Hard work is what most companies are built on. If the sole proprietor is successful, he/she will have to hire help eventually. If they are wildly succesful, the risk taker will be very wealthy. What I don’t understand is why, after that “stage” is reached, the pendulum swings the other way. Did the Waltons treat their first employees well, paying them more than they were making. Now, they can’t give up a fraction of their fortunes to give their employees benefits, as one example?
I agree that there is a return deserved for risk taking, but how much is enough? And if you strip away the supports of the low level, minimum wage types, how does the upper echelon continue to support their profits?
Not to sound like a presidential candidate, but I come from humble beginnings. I am the only person in my generation in my family with an advanced degree. My mother was the only one in her generation of my family with an undergrad degree. I went to public schools, did well, but faced a rude awakening at the elite college I attended when competing with other college students who went to prep schools, had travelled abroad, had parents who were doctors, lawyers, etc. My family existed and subsisted at times on welfare and food stamps–not because we sat around on the couch and did nothing, but because my mother’s jobs did not pay well in her early years and with a child to feed. She eventually chose a job helping others as a state-employed social worker so she still doesn’t make a fortune, but her living is adequate and she will hopefully have a decent retirement.
I can’t abide people saying that people who don’t make much aren’t working hard or don’t have ambition, etc. My mother worked two jobs most of her life, then I started working informally at 9 (no, not a paper route, that would be parental neglect to allow a child to do that in a ghetto neighborhood–not much readership and woe to you if you interrupt a drug transaction in the hallway).
When those who are doing extraordinarily well were born into privilege, or are being paid for ridiculous things like dribbling a basketball or driving cars really fast. Where is the societal contribution of these activities? They make more than doctors! Or my personal favorite, Stan’s CEO could run his company into the ground, and he could still receive a multimillion dollar severance! Wow, now there’s an incentive! How about we tax the shit out of that sort of income!
I think the greedy buttheads that complain because their taxes will go up by a few thousand dollars (they’ll barely notice) ought to suck it up. They, by and large, reaped the benefits of our economy through luck and privilege (and, in a fair number of cases, exploiting or breaking the rules). I guess they’ll have to forego that new Mercedes this year, crowding the garage with all the others. If you benefit from the AMerican dream, you ought to help finance that dream for others.
I can’t see how anyone can say they are working harder than another. Your gardener works hard to save the SoCal common white man from having to trim his own lawn. You’ll be whining when he tells you he is quitting his gardener job to go back to college…but probably he is doing that backbreaking work to put his kids through college, because he’s bought into the American dream, no matter whether he’s an American or not.
