to format documents for eBooks, copyright material, trademark logos, buy and assign ISBNs, design covers with Picasa + Gimp 2, edit documents, build websites and more. I have a steady client flow but it's small still and I am running the whole business, top to bottom, myself. My next plan: offer services on Fiverr.com.

I was never given a chance in my life and now I'm almost 24 and still have never worked for someone. I never had more than $600 in savings. I have more skills than anyone else my age but it will never matter. I starve, suffer, live in a shack, and consider ODing on sleeping pills on a regular basis. However, I continue, and dream to have the power to change the world in a meaningful way someday.

From my life experience, what pays off is: 1) connections 2) luck 3) blue blood 4) more CONNECTIONS. You can write one of the most enlightening pieces of literature in history, but it doesn't matter if nobody learns it exists. You can perform a duty better than anyone else, but it doesn't matter if you're not ever given a chance to because you lack connections.

I've done some stupid things, even in the life story above, but that is the product of a young man being entirely on his own from his early teens. I don't even have someone to bounce ideas off of, or help me on basic things. If there is a chance of getting into the 1% with hard work and heartache alone, I will prove it eventually.

The thing is, you'll never get rich, let alone wealthy from doing manual labor. The people who get rich understand this and find other ways to get it.

But hard work does come into it. Figuring out ways to make a lot of money, is much harder imo then say going and working 8 hours at a call center or fast food joint. Those places aren't hard work. Flipping burgers and answering phone calls isn't hard. They also don't require any substantial cognitive abilities.

Average intelligence + hard word = decent shot in the long run to make above average wages

Below average intelligence + hard work = no real chance of making anything more than an average income

High intelligence + hard work = very good chance of making above average wages. Possible chance to become wealthy.


Point being, dumb people don't get far.

opethPA
Guarantee you being mentally tired can and will lead to as many mistakes as being physically tired.
You can also use your mind to work through and or past physical fatigue , look no farther then Hell Week.
You can't use your body to work through mental fatigue.

That's because you don't physically shut down through mental fatigue... maybe I've just never been that fatigued and don't know what I'm talking about despite my skillset falling on the thinking side of things. Or maybe I've recognized that mental fatigue is bs?

Please though tell me again how someone that does physical labor deserves more than I do because you have concentrated for years.

I'm not getting into earnings, the majority of people are overpaid relative to ability, most likely that includes you but people like to believe they're special and work hard even though by definition the majority of people are not above average. Shattering your ego is just a sidetrack to the thread. People that work hard physically deserve to be paid well, if the job required no skill the thinker would do it in addition to their own job and save the expense of hiring someone.

ketsuko
Speaking as someone who has done both physical labor - I worked the harvest every year when I was in high school, and I worked the physical side of a print shop for a couple years when I was in college - and as someone who now does pretty intense mental labor. You really don't know what you're talking about.

I've done physical labor and I've done what is jokingly referred to as mental labor. Physical labor requires time for your body to adjust to doing it day in and day out, but once you do it's not all that tiring. The thing is though, if you push yourself to go at a faster pace you eventually stop due to fatigue. With mental labor, you can feel fatigued until you're used to it but once you're used to thinking all the time, thinking more doesn't cause additional strain. A 20 hour week and a 100 hour week aren't significantly different because your brain is thinking anyways. That's how it has been for me atleast... people are different and all that but I'm just average at best so I assume someone who is an above average hard working sort of person would be even better than me.

In either case, what it takes to succeed is someone who can do the job and rise above and does the job better and longer if needed than everyone else because they see the job and do the job until it's done and done right. It's not the ones who see the time and leave, job done or not.

I think this is the only thing you've ever written that I've agreed with you on. The thing is I don't call that hard work. I call that doing the job you were supposed to do in the first place.

peck420
Mental fatigue is very real.

Only if you're not used to it. If you do a mentally strenuous job, isn't the responsible thing to train yourself so that it's not so difficult? You don't see out of shape physical laborers for a reason. That's called being prepared for work.

TheLegend
I also realized why I didn't get a job before - it's because I don't use social media and have no online presence (on top of having a very "eccentric and different" appearance/personality - which in the Southern U.S. is very bad). Employers nowadays want to be able to look you up on Google. I then authored a few eBooks for Kindle - hoping for monthly income while I continued with Forex. "Greatest book I ever read, brilliant, just amazing," was the typical response from everyone I gave it to. However, the problem was I never got anyone to actually write a review for it online. They were people who read it in person and told me on the phone, so my Kindle sales never took off (reviews move it up on rankings). Since I have no connections, I could not share my work either with hundreds and had no platform. I also didn't want to be unethical and pay firms to write reviews for me (MOST top sellers do that). The little money I did make from being an author went into America's Cardroom. Yes...I was so desperate that I learned Texas Hold'em and gambled online. I shoved all in on a 98% winning hand on the flop and lost it the river. I would have been a fool not to do that move, but got shanked anyway.

Social media is awful. I very begrudgingly keep an updated LinkedIn profile for job searches but that's it. No facebook, no google, no twitter, or anything else. Social media is a plague in my opinion. If that prevents me from getting jobs, then so be it. Putting something on a social media page will prevent you from getting a job too.

As for your online gambling, a 98% hand is still a 1 in 50 chance to lose it all. A 2% chance is not a 0% chance, 2% chances happen and they happen often. Making an all in move on a 2% chance to end up with nothing is quite a poor move. You should sue the college you graduated from at 19 for not giving you a proper background in statistics. Did you know that a 2% default rate (losing your money) is essentially junk bond status if you're looking at this from an investment standpoint?

Aazadan
Or maybe I've recognized that mental fatigue is bs?

It's not but whatever makes you feel elite.

Aazadan
I'm not getting into earnings, the majority of people are overpaid relative to ability, most likely that includes you but people like to believe they're special and work hard even though by definition the majority of people are not above average. Shattering your ego is just a sidetrack to the thread.

You know their is nothing you can say that would shatter or improve my ego right?
Anyone that is established to any level should respond to that the same way.
I also don't need to justify to you what I get paid or what my worth is as the industry I am in already does that and their thoughts matter to me a lot more than yours.

Aazadan
People that work hard physically deserve to be paid well, if the job required no skill the thinker would do it in addition to their own job and save the expense of hiring someone.

No where did I say people that work hard physically should not be paid. Multiple times I said they are both equally as taxing just using different skills sets.

Do I think that a guy cutting lawns every summer should get paid the same as a high end Engineer, no.
Do I think that a data entry person should get paid the same as a welder on a high rise , no.

Compensation should be commensurate with training, skill level, experience, difficulty and risk not if you are mental labor vs physical.

opethPA
It's not but whatever makes you feel elite.

It's not about feeling elite. I've done plenty of mentally strenuous tasks in my time, my favorite was taking 36 credit hours one quarter. If a typical 8 hour shift makes someone braindead I have to question if they're cut out for the job they're doing in the first place. My current job is more like 14 hours straight on a typical day, and then I play pvp strategy games where I still have to think afterwards (and get paid relative to my win rate). It's not difficult to think, as long as you're actually in the habit of doing so. Compare that with physical labor where a person can't put in an 8 hour shift of lifting heavy things all day long and then go compete in a marathon, and place highly.

You know their is nothing you can say that would shatter or improve my ego right?
Anyone that is established to any level should respond to that the same way.
I also don't need to justify to you what I get paid or what my worth is as the industry I am in already does that and their thoughts matter to me a lot more than yours.

Being established means nothing as to your ability. The world is filled with below average people that get paid a good wage. Individual performance has very little to do with financial success, though people tend to correlate doing well with personal ability, largely because the opposite point of view is crippling for the vast majority.

Aazadan
If a typical 8 hour shift makes someone braindead I have to question if they're cut out for the job they're doing in the first place.

Yet none of the scenarios I mentioned were a typical 8 hour shift.
My average work week consists of roughly 50 , more when outages occur outside normal operating times , hours a week of thinking and their are some days or nights where mental fatigue comes into it. The ability to focus past that fatigue is a skill that not everyone has.

Please tell me again though how I shouldn't be doing the job I do because mental fatigue can and will set in during extreme periods or how I am not in the habit of thinking.

Then again you play RTS/Axis and Allies/Poker/MMORPGs after working so nothing I say is going to change your mind that mental fatigue is real .

Aazadan
Being established means nothing as to your ability. The world is filled with below average people that get paid a good wage. Individual performance has very little to do with financial success, though people tend to correlate doing well with personal ability, largely because the opposite point of view is crippling for the vast majority.

The world is also full of above average people that get paid a poor wage..what is your point?

I don't agree with your statement that individual performance has very little to do with financial success. Take two people in the same industry. One person is motivated, driven, constantly maintains or progresses certifications or other metrics. The other person does the bare minimum to get by in the job. My experience over the course of my career has shown that the first person will earn , and rightly so, a higher wage which in turn is one element that comprises financial success.

What I know is that I never said either mental of physical labor is more taxing than the other and that people should be judged on a range of things not just if they sweat or if they think.

reply to post by Aazadan


Citing playing strategy games as proof that you don't mentally fatigue isn't actually proof of anything. I do that too as far as it goes, but there are no real stakes there. If you play poorly, it's only your own ego that's bruised. It's not like your entire career is on the line. Not to mention, the type of mental concentration and mental activity required is different than what you normally do and you are enjoying yourself.

This is entirely different than say ... applying your self at a high rate of speed and a high rate of concentration to edit something that's as boring as watching paint dry for hours on end and catching every tiny mistake in the text.

I feel a different level of mental fatigue, too, when I get home and can come here and chatter on this forum or go off and play games, but I'm not proofreading my thousandth "Daylight saving time starts March 9" article for the month. The tedium of what I've been doing has been relieved and I've gotten a second wind, so, I suspect have you.

Compare it to someone who is doing intense work with his legs and then switches to a task that demands more from the arms. Suddenly, he doesn't feel quite as tired as he did even though there is still some degree of fatigue present. I'm familiar with this from my days as a competing heptathlete. Going from a track event to a field event was a bit of a fatigue reliever.

opethPA
Yet none of the scenarios I mentioned were a typical 8 hour shift.
My average work week consists of roughly 50 , more when outages occur outside normal operating times , hours a week of thinking and their are some days or nights where mental fatigue comes into it. The ability to focus past that fatigue is a skill that not everyone has.

Maybe so that not everyone has it, but the same is true for other types of fatigue. Really, all any of us can go by here is our personal experience. I put in plenty of hours focusing at work, then I come home and write computer code because I would like to one day earn more money. With that writing comes plenty of other things like research. All together I'm thinking for work roughly 13 hours a day 5 days a week, and 8 hours a day the other 2 days, and sleeping another 10 (due to a medical condition I physically can't sleep less). Though when working on my own I do take occasional breaks... at work I've never taken as much as a 5 minute break in my life (including lunch), the concept just seems wrong to me.

Then again you play RTS/Axis and Allies/Poker/MMORPGs after working so nothing I say is going to change your mind that mental fatigue is real .

You missed on all 4 actually, but it's not relevant.

The world is also full of above average people that get paid a poor wage..what is your point?

So you're agreeing with me that capability doesn't translate into wages earned.

I don't agree with your statement that individual performance has very little to do with financial success. Take two people in the same industry. One person is motivated, driven, constantly maintains or progresses certifications or other metrics. The other person does the bare minimum to get by in the job. My experience over the course of my career has shown that the first person will earn , and rightly so, a higher wage which in turn is one element that comprises financial success.

My experience is the one who does the bare minimum is promoted so they can put someone competent in the job. The person who works hard is kept there because the company is getting good results out of them. Degrees earned, certifications obtained, and so on mean absolutely nothing. It's far more about getting credit for doing a job, than actually doing it.

ketsuko
This is entirely different than say ... applying your self at a high rate of speed and a high rate of concentration to edit something that's as boring as watching paint dry for hours on end and catching every tiny mistake in the text.

That's more about being detail oriented. Proofreading definitely wouldn't be the job for me, because my brain fills in the word meant in a typo. Actually reading papers I would like to do, but I tend to lose myself in whatever I'm reading rather than be able to evaluate sentence flow from word to word.

There's other types of detail oriented tasks which I'm decent at however, for example debugging computer code, which I do for hours per day, or evaluating artwork, which I do less often (but still do) though it uses the same skill set.

I feel a different level of mental fatigue, too, when I get home and can come here and chatter on this forum or go off and play games, but I'm not proofreading my thousandth "Daylight saving time starts March 9" article for the month. The tedium of what I've been doing has been relieved and I've gotten a second wind, so, I suspect have you.

No, I never feel like I've gotten a second wind. To me thinking is thinking, the subject doesn't really matter. When I have nothing to think about I'll do things like long division or multiplication in my head to keep busy, or when I'm not in a numbers mood I list out the parameters to do a task and figure out how the current system can be improved. Maybe other people don't do this? I just don't understand the concept of mental fatigue because it doesn't happen to me. Maybe that means I don't think hard enough? Or maybe I'm just conditioned to always thinking so it doesn't bother me.

Aazadan
Though when working on my own I do take occasional breaks... at work I've never taken as much as a 5 minute break in my life (including lunch), the concept just seems wrong to me.

Clearly you have a much more experienced history in the IT world then I do so you keep on coding arrays and I'll keep doing it my way.

AazadanSo you're agreeing with me that capability doesn't translate into wages earned.

Capability is one metric, of multiple things, that are used to determine wages earned.

Aazadan
My experience is the one who does the bare minimum is promoted so they can put someone competent in the job. The person who works hard is kept there because the company is getting good results out of them. Degrees earned, certifications obtained, and so on mean absolutely nothing. It's far more about getting credit for doing a job, than actually doing it.

Let me ask you , how old are you, how long have you been in a specific field and and what level have you achieved in that field ? I know in the other thread you mentioned you have 5 or was it 50 or was it 500 degrees?

I can only speak on the industry I know and in that field this statement above that you made is wrong, "Degrees earned, certifications obtained, and so on mean absolutely nothing. It's far more about getting credit for doing a job, than actually doing it."

opethPA
Let me ask you , how old are you, how long have you been in a specific field and and what level have you achieved in that field ?

30, I've had my current job for just short of 4 years at this point. So far zero raises (still get minimum wage), zero opportunity for promotion, so still on the bottom rung, if on a rung at all.

reply to post by Aazadan


The error was in my bankroll management. Starting at $50, I grew it into $200 over 3 hours and entered a 200 NL game (meaning the max buy-in was $200 with $2 BB (big blinds)).
A player should have at least $2,400 in his bank before joining a 200 NL game in order to be responsible with risks (and so he can auto buy-in to keep his stack at a constant 200 because the smaller your stack and bank, the more risks you have to take and the more you can get pushed around. When people see you can't auto-refresh your stack after each hand, they smell blood). When I got pocket aces and made a $20 bet pre-flop (before cards are on the table), then got raised to $70 (around 30% of my stack - I had 230 at this point), I accepted it. Ideally, you want to slow play pocket aces the fewer players there are to milk it. When the flop came (3 cards laid on table) I had 3 aces and it was a dry board (ace, 9, 2, no suited). The opponent had a huge stack and forced me to all-in. It was an obvious bluff because he was using my stack size against me to get a fold (common move at that lvl). I called, he had a low pocket pair vs my 3 aces but then the next 2/2 cards gave him quads.

TL;DR If I had a bigger stack, and played with him all night, he would get fished for making moves like that in zero-sum game (in the long-term). He bluffed, I called, had huge favor to win, but lost. That is a "bad beat" and it happens - but if you have the stack to keep going after it, you will win in the long run. He did end up losing chunks over the next hour that I watched the game because he relied on suckouts to win. Bankroll management was a hard lesson learned and I will play the game again when I have a stable income and will be more patient next time.

But sometimes you can even lose 3/4x in a row when you have a 85-90% chance to win each time. Sometimes it boils down to just luck. This was a famous hand:
www.youtube.com...
Luckily his stack could afford that bad luck.