The Myth That Success Is Unearned

a reply to: ChesterJohn

Ever hear of crowd funding? If people want your product or service even if it isn't in development they'll be happy to help see it there. Of course you know that work you keep saying people have to do that they have to earn it? That no one deserves to be handed something to be a success...

Anyways I don't have 10k identity theft cleaned me out... it's no big deal my life doesn't revolve around money, that should be pretty clear by now.

originally posted by: nightbringr

originally posted by: intrptr
A measure of ones worth is not determined by how much money and stuff they have.

Rather, how we behave towards others.

But that's not what this is about.

You can be the nicest person in the world, but if you cannot perform at your job, you are not worth what you are being paid.

Thats the worlds version of worth. The only thing you are taking out of here is you. How worthy are you to outlive your 'worth'?

originally posted by: luthier

originally posted by: ketsuko

originally posted by: JDeLattre89
a reply to: SprocketUK

When you allow small numbers of people to stash away billions of dollars in trust funds and suchlike it means that there is less liquid money out there in the economy for everyone to chase. At some point, people realise that carrot is getting smaller and further away and they give up reaching for it.

What would have us do? Force people to spend money they earned . . . that doesn't sound right. Not everyone wants to spend their money as they earn it, and some spend it more wisely than others.

And the ones who spend their money most wisely are the ones who tend to become wealthy. And then they become hated for their wisdom.

What a lot of people don't get is that no one really has giant vaults of hoarded wealth like Scrooge McDuck. In order to have money and a continuous flow of it, you have to use the money you have wisely.

For those of us on the bottom, we scramble to get the capital together to break into that tier where wealth can create wealth, so we never really understand this, and it's why when one of us wins the lottery, we often end up squandering that wealth and becoming miserable rather than making it.

How are there families like the Vanderbilts, Rothchilds, Rockefellors, Hiltons, Waltons, etc? Some of those people woukd have trouble spending their cut of their ancestors money.

Again, they are wealthy no doubt.

But there is a difference between wealth and rich.

Wealth is tangible assets. Rich is liquid assets.

You could call my parents wealthy. They have a house and land, but they are by no means rich. They live on fixed income.

And quite frankly, they've (the families you list) been wise with what they have in the sense that they've used it to continue creating more instead of wasting it as riches.

You can sneer at them and hate them for it all you want, but old money families don't become that way by hoarding their wealth and riches. They use it wisely. You may not like how they use it; I may not like they use it. But the fact is that they know how to use their wealth to create more.

a reply to: ChesterJohn

That is one of the reasons I believe that corporations should fund grants instead of the Government.

You think that corporation should not pay taxes? Do the corporations also get to decide what projects and grants they want to fund?

Our government is supposed to "for the people, by the people", while corporations are for profits that line the pockets of their stockholders.

Who is going to pay for the roads and the civil infrastructure that these corporations and their employees, as well as their customers, rely on? Who is going to ensure the safety of their product and their employee's working conditions?

a reply to: windword

Who is going to pay for the roads and the civil infrastructure that these corporations and their employees, as well as their customers, rely on? Who is going to ensure the safety of their product and their employee's working conditions?

Why exactly should a corporation pay a higher rate for those than their employees who also use their amenities?

The OP is standard libertarian tripe that makes it sound like either ALL pay is unearned or ALL pay is earned. Almost all proponents of income redistribution aren't suggesting that an owner of a successful company live the same life as a garbage man in terms of wealth.

For instance, the Bernie Sanders movement and popularity was not communism, it was democratic socialism, do not construct a straw man out of the argument. It follows high taxes on certain income levels like Nordic countries currently have, and like the USA used to have from the 1940s to the 1980s. People in the USA who created successful businesses in the USA during those decades enjoyed greater wealth than the average person.

BUT, chances are you didn't do it alone. Maybe you did, great, but many are like Donald Trump who got small loans of a million dollars in order to create their wealth.

The irony is that income redistribution actually fosters competition and creates a freer marketplace.

a reply to: ketsuko

Ok. True but it doesnt matter if they have american money in safes. That isnt how it works as you prob know most banks have shareholders and holdings.

Lets take the Rothschild's do you know why they took us off the gold standard?

a reply to: ketsuko

Who said anything about tax rates? The OP said that he didn't think that corporations should pay taxes. He thinks that they should fund grants. Can you address the questions I brought up regarding that issue?

a reply to: ketsuko

Money and wealth are tools, same as an axe, gun, or bible.

You can use an axe to collect firewood, you can use a gun to hunt dinner, you can use a bible to spread peace and love.

You can also use an axe and gun to commit murder or the bible to spread hate and bigotry.

Just because one has acquired a tool does not give them the right to do whatever they want with it.

So when people who've acquired massive wealth use it to spread poverty and famine, to benefit themselves, and cause untold suffering I'm not going to give them a pass simply because they're frugal.

a reply to: windword

Well lowering corperate taxes is pretty important for growth.

a reply to: Puppylove

You are correct in that they are tools.

But trying to pass laws to force people to behave with their tools as you think they should is futile.

Laws are made to protect others from violating our rights. Sometimes, someone does a thing with their tool that violates our rights. A man with an axe can use that axe to commit murder thus violating our right to life. Someone with wealth can use that wealth to purchase a slave violating the right to liberty.

But in the first case, the law is against committing murder - violating the right to life.
And in the second case, the law is against slavery - violating ones right to liberty.

In neither case do we make laws against the tools used - money and the axe - as those tools can also be used for very good purposes or useful purposes both for their owners and for the larger society. And even if the specific owners of those tools aren't currently doing that, others with those tools most certainly are and any laws you try to write infringing on the rights to those tools will impede what others are doing for them and those goods to society.

a reply to: luthier

Some pay zero and some pay as little as a nickle can't get much lower. Now if you mean small business? They are the ones knocking it out tax wise holding up these large conglomerate multi-billion dollar profit quarters that pay zero or a nickle.

Yup that's fair.

a reply to: ketsuko

You make the laws about how the tool can be used and for what purposes and when. Clearly as things stand there's a whole lot of ways wealth are being used that are outright malevolent.

People are using money in ways that makes the crimes of the most successful axe murderer pale in comparison. I think we need to start looking into finding ways to curtail those uses of wealth, don't you?

I'm pro second amendment, I am however anti-murder.

What I don't get are all these people that are pro-wealth but not anti-corruption.

I agree wealth is fine, as long as it's not being used to commit more atrocities than the world greatest serial killer.

a reply to: ketsuko

You can make laws that prevent individuals from buying entire resource shares of industries with their wealth if its in your country or you can put tariffs on people who do it and manipulate the market that way.

originally posted by: intrptr

originally posted by: nightbringr

originally posted by: intrptr
A measure of ones worth is not determined by how much money and stuff they have.

Rather, how we behave towards others.

But that's not what this is about.

You can be the nicest person in the world, but if you cannot perform at your job, you are not worth what you are being paid.

Thats the worlds version of worth. The only thing you are taking out of here is you. How worthy are you to outlive your 'worth'?

If you own a business, you don't hire a 'nice guy' to do your accounting if you need an accountant. You hire an accountant.

Business owners need to feed their families too.

a reply to: Puppylove

No, because like your right to own a firearm, your wealth is your property, and another fundamental, unalienable right we all have is to our property. Your firearm is part of your property and thus part of your wealth.

We do have laws against corruption. Why do you think pay-for-play and other practices are illegal?

Again, stop looking at the tool as the malevolent entity. It is the person who creates the malevolence, just like with murder. Money is no different than the gun.

a reply to: BigBrotherDarkness

This isnt true by any means and is propaganda.

Yes small business suffers. But things like an S corp. and llc's have helped that a little.

Nobody pays zero. They pay millions to accountanting to disperse the mobey to avoid taxes.

Are system is so complex is turns a lot of business away from opening in the US.

There is plenty of cronyism but you cant just make up this evil corperation stereotype. There are plenty that are holding up towns as well.

There is a nice trend of younger ceo s and owners willingly dispersing profit better. Which is a better solution than one of the most innefective corrupt govs trying to intervene.

All men are not created equal. They should receive equal treatment under the law however.

That's the core of the issue. We're fed a lie that everything should be fair.
Some animals are born to lions and some are born to zebras.

Yep, it sucks but what can ya do?
You can work harder than the lion to achieve the same level of success or you can have a cry and stay where you are.

a reply to: luthier

Part of the problem is the cronyist pay for play that keeps the biggest insulated from competition from the lower tiers.

Again, this is not so much a function of wealth, but a function of corruption of process between government and business. It doesn't matter so much how it goes started or where, but by now, it is an entrenched practice that is understood. If you want to grow your business beyond a certain level, you have to lobby and play that game.

Heck, my husband has lobbying on his resume.

But this isn't an "evil" corporation thing as much as it is the way things are now. You don't have to be an "evil" corporation, just one looking to grow and expand. So I guess you can put this in the necessary evil category. At some point, this became a necessary game, and it's as much government's fault as it is anything else.

The system now needs to be decoupled from both sides in order for there to ever be a real fix.

a reply to: luthier

Well lowering corperate taxes is pretty important for growth.

That's not what the OP called for.