WISDOMfromPO-MOFebruary 04, 2018 at 05:00#1496290 likes
The American Dream was bought with credit. It was bought with resources borrowed (or taken) from ecosystems, non-renewable energy, indigenous peoples, etc., not just money borrowed from banks. This borrowing was wreckless. A lot of consumption more than investing. Externalities not included in the prices of that consumption.
Like with any debt, eventually you pay one way or another. We are massively in debt.
Reply to René Descartes "The American Dream" isn't very old. Here is a Google Ngram chart that shows the history of the expression in print:
See? 1930, the beginning of the worst crisis in capitalism and writers started talking about this American Dream.
Unfortunately I do not have a chart that reveals whether the American Dream has succeeded, failed, or never existed in the first place. We do have history, however, and it is clear that capitalism was developed in England and was exported to the colonies. I can't say whether it was the British Empire or the United States that most fulfilled capitalism's potential. Let's call it a draw. And let's not forget Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. Capitalism is alive and well all over, for good or for ill.
Capitalism = "The American Dream"? Maybe? Probably? Obviously? I don't know.
The American Dream was bought with credit. It was bought with resources borrowed (or taken) from ecosystems, non-renewable energy, indigenous peoples, etc., not just money borrowed from banks. This borrowing was wreckless. A lot of consumption more than investing. Externalities not included in the prices of that consumption.
I think you will find that this is a pattern which is far older than the United States. There is no way for any organism to exist without using resources from ecosystems. As for the rest, sure: non-renewable energy, seizure of indigenous resources through genocide, reckless, costs externalized, etc. All true.
Capitalism is not sustainable--anywhere. To the extent that capitalism = the American Dream, then neither is sustainable.
This next comments will seem like they are totally off-topic, but it actually are not:
I've been reading the Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg worked for the RAND Corporation in the 1950s and '60s as a national defense analyst and strategist. He became well acquainted with American nuclear war strategies at the time. He was appalled to discover that the US had a first-strike strategy; Command and Control was sloppy at best; authority to launch nuclear weapons was delegated by Eisenhower and subsequently followed by several presidents; the plan was all out attack on both the Soviet Union and China -- regardless of whether China was involved in whatever threat the USSR was thought to pose. The plan called for the destruction of every significant city in the USSR and China.
Kennedy wanted to know what the human cost would be -- assuming that all of our bombs reached their targets and no weapons were launched from the USSR. The military had a ready answer: around 700 million in Europe and Asia. The military planners, however, had not included deaths from fire storms, which they should have because they knew all about firestorms from Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. A quite reasonable estimation of total deaths would be closer to 1 billion -- then 1/3 of the world's population.
The assumption was that the USA would survive the fallout from this massive attack with little or no cost. At the time, the concept of nuclear winter had not been developed. Ellsberg notes that the US still has enough missiles (about 400) and nuclear-armed submarines to bring about nuclear winter, even if we were the only ones to fire off our atomic weapons--because of the fire storms boosting massive tonnage of soot into the high atmosphere where it would remain for years--blocking a lot of sunlight and chilling the planet significantly -- causing a massive kill off of many species, including humans.
One might hope that America and the American military are not one and the same thing. At the very least, the ideas of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism are ticking away in their heads, and in the heads of a lot of civilians too.
René DescartesFebruary 04, 2018 at 06:56#1496390 likes
Reply to René Descartes I won't give you another chart, but note that some material has been added to the post where the chart was.
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg provides detail about how the earliest colonies were riven by deliberate deep class divides, and not just the divide between free and slave. There were wealthy white elites imported directly from England; what would later be called 'bourgeois whites' (businessmen, entrepreneurs, speculators); white farmers (small landowners), and then riff raff -- working people, in other words. So 4 classes. Working people were kept at the bottom of the class structure--not just relatively poor, but absolutely poor. Not until "disruptive" industrialism got underway, and created more routes to advancement, were working people able to make some advances -- not into the classes above them, but at least greater financial well-being within their own class of workers.
The westward movement of Europeans (led, spurred and facilitated by land speculators, railroads, etc.) created more opportunities for working people to get a slightly larger piece of their smaller share of the pie, but westward movement also involved a lot of financial and mortal risk for 'pioneers'. In the late 19th century the workers, still the bottom class relatively and absolutely, began to agitate against long work weeks, long days, unsafe conditions, low pay, and so forth by organizing unions. The resistance from the upper classes was fierce, and has remained fierce to the present. Which, by the way, is why the union movement is so weak in the United States. As the saying goes, the labor movement didn't get sick and die, it was murdered.
So here we are, 21st century; working people are as much at the bottom as ever, with no place to go. The small entrepreneurs, bourgeoisie, rich, and super rich are all still there too, richer and stronger than ever.
TReply to René Descartes Capitalism hasn't failed, actually. It has succeeded admirably. Whether it will continue to succeed forever is a foolish question, of course. Who the hell knows. That some people have done so poorly under capitalism isn't a sign of failure, it's a sign of capitalist control.
Take black people, for instance. Why are so many black people poor? Poorly educated? Jobless? Sickly? It's not an accident. A central cause of black poverty today is the history of the Federal Housing Administration which, between 1930 and 1980, deliberately, competently, and thoroughly prevented black people from benefitting from the federal housing programs, the post WWII housing boom, and more recent advances in housing value. White people, on the other hand -- the ones who were well enough employed in the metropolitan areas of the country in 1946 to benefit, received a huge financial boost by being let into good, newly built mass housing which would hold its value and appreciate over the decades, up to the present. At least two generations of whites, numbering in the millions, benefitted from FHA programs. Not blacks. They were explicitly excluded from the programs. This is all described and documented in an excellent book, THE COLOR OF LAW by Richard Rothstein, 2017.
Education is largely organized around housing, and poor people tend to live together in cheaper, poorer or public housing. Poverty and less education isn't a good combination and when opportunities are closed off, people can't readily bootstrap their way up. They are stuck. At the bottom.
Now, not all white people benefitted from the FHA program. Poor whites, rural whites, and low paid whites, or whites with large families (which tended to keep them poorer) were not able to afford these programs, or they weren't available in their part of the country. That's maybe slightly less true now than in the past, but not by much.
Reply to Bitter Crank If things are so bad, why are 62% of American billionaires self-made? Clearly the evidence shows that most of the new rich were much poorer people at one point.
Reply to Agustino there are 540 plunderers and extortionists worth more than s billion dollars--$2.399 trillion in all--in the United States. Whether they were self made, crawled out of a sewer, or were suckled on a 24 caret gold teat is of no concern to me. There is no reason for us proles to stare in wonder, jaws agape, at Mark Zuckerberg or Andrew Carnegie.
If you are awestruck by their net worth, and you think that Jesus approves, then drool on at the wonder of their wealth.
there are 540 plunderers and extortionists worth more than s billion dollars--$2.399 trillion in all--in the United States. Whether they were self made, crawled out of a sewer, or were suckled on a 24 caret gold teat is of no concern to me. There is no reason for us proles to stare in wonder, jaws agape, at Mark Zuckerberg or Andrew Carnegie.
Working people were kept at the bottom of the class structure--not just relatively poor, but absolutely poor. Not until "disruptive" industrialism got underway, and created more routes to advancement, were working people able to make some advances -- not into the classes above them, but at least greater financial well-being within their own class of workers.
The resistance from the upper classes was fierce, and has remained fierce to the present.
These statements are false, and categorically so if it's possible for working class people to become rich themselves. The wealthy are not hoarding anything - if they were, then we would see that most fortunes out there were inherited, not self-made.
But the fact remains, that even though the bottom %s own less of the pie percentage-wise, the pie is now exponentially bigger, so that smaller % is, in real terms, a bigger portion than ever before.
I see no problem with 1% owning even 99% of the wealth, so long as the other 99% have what they need to survive, take care of health, education, food, shelter, and the necessities.
René DescartesFebruary 04, 2018 at 09:49#1496870 likes
It promises equal opportunities but those are lies which are concealed by a dream of a better future.
You do have equal opportunities, if you start a business and do the things that you should be doing if you are interested in becoming wealthy. You won't become wealthy just by working for someone else :s - it's silly to expect that to happen in the first place.
If things are so bad, why are 62% of American billionaires self-made? Clearly the evidence shows that most of the new rich were much poorer people at one point.
35% of the Forbes 400 list were from lower class backgrounds. 95% of the country are in that category. A completely free journey uninfluenced by prior wealth we would expect to result in a similar distribution. 95% of billionaires should be self made if the American dream is working. In fact only 35% are. You're a businessman, you tell me if a strategy that is supposed to achieve 95%, but actually only manages 35% is usually classed as 'working'.
Would you also like to know how many African Americans made that list... 1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_billionaires
12, with Nigeria producing what looks like a disproportionate number. Notice how all other black billionaires are virtually from the US. So there's more than 1 African American billionaire on Forbes.
The relatively low numbers are not surprising granted the discrimination that existed previously against black people in the US. However, notice how the numbers of black billionaires are growing. In the 90s, those numbers were 0, were at 12 now.
Simple statistics, but if you want me to spell it out for you...
The American dream says that if you want to get rich all you have to do is work hard.
People who are born rich are not somehow genetically predisposed to want to be rich, nor are they any more likely to be harder workers.
Therefore that subset of the population who want to be rich (want it enough to work hard to get it) should reflect the socioeconomic make-up of the whole population.
The subset of the population who actually are rich does not reflect the socioeconomic make-up of the whole population (not even close).
Therefore, statistically, the two subsets are unrelated. Ergo being in the subset 'people who want to be rich and are willing to work hard to achieve it' does not have any statistically significant relationship to being in the group 'people who actually are rich'.
I see no problem with 1% owning even 99% of the wealth, so long as the other 99% have what they need to survive, take care of health, education, food, shelter, and the necessities.
Do you think that hypothetical scenario would be compatible with social stability? I think it would instead lead to widespread resentment of that 1%, even if the basic needs of the other 99% were met, and this would consequently increase the likelihood of the breakdown of democracy.
I just don't see how we can isolate economic considerations from larger social, cultural, and political ones.
In my ideal (and admittedly unrealistic) world we would collectively and freely choose to simplify and re-prioritize our lives around values less enamored with material prosperity, and less beholden to narrow definitions of "success."
I would not want to force my views on others, however, and would much rather live in this debased capitalist world than one in which communist aims and values were imposed on the populace by some class of intellectual elites.
I guess I'm a sort of culturally conservative hippie--combining aspects of libertarianism, communitarianism, environmentalism, and anti-hyper-consumerism--if such a thing isn't a complete contradiction.
Therefore, statistically, the two subsets are unrelated. Ergo being in the subset 'people who want to be rich and are willing to work hard to achieve it' does not have any statistically significant relationship to being in the group 'people who actually are rich'.
Sure, because just working hard is not enough to get rich. You must also work smart.
It also matters what you mean by "getting rich". A lot of people can probably get to $1-10million dollars if that's really their goal and they keep trying to get there.
To get to billionaire level though is a lot more difficult, and in large parts also depends on favourable circumstances. In other words, you can't really sell just about anything to get to billionaire levels. To become a millionaire, you just have to be a good marketer, you don't necessarily need a great product - like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock
To become a billionaire, either political connections or very valuable products/services combined with amazing marketing.
I think it would instead lead to widespread resentment of that 1%, even if the basic needs of the other 99% were met, and this would consequently increase the likelihood of the breakdown of democracy.
Yes, I think unfortunately that would be the case, because the 99% are barbarians.
You genuinely don't understand the statistics do you. The failure of one subset to match the socioeconomic distribution of the population as a whole means that that subset must be made up from some criteria not available to the population as a whole on the basis of their socioeconomic status.
Unless you're suggesting that poor people are generally not 'good marketers' or 'smart' then the disparity between the groups has still not been explained.
ArguingWAristotleTiffFebruary 04, 2018 at 14:39#1497330 likes
Who said "The American Dream" is based upon the value of a form of currency?
No, not false. Maybe it is true in the post-socialist wonderland where you live, that every schoolboy becomes rich by a frenzy of hard labor and inspiration IF he wants to. It isn't true in the United States.
You are right that billionaires are made, not born. You are wrong that the doors to fabulous wealth are wide open. There are certain entry level requirements that working people (most of the population) lack: the habits of middle class parents; a solid education starting in primary school and ending in one of the top ranked universities; contacts among successful, wealthy people; access to investment capital, and so on.
You are wrong about what 99% of the population sharing 1% of the wealth means: an exceedingly small share of a comparatively tiny pie. For many Americans it doesn't mean the abject poverty of the sort that the poorest decile experience; it doesn't mean the deprivation of the poorest third, even. But for even the middle 4 deciles of the 99%, it means poorer housing, less education, inadequate welfare, poorer outcomes all round. Only for the 2 richest deciles of the 99% is there better education, secure finances, good healthcare, adequately funded retirement, regular travel, and so forth.
You are wrong about the ferocity with which the labor movement has been suppressed. The suppression of organized labor has had a profound effect on American life, especially in the last 50 years. In an earlier period, labor was suppressed with goon squads and clubs. These days it is done through law and propaganda, backed up by the power of the state which has proven more effective.
You are probably not aware that wealthy conservatives have resented the existence of Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Medicare (for the retired and disabled), Medicaid (for the indigent), welfare programs, etc. and have periodically sought to undo these programs ever since they were started, in some cases, 88 years ago.
The American dream says that if you want to get rich all you have to do is work hard.
No it doesn't. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
The American dream says that success is achieved through hard work. It doesn't say everyone will be rich or even expect to be rich. It is the reason immigrants flock to the US despite leaving everything known and familiar to a nation not entirely welcoming them.
The opportunity is in the US, often unrecognized by those borne into it who are more interested in complaining than appreciating the sea of wealth and opportunity they are truly blessed to be swimming in.
Reply to ArguingWAristotleTiff Presumably the American Dream is about more than the amount of lucre one has accumulated. Isn't it also about the freedom to think, speak, and act politically; to go anywhere in the country without permission; to enjoy the great outdoors without running into too many fences with NO TRESPASSING signs; to pursue the kind of life one wants to pursue, or at least try; free libraries, health, education, and welfare for all; a wide assortment of religious, social, and political views not just tolerated but expected... ???
Reply to Pseudonym It's the achievement of your goals generally, which would include some degree of wealth, but it would more likely include security, freedom, upward mobility, and greater happiness generally. I'd imagine it's subjective and variable from person to person. If you're currently living the life you desire (more or less), I'd call you successful, even if not wealthy.
BuxtebuddhaFebruary 04, 2018 at 15:55#1497490 likes
You are right that billionaires are made, not born. You are wrong that the doors to fabulous wealth are wide open. There are certain entry level requirements that working people (most of the population) lack: the habits of middle class parents; a solid education starting in primary school and ending in one of the top ranked universities; contacts among successful, wealthy people; access to investment capital, and so on.
Common BC, we both know that those aren't the skills needed to become a billionaire. We both know that most often people become billionaires by starting a business and making lots of sales. Habits of middle-class parents aren't needed; neither is an education if by that you mean what you get in school (or 'top universities' for that matter). 33% of all billionaires are dropouts. Many of the rich people I've met are quite uneducated.
Contacts amongst the wealthy - most self-made billionaires don't have this at the start, over time, they do get it. Access to capital? Irrelevant. If you make sales, you can get capital. In fact, if you make sales and are doing great in that chapter, you can get whatsoever you need - all other problems take care of themselves.
So that's the difficult part. Making sales. Or, alternatively, having the right political connections, and getting those yummy state contracts where they pay x10 market price >:) >:O
It's the achievement of your goals generally, which would include some degree of wealth, but it would more likely include security, freedom, upward mobility, and greater happiness generally. I'd imagine it's subjective and variable from person to person. If you're currently living the life you desire (more or less), I'd call you successful, even if not wealthy.
So if your goal was to be a CEO of your own company perhaps (where as a woman you have about half the chance a man has), or maybe you just want the fresh outdoor life of a rancher (where as an Black or African American you have one tenth the opportunity a white person has). Maybe science is your thing (where a Black or African American has half the opportunity a white man has), although you're all right if cleaning is your thing because Hispanics and Latinos are four times more likely to remain in these professions, not sure I know anyone whose dream it is to be a cleaner though, but it takes all sorts.
200 years and the American dream has been through periods of one of the biggest racial genocides in human history, racial segregation, imprisoning people for their political opinions, breaking the Geneva convention, presided over a steady increase in wealth disparity and suicide is still one of the the leading causes of death for most age groups.
If you're trying to build a case for it being some kind of saviour because it's prepared to employ low grade workers at rates marginally above the rates their own countries can afford (largely as a result of Western trading policy in the first place), then I'm afraid it's just not a 'dream' I can really get behind.
I think its origin can be traced back to the Bill of Rights , with its Utopian aspiration:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Here is quote from "The Epic of America" which Truslow wrote in 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression
“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”
This 'Dream' has evolved over the years. I think R Reagan and M Thatcher had a lot to do with a paradigm shift in the West where individual citizens "... recognized by others for what are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" became individual consumers, who's success became measured by consumption. Where the more you consume, the more successful you are, the better consumer, hence citizen you are.
It's a difficult subject with a lot of different view points, I think it is and always has been intimately tied up with immigration, why people want(ed) to come to America in the first place. I have a letter written by a family member a long time ago about my great grandparents who where farmers living in Italy around 1860. It indicates that they were planning to come to the United States because they could not compete with the cheap produce being imported into Italy from the US at the time, all they saw was the freedom and opportunity the US appeared to offer.
Granted. When the business is making a product or delivering a service, there follows the necessity of selling it, if you are going to succeed, whatever it is that you have to sell. If no one wants to buy what you are offering, then you're not going to succeed (at least through honest means). Most businesses fail because either no one likes what the company offers, the business doesn't find its customers, it's out-competed, or the Russian mafia blows up the store, office, warehouse, lab, what have you.
If lots of people like what you have to sell and buy it every now and then, you will do reasonably well, barring other business mistakes, which lay in wait. Like expanding too fast, running out of inventory, not changing the style of the clothes you make fast enough to keep up with style changes, etc. Or bad luck -- like an outbreak of food poisoning from your kitchen.
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to sell" they said sarcastically.
Reply to Pseudonym It's just a boring routine, arguing about whether the disparity among various races is caused by government imposed limitations, cultural problems within certain groups, de facto racism, or even genetics. After that discussion, which will entail you vomiting your hyperbolic claims of injustice, we'll be left with the remaining unaddressed question (i.e. the actual OP) of whether success can still be acheived even though some people will have less success than others. A Hispanic immigrant who cleans homes but who gets her child through college has likely lived her American Dream despite all the injustice, inequity, struggle and whatnot. In fact, I'd argue that her success is what makes America great. All of this is to say that I don't find your concerns about class injustice relevant to the topic at hand and your attempt to interject it here is similar to your injection of it in a prior post where the OP concerned the best car to buy.
I get it. You think certain groups are unfairly disadvantaged. I don't need to keep hearing it. It makes me yawn.
I don't give a fuck if it makes you yawn. I'm not here for your entertainment.
It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that unless the American system is 100% successful in repressing the opportunities of migrants and minorities then it's fulfilling its dream. Of course some things can be achieved by migrants in America. It's possible to build a relatively successful business in Zimbabwe, does that mean the Zimbabwean dream is working?
Name me a single country in the world where it is literally impossible, no matter how much hard work and injenuity a person puts in, for them to achieve some minor measure of success (a slightly better paid job, some improvement in living standards). I'd be surprised if you could come up with more than a handful of the worst dictatorships on the planet.
So America offers immigrants a slightly better deal than they get in the countries that Western trading policies trashed in the first place. Well done them.
So America offers immigrants a slightly better deal than they get in the countries that Western trading policies trashed in the first place. Well done them.
America remains the country where immigrants want to come for a better life, despite very clear declarations they are unwelcome, and they do in fact find great success here. If they didn't, they'd stay home.
Political and class connections has been shown to be a part of gaining access to capital, expertise.
Yes, the political aspect is definitely true. Class connections? Not really. In the more corrupt places, it is access to the relevant decision makers. Who knows how you get that? Maybe you went to school with them - several of Putin's friends are now billionaires for example.
Most businesses fail because either no one likes what the company offers, the business doesn't find its customers, it's out-competed, or the Russian mafia blows up the store, office, warehouse, lab, what have you.
Or bad luck -- like an outbreak of food poisoning from your kitchen.
Is that bad luck, or was it maybe planned by someone? >:)
Regardless, it seems that the fact remains that it is possible to go from working class to super-wealthy provided that you have a good product, and you know how to sell it, and no one stops you through force, ill health, etc.
America remains the country where immigrants want to come for a better life, despite very clear declarations they are unwelcome, and they do in fact find great success here. If they didn't, they'd stay home.
Immigrants want to leave the countries they are in because Western trading policies and colonialism have trashed their economies. Did you read the example Cavacava gave of the Italians forced out of their country by cheap imports?
America then offers them marginally higher living standards, because it needs the cheap labour to keep making the cheap imports that prevent other countries from developing their own economies.
I don't see what's so impressive about that. If a luxury cruise liner drags a few people off the shipwreck they just caused so they can employ them as cleaners, that would be your idea of a noble dream would it?
Regardless, it seems that the fact remains that it is possible to go from working class to super-wealthy provided that you have a good product, and you know how to sell it
I will grant that it is possible for a working class person with a very bright idea and drive to become a billionaire, and out of 7.3 billion people, a minuscule--no, microscopic number, less than 500, are able to do that. But then, so what? 500 out of 7 billion is hardly a groundswell of opportunity.
Any native-born American can become president of the United States, too. And how likely is that? Over the next 40 years, no more than 10 people can become president, and only 5 if they all serve two terms.
The rare exception to the rule doesn't collapse the rule, it just means that there are rare exceptions. If a black man becomes POTUS, or a woman, this means nothing for the chances of any given black person or woman becoming president.
What matters is if 250 million working class people in the United States can gain a reasonable share of the enormous amount of wealth they produce (labor creates all wealth) and can direct that wealth into uses which bring about a sustainable future. The rich and super rich have not done that. In deed, the rich and the super rich are the ones who have arranged for an unsustainable future for everybody.
I think you will find that this is a pattern which is far older than the United States. There is no way for any organism to exist without using resources from ecosystems.
But how many organisms do this?: 1.) Take from their environment far more than they need; 2.) Justify this by saying that it is an investment that will lead to a net gain down the road; 3.) Ignoring the destruction the whole process has left, take even more of what they don't really need; 4.) Repeat 1.)-4.).
I was responding only to the idea of "resources borrowed (or taken) from ecosystems". That's the basis of life. Of course, taking way too much, returning nothing, and wrecking the ecosystem is extremely stupid, and that's a specialty of our species. We do it because we can, and because we are unable to think. plan, and act for the long terms (beyond maybe 25 years or so). Sometimes we aren't able to think beyond the next 15 minutes.
Reply to JJJJS I recollect that the Germans had a dream a few years back. Their dream didn't turn out well either. Maybe nations should just avoid dreaming.
René DescartesFebruary 05, 2018 at 04:52#1499210 likes
I will grant that it is possible for a working class person with a very bright idea and drive to become a billionaire, and out of 7.3 billion people, a minuscule--no, microscopic number, less than 500, are able to do that. But then, so what? 500 out of 7 billion is hardly a groundswell of opportunity.
Not a fair comparison. ~1700 or so, not 500. And those are only official numbers - I have no doubt that there may be a lot of other very rich people who don't appear on those lists. And sure, becoming a billionaire is super difficult. But pretty much everyone could make $1-10 million over their lifetime if this was their goal.
What matters is if 250 million working class people in the United States can gain a reasonable share of the enormous amount of wealth they produce (labor creates all wealth) and can direct that wealth into uses which bring about a sustainable future.
Well yeah, I obviously agree about the sustainable future part. But I don't think that's best achieved by giving 250 million working class people control over wealth. I don't know what makes you think that the 250 million would be good administrators of that wealth.
ArguingWAristotleTiffFebruary 05, 2018 at 11:31#1500000 likes
Presumably the American Dream is about more than the amount of lucre one has accumulated. Isn't it also about the freedom to think, speak, and act politically; to go anywhere in the country without permission; to enjoy the great outdoors without running into too many fences with NO TRESPASSING signs; to pursue the kind of life one wants to pursue, or at least try; free libraries, health, education, and welfare for all; a wide assortment of religious, social, and political views not just tolerated but expected... ???
Maybe all that is utopian.
Utopian? Maybe. But I often challenge those who believe in God to show me evidence and when it comes down to it, neither of us knows yet. But until we know, many believe living a life believing in God is not a bad way to live, which is a fair argument.
The same goes for living The American Dream. All America promises is the right to PURSUE happiness, however that happiness is for us to define not others. I find that placing my degree of happiness on any one thing, such as money, is counter productive to my overall happiness in life. Rather I try to live by the idea that if you do what you love and you do it honestly, the rest will follow. So far so good but as with all of life it has it's little up's and downs.
René DescartesFebruary 05, 2018 at 19:51#1501570 likes
Because that is the only way to think of this problem. There is only a limited amount of wealth, not everyone can be a billionaire even though the majority may want to and may work harder than those who are billionaires, so I'd be interested to know in which other ways you might think of this problem that does not involve chance.
Do you consider that one becomes a billionaire by chance?
They are the ones who produce that wealth, so I think more than anyone they would know how to use the wealth they produced through work and labour.
This depends. They do not produce that wealth alone but when put in certain systems that are not of their own making. Without those systems, they don't produce wealth, that's why they need the systems - otherwise they'd be working on their own.
There is also the problem that the one who produces the wealth may not know how to administrate it. It doesn't follow all by itself from the fact that one produces wealth, that thereby one knows how to administrate it and use it wisely. All that results from the former, is that the respective person is good at producing wealth.
I know many people who have worked hard all their lives and not even reached such amounts that you talk about.
Working hard is not sufficient. I can work hard in digging ditches all my life - I can break my back, and ruin my health doing it, but I probably won't get rich.
I don't see why you follow the principle that hard work necessarily means big results. If you work stupidly - like trying to cut a tree with a hammer - then you may work super hard and achieve almost nothing. And no, I don't think we should reward people for working stupidly.
René DescartesFebruary 05, 2018 at 20:15#1501630 likes
Those jobs are far more necessary in society than being a CEO of something like Facebook. Yet they seem to be paid the least in all society for doing some of the most difficult jobs.
Last I heard, Zuckerberg's salary as Facebook's CEO was $1 :P
So you're saying that wealth that you produce should be given to someone else who has not worked at all for that wealth so that they can 'administrate it'.
No, I just pointed out that being a good wealth-producer isn't the same as being a good wealth manager. Bill Gates doesn't administrate his own wealth for example - he pays others to do it, others who are more knowledgeable than he is at doing that.
But the entire American dream states if you work hard enough all your life will achieve success and wealth, even if you start out with nothing you will eventually achieve wealth so by your logic, the American dream is a lie.
Sure, I don't care about the "American dream" or any such notions. I care about the reality. Hard work is not enough to be rich. I generally dislike people who always complain about how hard they work anyway.
Also, someone has to dig those trenches, someone has to clean the streets, someone has to go into the mines: when will they receive a fair share of the wealth they work for. Imagine if there was no one to do those jobs, will the rich feel stupid then for not paying them adequately.
This is a social phenomenon. People don't want to do those jobs anymore in developed countries. It's not about the money, for many of those jobs there is a labor shortage, even if some of them are even well-paid. The reason for that is that these people don't have a good social standing, they may be affected by poorer health, less time for family, etc. So if you think that increasing the pay of those jobs to stupendous amounts will solve the problem, you should think again.
That's why all the immigrants end up getting those jobs - no one else wants them!
Like take an American with a high-school education - do you imagine they'll go to sweeping the streets? :s Suppose that the pay to be - say - a store clerk is $1000/month, and the pay to sweep the streets is $1500/month - what will they choose? The store clerk, of course! I would do the same myself.
René DescartesFebruary 05, 2018 at 23:43#1502470 likes
Reply to Agustino
Sweeping the streets can often be a city government job in the United States which generally come with decent benefits like partially subsidized health care premiums, paid time off programs, retirement plans with company match money and even pension programs which is far less common nowadays in the private sector but quite valuable. A job preference for a typical American be it clerical, blue collar or something else would depend on that individual's real life context.
Reply to René Descartes " It is fairly obvious to say that the great American Dream, with all it's hopes and aspirations has failed."
I don't think that dreams can fail, rather we wake up or move on to another dream. The major turning point in recent history I think was circa the 1960's from the sputnik to the man on the moon, the resistance the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the end of segregation, the martyrs, and of course Las Vegas. The new dream of hope, change, peace, love and drugs could not last long.
Vegas: how a dead place out in middle of the desert became an earth bound shooting star, a facet of the America dream which begat a surreal landscape designed by marketing people with little regard for history or anything else. 42 million annual visitors fantasize in its blare and neon glare. Vegas creates and destroys continually, mimicking the national/international whims of its designers.
What is your definition of social status and can you give an example as well please.
How well you're seen by others. For example, the profession of lawyer is typically well-regarded - so even if a lawyer makes less money than someone working in IT, they will have higher status - people will give them more importance.
René DescartesFebruary 06, 2018 at 09:09#1504640 likes
Don't you think it is the fact that in our current society lawyers make more money than people in IT that they have a higher social status?
No, they don't make more money in all societies (at least not on average - top lawyers do generally make more than top people in IT pretty much everywhere).
René DescartesFebruary 06, 2018 at 09:18#1504680 likes
Reply to René Descartes Sure, but those earnings are reversed in third-world countries usually, where good IT developers earn more than lawyers on average (again, not more than top lawyers). And still, lawyers are given higher social status. These are social phenomena - the peasant from the countryside in third world countries has no clue what someone in IT does - but they do know what a lawyer does. It's an older profession and has accrued more respect over time.
Anyway, I'm sure social status does play a role but I still maintain that money is the key driver and holds more importance than status in the American dream.
For some, money is indeed more important.
René DescartesFebruary 06, 2018 at 09:39#1504810 likes
Reply to René Descartes
Capitalism is the American nightmare, which has crushed all the dreams of ordinary Americans. It's just a pity they don't know it.
To maintain the so-called American Dream requires an intercessionry government bound to the values of that dream, and capable of creating the environment where the dream can be realised: NOT a government in the pockets of big money and corporate interests who conspire to place the burdens of the maintenance of that society on the people and away from themselves, even though they reap most of the rewards.
Comments (71)
Like with any debt, eventually you pay one way or another. We are massively in debt.
The American Dream was not sustainable.
See? 1930, the beginning of the worst crisis in capitalism and writers started talking about this American Dream.
Unfortunately I do not have a chart that reveals whether the American Dream has succeeded, failed, or never existed in the first place. We do have history, however, and it is clear that capitalism was developed in England and was exported to the colonies. I can't say whether it was the British Empire or the United States that most fulfilled capitalism's potential. Let's call it a draw. And let's not forget Europe, South America, Asia, and Africa. Capitalism is alive and well all over, for good or for ill.
Capitalism = "The American Dream"? Maybe? Probably? Obviously? I don't know.
Quoting WISDOMfromPO-MO
I think you will find that this is a pattern which is far older than the United States. There is no way for any organism to exist without using resources from ecosystems. As for the rest, sure: non-renewable energy, seizure of indigenous resources through genocide, reckless, costs externalized, etc. All true.
Capitalism is not sustainable--anywhere. To the extent that capitalism = the American Dream, then neither is sustainable.
This next comments will seem like they are totally off-topic, but it actually are not:
I've been reading the Doomsday Machine by Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg worked for the RAND Corporation in the 1950s and '60s as a national defense analyst and strategist. He became well acquainted with American nuclear war strategies at the time. He was appalled to discover that the US had a first-strike strategy; Command and Control was sloppy at best; authority to launch nuclear weapons was delegated by Eisenhower and subsequently followed by several presidents; the plan was all out attack on both the Soviet Union and China -- regardless of whether China was involved in whatever threat the USSR was thought to pose. The plan called for the destruction of every significant city in the USSR and China.
Kennedy wanted to know what the human cost would be -- assuming that all of our bombs reached their targets and no weapons were launched from the USSR. The military had a ready answer: around 700 million in Europe and Asia. The military planners, however, had not included deaths from fire storms, which they should have because they knew all about firestorms from Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. A quite reasonable estimation of total deaths would be closer to 1 billion -- then 1/3 of the world's population.
The assumption was that the USA would survive the fallout from this massive attack with little or no cost. At the time, the concept of nuclear winter had not been developed. Ellsberg notes that the US still has enough missiles (about 400) and nuclear-armed submarines to bring about nuclear winter, even if we were the only ones to fire off our atomic weapons--because of the fire storms boosting massive tonnage of soot into the high atmosphere where it would remain for years--blocking a lot of sunlight and chilling the planet significantly -- causing a massive kill off of many species, including humans.
One might hope that America and the American military are not one and the same thing. At the very least, the ideas of Manifest Destiny and American Exceptionalism are ticking away in their heads, and in the heads of a lot of civilians too.
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg provides detail about how the earliest colonies were riven by deliberate deep class divides, and not just the divide between free and slave. There were wealthy white elites imported directly from England; what would later be called 'bourgeois whites' (businessmen, entrepreneurs, speculators); white farmers (small landowners), and then riff raff -- working people, in other words. So 4 classes. Working people were kept at the bottom of the class structure--not just relatively poor, but absolutely poor. Not until "disruptive" industrialism got underway, and created more routes to advancement, were working people able to make some advances -- not into the classes above them, but at least greater financial well-being within their own class of workers.
The westward movement of Europeans (led, spurred and facilitated by land speculators, railroads, etc.) created more opportunities for working people to get a slightly larger piece of their smaller share of the pie, but westward movement also involved a lot of financial and mortal risk for 'pioneers'. In the late 19th century the workers, still the bottom class relatively and absolutely, began to agitate against long work weeks, long days, unsafe conditions, low pay, and so forth by organizing unions. The resistance from the upper classes was fierce, and has remained fierce to the present. Which, by the way, is why the union movement is so weak in the United States. As the saying goes, the labor movement didn't get sick and die, it was murdered.
So here we are, 21st century; working people are as much at the bottom as ever, with no place to go. The small entrepreneurs, bourgeoisie, rich, and super rich are all still there too, richer and stronger than ever.
Take black people, for instance. Why are so many black people poor? Poorly educated? Jobless? Sickly? It's not an accident. A central cause of black poverty today is the history of the Federal Housing Administration which, between 1930 and 1980, deliberately, competently, and thoroughly prevented black people from benefitting from the federal housing programs, the post WWII housing boom, and more recent advances in housing value. White people, on the other hand -- the ones who were well enough employed in the metropolitan areas of the country in 1946 to benefit, received a huge financial boost by being let into good, newly built mass housing which would hold its value and appreciate over the decades, up to the present. At least two generations of whites, numbering in the millions, benefitted from FHA programs. Not blacks. They were explicitly excluded from the programs. This is all described and documented in an excellent book, THE COLOR OF LAW by Richard Rothstein, 2017.
Education is largely organized around housing, and poor people tend to live together in cheaper, poorer or public housing. Poverty and less education isn't a good combination and when opportunities are closed off, people can't readily bootstrap their way up. They are stuck. At the bottom.
Now, not all white people benefitted from the FHA program. Poor whites, rural whites, and low paid whites, or whites with large families (which tended to keep them poorer) were not able to afford these programs, or they weren't available in their part of the country. That's maybe slightly less true now than in the past, but not by much.
If you are awestruck by their net worth, and you think that Jesus approves, then drool on at the wonder of their wealth.
Well, you were just making statements like:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Quoting Bitter Crank
These statements are false, and categorically so if it's possible for working class people to become rich themselves. The wealthy are not hoarding anything - if they were, then we would see that most fortunes out there were inherited, not self-made.
But the fact remains, that even though the bottom %s own less of the pie percentage-wise, the pie is now exponentially bigger, so that smaller % is, in real terms, a bigger portion than ever before.
I see no problem with 1% owning even 99% of the wealth, so long as the other 99% have what they need to survive, take care of health, education, food, shelter, and the necessities.
Middle class (maybe middle-upper class depending on what geographical area you take as your reference)
You do have equal opportunities, if you start a business and do the things that you should be doing if you are interested in becoming wealthy. You won't become wealthy just by working for someone else :s - it's silly to expect that to happen in the first place.
35% of the Forbes 400 list were from lower class backgrounds. 95% of the country are in that category. A completely free journey uninfluenced by prior wealth we would expect to result in a similar distribution. 95% of billionaires should be self made if the American dream is working. In fact only 35% are. You're a businessman, you tell me if a strategy that is supposed to achieve 95%, but actually only manages 35% is usually classed as 'working'.
Who said it's supposed to achieve 95%? :s
So, more than half of the self-made fortunes are from lower-class backgrounds. (35%/62%).
Quoting René Descartes
Do you have anywhere to cite that figure? I thought the 35% represented working class people, not middle-class.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_billionaires
12, with Nigeria producing what looks like a disproportionate number. Notice how all other black billionaires are virtually from the US. So there's more than 1 African American billionaire on Forbes.
The relatively low numbers are not surprising granted the discrimination that existed previously against black people in the US. However, notice how the numbers of black billionaires are growing. In the 90s, those numbers were 0, were at 12 now.
Simple statistics, but if you want me to spell it out for you...
The American dream says that if you want to get rich all you have to do is work hard.
People who are born rich are not somehow genetically predisposed to want to be rich, nor are they any more likely to be harder workers.
Therefore that subset of the population who want to be rich (want it enough to work hard to get it) should reflect the socioeconomic make-up of the whole population.
The subset of the population who actually are rich does not reflect the socioeconomic make-up of the whole population (not even close).
Therefore, statistically, the two subsets are unrelated. Ergo being in the subset 'people who want to be rich and are willing to work hard to achieve it' does not have any statistically significant relationship to being in the group 'people who actually are rich'.
Do you think that hypothetical scenario would be compatible with social stability? I think it would instead lead to widespread resentment of that 1%, even if the basic needs of the other 99% were met, and this would consequently increase the likelihood of the breakdown of democracy.
I just don't see how we can isolate economic considerations from larger social, cultural, and political ones.
In my ideal (and admittedly unrealistic) world we would collectively and freely choose to simplify and re-prioritize our lives around values less enamored with material prosperity, and less beholden to narrow definitions of "success."
I would not want to force my views on others, however, and would much rather live in this debased capitalist world than one in which communist aims and values were imposed on the populace by some class of intellectual elites.
I guess I'm a sort of culturally conservative hippie--combining aspects of libertarianism, communitarianism, environmentalism, and anti-hyper-consumerism--if such a thing isn't a complete contradiction.
Then the American dream is a lie.
Quoting Pseudonym
Sure, because just working hard is not enough to get rich. You must also work smart.
It also matters what you mean by "getting rich". A lot of people can probably get to $1-10million dollars if that's really their goal and they keep trying to get there.
To get to billionaire level though is a lot more difficult, and in large parts also depends on favourable circumstances. In other words, you can't really sell just about anything to get to billionaire levels. To become a millionaire, you just have to be a good marketer, you don't necessarily need a great product - like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_Rock
To become a billionaire, either political connections or very valuable products/services combined with amazing marketing.
Yes, I think unfortunately that would be the case, because the 99% are barbarians.
http://blakemasters.com/post/24578683805/peter-thiels-cs183-startup-class-18-notes
Read René Girard's anthropological work for more detail on the all against one sacrificial crisis that is used to maintain social stability.
Society though is usually built by the 1% - they are its founders, who are then killed by the 99%.
You genuinely don't understand the statistics do you. The failure of one subset to match the socioeconomic distribution of the population as a whole means that that subset must be made up from some criteria not available to the population as a whole on the basis of their socioeconomic status.
Unless you're suggesting that poor people are generally not 'good marketers' or 'smart' then the disparity between the groups has still not been explained.
No, not false. Maybe it is true in the post-socialist wonderland where you live, that every schoolboy becomes rich by a frenzy of hard labor and inspiration IF he wants to. It isn't true in the United States.
You are right that billionaires are made, not born. You are wrong that the doors to fabulous wealth are wide open. There are certain entry level requirements that working people (most of the population) lack: the habits of middle class parents; a solid education starting in primary school and ending in one of the top ranked universities; contacts among successful, wealthy people; access to investment capital, and so on.
You are wrong about what 99% of the population sharing 1% of the wealth means: an exceedingly small share of a comparatively tiny pie. For many Americans it doesn't mean the abject poverty of the sort that the poorest decile experience; it doesn't mean the deprivation of the poorest third, even. But for even the middle 4 deciles of the 99%, it means poorer housing, less education, inadequate welfare, poorer outcomes all round. Only for the 2 richest deciles of the 99% is there better education, secure finances, good healthcare, adequately funded retirement, regular travel, and so forth.
You are wrong about the ferocity with which the labor movement has been suppressed. The suppression of organized labor has had a profound effect on American life, especially in the last 50 years. In an earlier period, labor was suppressed with goon squads and clubs. These days it is done through law and propaganda, backed up by the power of the state which has proven more effective.
You are probably not aware that wealthy conservatives have resented the existence of Social Security, Unemployment Compensation, Medicare (for the retired and disabled), Medicaid (for the indigent), welfare programs, etc. and have periodically sought to undo these programs ever since they were started, in some cases, 88 years ago.
No it doesn't. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Dream
The American dream says that success is achieved through hard work. It doesn't say everyone will be rich or even expect to be rich. It is the reason immigrants flock to the US despite leaving everything known and familiar to a nation not entirely welcoming them.
The opportunity is in the US, often unrecognized by those borne into it who are more interested in complaining than appreciating the sea of wealth and opportunity they are truly blessed to be swimming in.
What's 'success' then?
Maybe all that is utopian.
Ummm like when money is falling from the sky on top of you? :-O
[hide="Reveal"](just joking LOL >:O )[/hide]
Make money, fuck bitches.
Common BC, we both know that those aren't the skills needed to become a billionaire. We both know that most often people become billionaires by starting a business and making lots of sales. Habits of middle-class parents aren't needed; neither is an education if by that you mean what you get in school (or 'top universities' for that matter). 33% of all billionaires are dropouts. Many of the rich people I've met are quite uneducated.
Contacts amongst the wealthy - most self-made billionaires don't have this at the start, over time, they do get it. Access to capital? Irrelevant. If you make sales, you can get capital. In fact, if you make sales and are doing great in that chapter, you can get whatsoever you need - all other problems take care of themselves.
So that's the difficult part. Making sales. Or, alternatively, having the right political connections, and getting those yummy state contracts where they pay x10 market price >:) >:O
So if your goal was to be a CEO of your own company perhaps (where as a woman you have about half the chance a man has), or maybe you just want the fresh outdoor life of a rancher (where as an Black or African American you have one tenth the opportunity a white person has). Maybe science is your thing (where a Black or African American has half the opportunity a white man has), although you're all right if cleaning is your thing because Hispanics and Latinos are four times more likely to remain in these professions, not sure I know anyone whose dream it is to be a cleaner though, but it takes all sorts.
200 years and the American dream has been through periods of one of the biggest racial genocides in human history, racial segregation, imprisoning people for their political opinions, breaking the Geneva convention, presided over a steady increase in wealth disparity and suicide is still one of the the leading causes of death for most age groups.
If you're trying to build a case for it being some kind of saviour because it's prepared to employ low grade workers at rates marginally above the rates their own countries can afford (largely as a result of Western trading policy in the first place), then I'm afraid it's just not a 'dream' I can really get behind.
I think its origin can be traced back to the Bill of Rights , with its Utopian aspiration:
Here is quote from "The Epic of America" which Truslow wrote in 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression
This 'Dream' has evolved over the years. I think R Reagan and M Thatcher had a lot to do with a paradigm shift in the West where individual citizens "... recognized by others for what are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" became individual consumers, who's success became measured by consumption. Where the more you consume, the more successful you are, the better consumer, hence citizen you are.
It's a difficult subject with a lot of different view points, I think it is and always has been intimately tied up with immigration, why people want(ed) to come to America in the first place. I have a letter written by a family member a long time ago about my great grandparents who where farmers living in Italy around 1860. It indicates that they were planning to come to the United States because they could not compete with the cheap produce being imported into Italy from the US at the time, all they saw was the freedom and opportunity the US appeared to offer.
I enjoyed listening to the following:
Oh, brilliant. What an insightful piece of philosophy. I can see why they invited you to be a moderator.
I'm not surprised. The "If you're so rich, how come you're so stupid?" phenomenon.
Quoting Agustino
Political and class connections has been shown to be a part of gaining access to capital, expertise.
Quoting Agustino
Granted. When the business is making a product or delivering a service, there follows the necessity of selling it, if you are going to succeed, whatever it is that you have to sell. If no one wants to buy what you are offering, then you're not going to succeed (at least through honest means). Most businesses fail because either no one likes what the company offers, the business doesn't find its customers, it's out-competed, or the Russian mafia blows up the store, office, warehouse, lab, what have you.
If lots of people like what you have to sell and buy it every now and then, you will do reasonably well, barring other business mistakes, which lay in wait. Like expanding too fast, running out of inventory, not changing the style of the clothes you make fast enough to keep up with style changes, etc. Or bad luck -- like an outbreak of food poisoning from your kitchen.
"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to sell" they said sarcastically.
I get it. You think certain groups are unfairly disadvantaged. I don't need to keep hearing it. It makes me yawn.
I don't give a fuck if it makes you yawn. I'm not here for your entertainment.
It is utterly ridiculous to suggest that unless the American system is 100% successful in repressing the opportunities of migrants and minorities then it's fulfilling its dream. Of course some things can be achieved by migrants in America. It's possible to build a relatively successful business in Zimbabwe, does that mean the Zimbabwean dream is working?
Name me a single country in the world where it is literally impossible, no matter how much hard work and injenuity a person puts in, for them to achieve some minor measure of success (a slightly better paid job, some improvement in living standards). I'd be surprised if you could come up with more than a handful of the worst dictatorships on the planet.
So America offers immigrants a slightly better deal than they get in the countries that Western trading policies trashed in the first place. Well done them.
Sounds like you do give a fuck.Quoting Pseudonym
America remains the country where immigrants want to come for a better life, despite very clear declarations they are unwelcome, and they do in fact find great success here. If they didn't, they'd stay home.
And yet, you told me that lack of education is what keeps some from being rich?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, the political aspect is definitely true. Class connections? Not really. In the more corrupt places, it is access to the relevant decision makers. Who knows how you get that? Maybe you went to school with them - several of Putin's friends are now billionaires for example.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Is that bad luck, or was it maybe planned by someone? >:)
Regardless, it seems that the fact remains that it is possible to go from working class to super-wealthy provided that you have a good product, and you know how to sell it, and no one stops you through force, ill health, etc.
Immigrants want to leave the countries they are in because Western trading policies and colonialism have trashed their economies. Did you read the example Cavacava gave of the Italians forced out of their country by cheap imports?
America then offers them marginally higher living standards, because it needs the cheap labour to keep making the cheap imports that prevent other countries from developing their own economies.
I don't see what's so impressive about that. If a luxury cruise liner drags a few people off the shipwreck they just caused so they can employ them as cleaners, that would be your idea of a noble dream would it?
I will grant that it is possible for a working class person with a very bright idea and drive to become a billionaire, and out of 7.3 billion people, a minuscule--no, microscopic number, less than 500, are able to do that. But then, so what? 500 out of 7 billion is hardly a groundswell of opportunity.
Any native-born American can become president of the United States, too. And how likely is that? Over the next 40 years, no more than 10 people can become president, and only 5 if they all serve two terms.
The rare exception to the rule doesn't collapse the rule, it just means that there are rare exceptions. If a black man becomes POTUS, or a woman, this means nothing for the chances of any given black person or woman becoming president.
What matters is if 250 million working class people in the United States can gain a reasonable share of the enormous amount of wealth they produce (labor creates all wealth) and can direct that wealth into uses which bring about a sustainable future. The rich and super rich have not done that. In deed, the rich and the super rich are the ones who have arranged for an unsustainable future for everybody.
Nice work.
But how many organisms do this?: 1.) Take from their environment far more than they need; 2.) Justify this by saying that it is an investment that will lead to a net gain down the road; 3.) Ignoring the destruction the whole process has left, take even more of what they don't really need; 4.) Repeat 1.)-4.).
I was responding only to the idea of "resources borrowed (or taken) from ecosystems". That's the basis of life. Of course, taking way too much, returning nothing, and wrecking the ecosystem is extremely stupid, and that's a specialty of our species. We do it because we can, and because we are unable to think. plan, and act for the long terms (beyond maybe 25 years or so). Sometimes we aren't able to think beyond the next 15 minutes.
Not a fair comparison. ~1700 or so, not 500. And those are only official numbers - I have no doubt that there may be a lot of other very rich people who don't appear on those lists. And sure, becoming a billionaire is super difficult. But pretty much everyone could make $1-10 million over their lifetime if this was their goal.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Why do you think in terms of chances? :s
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well yeah, I obviously agree about the sustainable future part. But I don't think that's best achieved by giving 250 million working class people control over wealth. I don't know what makes you think that the 250 million would be good administrators of that wealth.
Utopian? Maybe. But I often challenge those who believe in God to show me evidence and when it comes down to it, neither of us knows yet. But until we know, many believe living a life believing in God is not a bad way to live, which is a fair argument.
The same goes for living The American Dream. All America promises is the right to PURSUE happiness, however that happiness is for us to define not others. I find that placing my degree of happiness on any one thing, such as money, is counter productive to my overall happiness in life. Rather I try to live by the idea that if you do what you love and you do it honestly, the rest will follow. So far so good but as with all of life it has it's little up's and downs.
Do you consider that one becomes a billionaire by chance?
Quoting René Descartes
This depends. They do not produce that wealth alone but when put in certain systems that are not of their own making. Without those systems, they don't produce wealth, that's why they need the systems - otherwise they'd be working on their own.
There is also the problem that the one who produces the wealth may not know how to administrate it. It doesn't follow all by itself from the fact that one produces wealth, that thereby one knows how to administrate it and use it wisely. All that results from the former, is that the respective person is good at producing wealth.
Quoting René Descartes
Working hard is not sufficient. I can work hard in digging ditches all my life - I can break my back, and ruin my health doing it, but I probably won't get rich.
I don't see why you follow the principle that hard work necessarily means big results. If you work stupidly - like trying to cut a tree with a hammer - then you may work super hard and achieve almost nothing. And no, I don't think we should reward people for working stupidly.
Last I heard, Zuckerberg's salary as Facebook's CEO was $1 :P
Quoting René Descartes
No, I just pointed out that being a good wealth-producer isn't the same as being a good wealth manager. Bill Gates doesn't administrate his own wealth for example - he pays others to do it, others who are more knowledgeable than he is at doing that.
Quoting René Descartes
They don't have much wealth at all, so no administration is needed.
Quoting René Descartes
Sure, I don't care about the "American dream" or any such notions. I care about the reality. Hard work is not enough to be rich. I generally dislike people who always complain about how hard they work anyway.
Quoting René Descartes
This is a social phenomenon. People don't want to do those jobs anymore in developed countries. It's not about the money, for many of those jobs there is a labor shortage, even if some of them are even well-paid. The reason for that is that these people don't have a good social standing, they may be affected by poorer health, less time for family, etc. So if you think that increasing the pay of those jobs to stupendous amounts will solve the problem, you should think again.
That's why all the immigrants end up getting those jobs - no one else wants them!
Sweeping the streets can often be a city government job in the United States which generally come with decent benefits like partially subsidized health care premiums, paid time off programs, retirement plans with company match money and even pension programs which is far less common nowadays in the private sector but quite valuable. A job preference for a typical American be it clerical, blue collar or something else would depend on that individual's real life context.
I don't think that dreams can fail, rather we wake up or move on to another dream. The major turning point in recent history I think was circa the 1960's from the sputnik to the man on the moon, the resistance the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the end of segregation, the martyrs, and of course Las Vegas. The new dream of hope, change, peace, love and drugs could not last long.
Vegas: how a dead place out in middle of the desert became an earth bound shooting star, a facet of the America dream which begat a surreal landscape designed by marketing people with little regard for history or anything else. 42 million annual visitors fantasize in its blare and neon glare. Vegas creates and destroys continually, mimicking the national/international whims of its designers.
Money is important, but it's not the only consideration. Social status is, arguably, more important than money for most.
How well you're seen by others. For example, the profession of lawyer is typically well-regarded - so even if a lawyer makes less money than someone working in IT, they will have higher status - people will give them more importance.
No, they don't make more money in all societies (at least not on average - top lawyers do generally make more than top people in IT pretty much everywhere).
Quoting René Descartes
For some, money is indeed more important.
Capitalism is the American nightmare, which has crushed all the dreams of ordinary Americans. It's just a pity they don't know it.
To maintain the so-called American Dream requires an intercessionry government bound to the values of that dream, and capable of creating the environment where the dream can be realised: NOT a government in the pockets of big money and corporate interests who conspire to place the burdens of the maintenance of that society on the people and away from themselves, even though they reap most of the rewards.