I agree with your point that not all rich people deserve or have earned it but I think most people have, just based on personal experience and attention to this detail.
Look at the number of CEOs in the US it’s actually a pretty low number, I think <300K. Most people around and below CEO will need to compete in some way and most people serving coffee actually wouldn’t want to be competing in these positions anyway.
I recently thought, if we paid people based on a persons importance in society so many things would be turned upside down. Example, day care workers are very important to a childs well being and education and are paid so little. If you paid them much better it would create incentives and competition for those positions. The smarter more driven people who would not have considered the position at such a low wage would be drawn in and as a result the quality of education would improve. That same dynamic applied anywhere else would have the same effect.
Without an enforced rule like this, people who “deserve” more money might take jobs that don’t pay well, think education or research. You end up with open positions around CEOs, upper and middle management, that need to be filled that don’t require skills as much as say available and experience doing specific things like scheduling.
I say all of this as a boots-on-the-ground senior engineer who refuses to take a management role, could make more money by doing less and have people being me coffee.
Joncash2@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
You understand that is a skill in and of itself. Which is why so many day traders end up going bankrupt. To be able to actually consistently make money off of money isn’t magical, it doesn’t happen automatically. If it did everyone would be far wealthier.
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Ever heard of interest? Savings accounts?
Say you just have 100 million sitting in a bank account. The average national savings account interest rate (and you’d get a much better one with 100 million) is 0.42 APY.
So you’d get $420,000 in interest every year.
No, the rich would be richer. It’s expensive to make money, but very simple if you have a lot of it. Those without the capacity will keep getting poorer. You can shift the margins by taking more risks, obviously, but you can just make moneys for free when you already have enough for everything you need.
And hmm how is the trend going?
oxfam.org/…/ten-richest-men-double-their-fortunes…
Oh, right.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Treasury Notes are 10x that rate. This mostly just illustrates how scammy and cheap your average bank has grown.
Dasus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, my point here being that even with the puniest of interest rates, you’d still make more than enough just off the interest to live somewhat comfortably. And in reality, you’d make millions and you’d have so much you could risk a little of it while still having those safe investments yielding all the time.
Joncash2@lemmy.ml 2 days ago
Sure they increased their money during the pandemic. People were acting like idiots buying homes and good when they really really shouldn’t have. It’s also true the rich prey on this. Go try to get 100 million in an interest bank account and see what happens, it’s actually harder to leave that kind of money in interest accounts because of how FINRA regulations work. Your money would literally not be insured. You wouldn’t know these things because you just hear other poor people talk about it.
Thus, the real crux of the problem. The poor don’t even understand well enough what’s happening to make a good argument. Between the wanna be rich poor people who talk about unskilled labor as if you just need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps and the poor who hate the rich, no one actually understands how it all works. And it all WORKS BECAUSE you don’t understand. If the poor didn’t respond the way they did during the pandemic, the rich wouldn’t have been able to hoover up all their money. Who’s taking the 22% loans, who’s buying houses they can’t afford on 30+ year mortgages at 8%. All of those actions make the rich richer. You want to stop the rich? Stop wasting your money. But even if you can, the rest won’t and the money will keep funneling up. Thus the real problem. But no one wants to change their life style. Instead they’ll go out and buy expensive handbags and other luxury items on lay away. You can’t stop the rich as long as everyone participates in capitalism.
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
A lot of words for saying “you’re right that one can very safely invest that kind of money and thus I was wrong in saying money doesn’t just generate money, when it very literally does”.
“I pointed a gun at a guy and asked to fuck him in the arse and he just seemed to agree without question. That doesn’t make me a rapist, it makes him a slut.”
Honestly I couldn’t come up with more hilarious victim blaming if I tried. 5/5 for trolling as a deeply brainwashed libertarian fucknut.
Dasus@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Joncash2@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Actually you make a great point. Which is why there’s professional poker, where gamblers can literally make a living. Understanding the difference between being a professional and being able to consistently make money and where to go to do it, is part of the skill I’m talking about. Thanks!
Nalivai@discuss.tchncs.de 1 day ago
Not understanding the difference between the game of skill and the game of chance is exactly the grasp on reality that I expected from you based on this thread.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Bankruptcy is a tool for discharging debt, not a metric for business failure.