Entitlement

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You aren't being singled out for no apparent reason. However, much of what you're saying is stuff that I've heard a million times before and come to realize that it's actually untrue. Your posts ITT come across as libertarian propaganda that you've been fed and are spewing out. Like when you said "why punish success? I've been around long enough to have heard those witty one liners before back when I was as a kid in the 80s and trickle down economics was the latest craze. Mainstream society never questioned this mentality UNTIL the epic stock market crash 4 years ago and the recession that we're still stuck in.

In this post you're setting up the false dichotomy of either the employer lives in poverty and the workers get everything, or the employer gets to have unlimited discretion in terms of how their employees are treated and what they are to be paid for their work. As for what happened to your dad(being defrauded by a client), that's the ugly reality of what the world of business is really like. That client defrauded your father to put him out of business.

When you start a business that caters to a corner of the market where other businesses already exist, they are going to try to bankrupt you. When someone starts a business that becomes successful, they try to prevent other people from following their example because they don't want competitors who might make money that they could be making for themselves. People in business don't play fair. It's even more cutthroat than a football game.

It's not about the wealthy not being wealthy. It's about the shrinking of the middle class. We don't want to be Mexico. Low taxes and a small group of the wealthy lording it over a large group of poor people with almost no middle remaining.

The right very much want a non-progressive flat tax and they are fighting hard to get it without calling it that. They handed out tax credits to the poor and middle over the years in order to get much deeper wealthy cuts passed and now intend to come back and snip away some of those lower bracket cuts while cutting the higher brackets further. The strategy is completely obvious. A flat tax delivered in small increments.

No you are describing my ex-wife.

What infuriates me about people who love to point the finger and accuse them of having a sense of entitlement is that they are the ones with a sense of entitlement and they feel their monopoly on privilege is threatened! This is exactly what deltafunction has been trying to get across........That employers are entitled to privileges that employees are not because they somehow 'deserve' it(she then concocted a bunch of nonsense about how poor and oppressed they are ).


The Cosmos doesn't owe ANYTHING to ANYBODY. Entitlement is purely a social construct used to determine who gets what and who can get away with what. That being side, having a sense of entitlement is something that anyone can adopt, but it is only useful as a social tool if society recognizes it. That's the deal with people who say "you're not entitled to this or that": They're saying that although you think you're entitled to something, the rest of us do not recognize your sense of entitlement and are not going to hand it over to you. People tell those on the bottom who are trying to move up that they are not entitled to anything as way to induce humility and keep them in their place.




Conclusion: Entitlement is all about social hierarchy, and not about the external reality we live in.


-The End

The Ad Hominem in this thread is so excessive that I should start a company producing Ad Hominem. The current supply is likely to be exhausted soon...

With little capital in my bank account this vision will go nowhere, of course.

Oh, wait...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital
... which is also an answer to several questions raised in this thread...

I find it interesting, though, that the following perspective has not been presented yet (Cautionary Statement: Unless you have been too sloppy when reading previous posts, master):

Perhaps it is a "good" thing that some people are filthy rich and others envy them to a great degree. Given the existence of enforced private property rights, the only way to deal with the envy is to work harder yourself, thus providing an incentive for industry...

I still haven't figured out how this model could yield any positive outcomes with ex-wives, though... Might need some more work...

And regarding the question of employee involvement and "Stakeholder" value... A reason (theoretical, but IMO supported by GDP performance) why capitalism is effective is that companies only maximize one variable - profit. If you introduce other objectives, then efficiency goes down the drain.

Why? Well, because it is mathematically impossible to maximize more than one variable at the same time (von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944: 10-11; Hardin, 1968: 1243). I am making an argument from authority here - as neither work provides an actual mathematical proof - (JakobVirgil would be exhilarated), but I am quoting the von Neumann...

You can't get rich by working hard FOR SOMEBODY ELSE! You have to own property and/or have capital. Do you SERIOUSLY not realize that those who are rich do not f*cking want anybody else to obtain what they have???


It is not enough to succeed, others must fail.

I'm so sick to death of people ITT beating their heads against a brick wall trying in vain to prove that capitalism is "fair"......Let alone life itself.


GIVE IT UP, YOUR ARGUMENT HAS FAILED.

... A lot of generalizations... not a lot of documentation...

Oh, and the concept "medical doctor" is apparently alien to you... In my country this is the most wealthy profession (on average, they earn substantially more than both lawyers and economists) and most of them are employed by someone else.



If you think that I can be defeated simply by an excessive use of the Caps Lock key, then you are in for a surprise...

(Reprimand: Master, there is no direct linkage between that particular post and your previous statement. A likely response would be to point out that your argument consists of a combination of an agricultural by-product and the male member of the human species.)

How do you account for Poor Boys like Thomas Edison becoming very wealthy because
they invented useful stuff or reorganized things to work better. Even Rockerfeller who the the quintessential Capitalist Bastard came from a modest background. He organized oil production so that masses of people could afford kerosine, which was the oil product that replaced whale oil for lighting.

ruveyn

What country do you live in, eh?




First of all, just because you have a high salary does not itself make you rich. Most American doctors are upper middle class, but only a few can truly be classified as "rich". Many attorneys are freelance, and by far the richest of them are(corporate lawyers and high profile criminal defense attorneys). If you are an employee, than anything you come up with that is profitable is the legal property of your employer. Employers pay you for the work you produce(and for your time if you work in the service sector). But all revenue goes directly into the company money pot and salaries are doled out to employees. The highest paid doctors are surgeons who earn 6 figure salaries. However, by far the richest people in America whose annual income is 7 figures and above, earn their money from investments and hedge funds, and not form salaries. So unless you manage to get into law school, medical school, or make it in the entertainment business, your best option for actually getting rich is going into business. And to do that you need property and/or capital.

Being in the right place at the right time. All these tall tales of rags to riches are getting tiresome. You see ruveyn, as much as I would like to believe that hard work and sacrifice will always be rewarded(that is, you get back what you give), life just doesn't work that way. Because the reality is that you are entitled to your labor, but not to the fruits of your labor. Getting back what you give involves a nice thick slice of good luck.

Denmark.



I am well aware of the lucrative salaries of US doctors. It is part of my job to know. My concern is that you are simply "raising the bar". If I claim that some individuals are rich, then somehow they are not rich "enough".... Doctors have exceptional access to income outside their primary occupation... They sometimes even derive more income from consulting a few hours a week than from their day jobs... this has to be added to the US estimate of approximately $ 360,000 a year. 7 figures is not that unrealistic for doctors who know where to find a demand, and since they are usually the smartest of us in the first place, they often find the demand.



And my previous reference to venture capital is thus vindicated...

"working hard" is overrated. Any slave can be whipped into "working hard" but that doesn't mean they'll ever be allowed to get rich. People stuck living in slums have to work pretty hard and live pretty damn uncomfortably just to survive, and they're the least likely to ever get rich. Not all people derive motivation in the simple carrot-stick model. People who are motivated purely on the basis of wanting wealth are most likely dull conventional-thinking idiots who don't have what it takes to truly stand out and create anything useful anyways. This whole idea that we must build society based on the carrot-and-stick model where everything is geared as being merely a means to the ultimate end of having more stuff is actually stifling and demotivational for a lot of people. It makes existence cheap. It goes on the assumption that everyone is a mindless drone who only does anything for profit. I can see a lot of NTs thinking this way but it's totally bizarre to see Aspies vouching for this theory.


The problem is this argument only works up to a certain point. Increasing productivity through better utilization of capitol resources, technology, and efficient division of labor does increase the overall standard of living. The problem is large companies reach a saturation point beyond which they can only increase share value at the expense of society as a whole. The Nash equilibrium is upset when companies compete primarily by limiting pay to the point where collectively people have less income to spend. Then there's the fact that companies driven purely by profit and/or share growth often gain an advantage by appealing to the lowest common denominator. A lot of consumers are dumb and will buy a shittier inferior product because they're just following the trend or find it hard to change their habits.

So there's problems on both the production and consumption end. Competitive cost cutting can lower overall wages hurting the economy as a whole and consumers can be too dumb to demand better products at times.

But. It. Works.



But. It. Works.

I know, I am not being nice right now. I just got tired of defending the market economy when all calls for realistic alternatives are being met with deafening silence... (Statement: Master, this post is likely to result in rebuttals quoting specific alternatives, which would undermine y... stand by, please - was this *intended*?)

Works. For. WHO, GGPViper?

Oh yeah that's right. It works the corporation since they really have no incentive to care about the economy as a whole or whether or not anyone has a job since they have one and they're makin big bucks.


I really have extremely low patience and tolerance for people who live in EU welfare states telling me how the world works here in the MOST competitive and stratified western country in the world. America favors the adaptable, and adaptability is not something that is distributed equally any more so than talent.


Alright, now that I blew off some steam, tell me where and how you're going to get this venture capital? More than 50% of Americans are having difficulty financing their homes and automobiles as banks are much more discrete about lending money to people who don't have the collateral to pay it all off within at least a year. So, you want a $25,000 loan to start a new biz and your net worth is only, say, $14,000? Alrighty then, tell ya what? We'll lone you $12,000 and as for the rest, you're on your own pal.

First of all, I am not *raising the bar*. I'm telling you the facts about what's considered "rich" by my country's standards as the USofA has much lower taxes then Denmark. The more you know! I

I've never heard of American physicians whose salaries are in the millions of dollars but I suppose there are few. As for them being "the smartest among us", I'd like to see some actual evidence that the IQs of physicians are the highest among among any definable group in a given population. There are puh-len-ty of scientists and academic who are AT LEAST as smart and make far less money. If assume that the smartest people in the world are the richest, I have many, many counterexamples.

Lastly, medicine is always in demand. Anytime, anywhere. People get sick, people get injured, and there is no possible way to avoid this. I'm through with being civil since you're not *listening* to me and now you're just repeating the same tired old libertarian cliche's despite people repeatedly explaining to you how they are incorrect.



CARRY ON!

Last edited by AspieRogue on 23 Sep 2012, 7:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.