Sergeant Thorne wrote:tunnelcat wrote:Krom wrote:... In corporate America all the extra productivity above average you bring to the table pretty much gets used exclusively to line the pockets of the people further up the ladder that had virtually nothing to do with your work. Just because you are more productive than someone else doesn't mean you will be compensated more for it.
Isn't that the American Dream? Work hard, come up with a better idea than the next guy and make a fortune? That idea seems to be more and more unattainable now. The system is now rigged against the individual and I don't think most Americans realize it yet.
TC, I appreciate that you believe that, and I wouldn't say that you're wrong out-of-hand, but I personally need to know just how the system is "rigged against the individual." In my mind, in order for the problem you describe to be dealt with effectively, it must be called out in precise terms. In other words, until you, or I, or anyone else runs up against it and has experienced where it is--where it starts and where it ends--how can it be dealt with? I'll tell you that my assumption is generally that people are so poorly equipped, morally and intellectually, to pursue the American dream that it is little wonder that not many realize it, relatively speaking; so--and again without dismissing your concerns--when I hear that the system is stacked against the individual, I cannot help but realize that in my own experience it is specifically the individual that is stacked against the individual, and no one who decries the system seems to recognize this reality. Having said this I think it would be incredible to believe our system to be perfect, except in principle as a free market. Wherever there is interplay with people inequities are sure to crop up which are not supported by principle, and recognizing and dealing with such inequities is one of the tasks of life, so by all means call it out where you see it.
One example I have is getting a college degree. It's now getting so expensive that student debt has surpassed credit card debt. Students will be in hock for perpetuity just to get a degree. But since corporations are farming out their degreed employees to foreign countries, I guess college degrees will become a thing of the past and service jobs will be the dominant employment opportunity in this country. Service jobs that don't have health insurance or retirement opportunities either. Servitude until death. That's not what made this country a place that everyone else desired to come to. A local company called Datalogic just canned 125 employees and sent those jobs over to Vietnam. Our legislators need to quit giving tax incentives, ie. tax breaks, to corporations that don't even bother to say thankyou.
Not everyone can be a Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg and fall into the right slot in life. Most of us want to get a steady, reliable, good paying occupation and support a family in happiness and security. A college degree is very beneficial ticket to that dream. Sure, one can make a living at some service job and hope to climb the ladder, it happens all the time. But it's not a guarantee for most of us. We're headed back to conditions right before the 1930's and it won't be pleasant.
callmeslick wrote:while I will quibble about the fact that 'class warfare' commencing(I feel it has been going on forever), I agree with much of the above. Having been one of those 'brats' you refer to, although always gainfully employed, and benefitting from not three but eleven generations in this country before me, I have spent much of my life in well-to-do circles. In such circles, I have been arguing for years those very fears for the future you express above. What kind of life do we leave our descendants if they have to be isolated from the masses and hiring some sort of mercenary protection to hold onto their assets? In my opinion, the rewards to the wealthy of maintaining various societal economic equalizers more than offsets any drag on our making higher returns on investment.
Maybe you're the exception, and there are always exceptions, no slam against you, but
on average, second and third generation wealth is abused by the heirs, if they don't burn through it outright. They get spoiled and lose that work ethic that their forbears valued. They'll either party till there's no more money or become some powerful tyrant that has no clue about what hard work really is because they've never known
work. Why work when someone inherits that giant trust fund windfall. Go play!
I'm the product of first generation wealth. My grandparents were farmers and laborers and had no wealth, but they lived comfortable lives by the 1950's. My father got a college degree and made it good for his wife and kids (me and my sister and brother). Not rich, but nicely middle class. But any part of my parent's wealth I may inherit will not be going to any of my siblings. My portion of the chain will be broken and someone less fortunate will benefit from it.
