"Rich Man’s Burden"

Is it really a burden?:

Rich Man’s Burden, by Dalton Conley, Commentary, NY Times: For many American professionals, the Labor Day holiday yesterday probably wasn’t as relaxing as they had hoped. They didn’t go into the office, but they were still working..., they were unable to turn off their BlackBerrys, their laptops and their work-oriented brains. ...

[I]t is now the rich who are the most stressed out and the most likely to be working the most. Perhaps for the first time since we’ve kept track of such things, higher-income folks work more hours than lower-wage earners do. ...

This is a stunning moment in economic history: ... Today, the more we earn, the more we work, since the opportunity cost of not working is all the greater (and since the higher we go, the more relatively deprived we feel). ...

It would be easy to simply lay the blame for this state of affairs on the laptops and mobile phones that litter the lives of upper-income professionals. But ... less visible forces have given birth to this state of affairs.

One of these forces is America’s income inequality, which has steadily increased since 1969. ... If we divided the American population in half, we would find that those in the lower half have been pretty stable over the last few decades... However, the top half has been stretching out like taffy. In fact, as we move up the ladder the rungs get spaced farther and farther apart.

The result of this high and rising inequality is what I call an “economic red shift.” Like the shift in the light spectrum caused by the galaxies rushing away, those Americans who are in the top half of the income distribution experience a sensation that, while they may be pulling away from the bottom half, they are also being left further and further behind by those just above them.

And since inequality rises exponentially the higher you climb the economic ladder, the better off you are in absolute terms, the more relatively deprived you may feel. In fact, a poll of New Yorkers found that those who earned more than $200,000 a year were the most likely of any income group to agree that “seeing other people with money” makes them feel poor.

Because these forces drive each other, they trap us in a vicious cycle: Rising inequality causes us to work more to keep up in an economy increasingly dominated by status goods. That further widens income differences. ... So, if you are someone who is pretty well off but couldn’t stop working yesterday nonetheless, don’t blame your iPhone or laptop. Blame a new wrinkle in something much more antiquated: inequality.

This makes it sound as though the lower number of hours at lower incomes is the result of worker preferences (i.e. from difference in the labor supply curve across income levels). But I don't think that's the whole or even the biggest part of the story, labor demand has likely played a role as well.

Comments

[Real Person from the Real World]

Gimme a break. Few people get access to jobs that pay well. Those that get them are expected to perform. Some that make it live the good life. My boss, a 3rd world entrepreneur, works pretty dam hard, but it is all of his own making. He wants to get rich, and is frustrated, and works all the harder. The local blue collar, millionaires work hard, and sporadically get to play plenty as well. The wife of one I know, just quit her stressful underpaid job with my overly nit-picky employer doing sales, (paid more than I, for fewer hours, and her work additionally included "incentives"), and fell into a great non-sales one by networking at a party, and in the meanwhile, has gone on two vacations in the last 12 months! I haven't had a vacation in over 30 years, nor can I afford to repair my home on my wages. Some people are paid TOO MUCH. The job placement game is one area that is a problem here. Too many resumes to read, too many lies, too many games by hiring gatekeepers, too many low paid crap and commodity jobs, too many sales jobs.

[Real Person from the Real World]

Btw, I have a master's degree, almost took a second one, and most of the people who work for more money and fewer hours have barely got a bachelors! AND, I end up doing some of their work they are just are not as good at doing, in addition to my own work!

[bakho]

Data please? There is no indication that his comments are factual.

Isn't he defining "rich" as above the median income?
"If we divided the American population in half" Is this the way sociologists treat economics?

[ken melvin]

I agree, the study looks at the upper levels and seems to know very little about what goes on elsewhere.

[Noni Mausa]

My first impulse was to look around for the violins.

But Conley makes one true and important statement:The result of this high and rising inequality is what I call an “economic red shift.” Like the shift in the light spectrum caused by the galaxies rushing away, those Americans who are in the top half of the income distribution experience a sensation that, while they may be pulling away from the bottom half, they are also being left further and further behind by those just above them.The separation of worlds is one of the things that makes the increasing inequality possible. The lower 50% with their "stable" incomes are one galaxy, and who cares what's happening in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud this morning? Meanwhile, the rushing galaxies of the rich increasingly separate out into the various levels of social standing, with concerns and priorities which separate the $5 millionaires from the billionaires as surely as I am separated from the street people living only a couple of miles from my middle-class home.

The separation of galaxies means the loss of sympathies across the divides, which means a disabling of democracy. Good old Adam Smith (I'm liking him better every day) said:Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many.

A handy metaphor: the new skyscraper in Dubai. I was watching a piece about it, and was startled when they said that all the empty land there was one reason they could build so tall. "A tall building requires a lot of land to stand on," said the architect. I always thought the opposite- that scarce land encourages building higher. But that's due to the cost of the land, not the engineering restrictions of steel, stone and glass which rule the tallest buildings.

Smith's assertion is an engineering statement: extreme wealth in a few will necessarily be accompanied by many people paid at a low level and scrambling for a living. The higher the wealth, the more flattened and extensive the land it needs to stand on.

Noni

[Icarus]

Also keep in mind, the tax burden of the professional wealthy (the $200k people) is quite high. Part of the stress is that while their lives are consumed with work, much of that money is being confiscated. This is why many college educated elites think democratically, but vote republican.

[Icarus]

Real Person...

You have an uncanny ability to simply blame everyone else. It's someone else's fault, huh, that you can't obtain financial stability?

I suspect what you need to do is simply look in the mirror, and evaluate the poor choices you must have made.

People with decent master's degrees in tech, with a good work ethic, and a commitment to skill acquisition, do quite well. Half of Silicon Valley is full of them.

In any field, some succeed, some fail. It's not because of the resumes, or the foreign workers, or the sales incentives. Some people just aren't able to cut it.

[Warland]

Icarus,

You really live in the best of all possible worlds, don't you? Perfect meritocracy. How else could you assume with such certainty someone else's poor choices?

[Bruce Wilder]

The reach of labor laws, which protect workers against exploitation by their employers, has been continually scaled back during the Reagan era. The exceptions for "professional" and "managerial", which deprived the "salaried" of both the right to overtime pay and the ability to say, "no", has made serfs of vast numbers of so-called knowledge workers. Part of the mythology that protects this system of ruthless domination and exploitation is that it becomes more intense as one climbs the hierarchical ladder of the corporate kingdom. And, this article enacts the myth. But, it is b.s.

The top of the income pyramid is, generally, a very relaxed place. It is among the servants, given status instead of compensation, deprived of legal protections and bargaining power, that things have become especially stressful. Especially, now, that the HELOC is gone.

[BRLEED]

The comments about the top of the income pyramid are correct. The top of the pyramid - 1 percentile earn 50 percent of all income. The the bottom 50 percent that is 150 million income recipients, earn the other half of all income.

Whether that is a relaxed place depends on whether we are discussing a business owner or a worker bee with high income. There is nothing relaxing about a worker bee with a high income who works day and night. But the top one percent essentially do no have to work.

Now to evoke A. Smith "Wealth of Nations" is to forget the rest of the economists who followed Smith from Ricardo, Marx, Keynes and the quantitative econs of the 20th Century.

Starting with Germany under Bismark/Metternick, advanced industrial states figured that reform was better than social upheaval, remembering the times of the French Revolution through the Paris Commune in 1870. These same Conservative German Reformers were copied by Lloyd George in Britain, and TR/FDR in the U.S. Again, reform sure beats social upheaval.

We are coming back to this argument again, due to statistically provable income inequality. Ignore income maldistribution only at great peril to the stability of society as a whole (see Anatomy of Revolution, Harvard Press, Crane Brinton), so says 400 years of history.

[im1dc]

(My apologies if this does not precisely fit this thread)

This guy, Mr. Hoenig, gets it, too bad he doesn't have a vote until 2010. Talk is cheap.

Fed Official Says Institutions Must Be Allowed to Fail

By BLOOMBERG NEWS September 1, 2008

"The president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, Thomas M. Hoenig, said on Monday that for economies to work best, institutions must be allowed to fail.

"Economies must “find a balance between financial stability and a stable price environment and in doing so must be able to allow individual institutions to fail,” Mr. Hoenig said in a speech in Buenos Aires.

"Changes in financial markets combined with the subprime mortgage crisis have “raised anew questions about the role of central banks in maintaining financial stability,” he said.

"The subprime mortgage collapse has taken a toll on banks and other financial companies, which have reported $514 billion of writedowns since the start of 2007. The Fed rescued Bear Stearns from bankruptcy in March, facilitating the firm’s merger with JPMorgan Chase by lending against $29 billion of Bear securities.

“Financial crises will occur despite our best efforts to prevent them,” Mr. Hoenig said in prepared remarks at an event held by Argentina’s central bank. The too-big-to-fail issue, he said, “will only grow in importance as the consolidation of the financial industry grows in both size and scope in future decades.”

"Earlier Monday, a Federal Reserve governor, Randall Kroszner, said that the housing slump in the United States and financial turmoil have spread to global emerging markets, slowing growth and bringing stock market declines.

"In early August, the Fed said that more banks had tightened lending for homes, small businesses and credit cards. About 75 percent of United States banks indicated they had raised standards on prime mortgage loans, up from 60 percent in the previous survey, the central bank said.

"Mr. Hoenig dissented from a rate cut on Oct. 31 because of inflation concerns. Mr. Hoenig does not vote this year and will vote next in 2010."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/business/economy/02hoenig.html?dlbk

My point in posting this article is to show there are people in authority opposed and unhappy with the current Bernanke/Bush Policy of GOVT bailouts for Wall Street Corps, Wall Street financiers and the world's multi-Billionaires b/c they are aware doing so interferes with the natural function of free markets.

Propping up demand by suppling cash flow to failed organizations and business models is doing more harm to our country than good, imo, b/c ultimately we must end up at the new price equilibrium anyway.

[lark]

In tech, in the U.S., the AVERAGE number of hours worked per week is 71. (I guess those offshoreable fields are more and more like the Chinese manufacturing jobs!)
http://tinyurl.com/5fzsl7

When I entered this field in the 80's that was no way no how the case. It has changed. I think it's mostly about the way that even highly skilled labor now a days is treated like dirt. There's always somebody cheaper elsewhere who wants your job.

[KThomas]

Great article, and very true. Most of my friends are in this bracket, and let me tell you, they have time for Jack and Sh%t. I see them once a year.

Isn't it fun living in the Mercantile Corporated States of America? Now get to work, ye surfs!

[Patricia Shannon]

If those rich whiners are unhappy with their lot, they can quit their high-paid jobs for lower-paid jobs. At their salaries, surely they have plenty of savings, so they might not even have to work.

[PeonInChief]

This argument--that the highest-paid workers suffer the most stress--reappears every 25 years or so. It hangs around, encouraging the highly-paid to take more vacations and practice yoga, until someone produces a study that shows the obvious--that lower-paid workers in jobs that provide no autonomy (line workers, secretaries, clerks and the like) actually suffer much greater stress. Then the articles appear that show that stress really isn't so bad and that paid vacations for lower-wage workers and subsidized yoga classes aren't necessary. Lower-wage workers handle the stress well--until it kills them.

Shall we all watch the trajectory of this go-round?

[outsider]

outsider says...

I recall a study that stress occurs on workers when the assembly line speeds up.

If an executive feels overworked, he cancels a few meetings.

Another got representative volunteers from these two classes drunk. Net result: no-one could tell by phone or memo the executive was "impaired", but they could sure as hell tell that the assembly line worker was!

Wonder whose job is more important?

[a]

Don't know, when I was growing up, the joke about doctors was that they worked in the mornings and played golf in the afternoon. That's not a joke any more, is it? Also Wall Street was seen as a cushy job not because of the high pay but because the hours were so short. So I do think something may have changed, and the well-to-do are working more. But I can't say I would draw any conclusions from this.

[Donald A. Coffin]

What bakho said: "Data please? There is no indication that his comments are factual."

It seems that the data are hard to find in any published form for the US, but I thnk the Census Public Use samples might be a place to look for actual real information on this question. Unfortunately, access to the data is not available online, so it's hard to do anything spontaneous with it.

[Icarus]

The average number of hours an IT worker works in the US is NOT 71. That statistic is simply wrong.

And...we must keep something in mind. Not all stress is equal. Keeping up with the Jones' can cause stress, but, that doesn't compare to the stress of paying for food, or paying rent.

We cannot equalize the two. The stress of living month to month is simply not the same as the stress of watching your capital gains suffer.

[Icarus]

And...

Most of you, I suspect, will feel that the stress of the poor must be met with more handouts from the central coffers.

This is where we disagree. We must openly talk about the stress of a paycheck to paycheck life, and convince them that procreating is a risky move.

We cannot change the fact that the poor have it tough. What we can do is hlep them make better choices. Living paycheck to paycheck, and having a child in that financial environment, is a recipe for a heart attack.

[tew]

Why do you refer to high income people as "rich". Somebody with a trust fund and expectations of a tax-free seven figure inheritance can work a low stress, lower paying job. That person is not high income, but is very rich. There are many of these folks in the big cities and sprinkled throughout the land.

The stressed out folks making a couple hundred grand a year are probably not rich by American standards. If they stopped working for a year their standard of living would drop far and fast. That's not rich. Now these folks could live below their spending power by saving what's left after taxes. After a couple decades they too would be somewhat "rich", but only after living most of their life spending at a low rate. Catch 22.

[Jim D]

I work 80 hour weeks, and make about 250% of what my brother makes, working 38.

Yeah, that's stress - I don't like working 80 hours any more than anyone. But having made my brother's wage as well, I'll take my stress - though my brother seems to have very little stress at all.

Oh, and it really cheeses me off when folks talk about "rich". Define terms, or don't use them. My rich, I assure you, isn't your rich. In some parts of the country, $200k/yr/family is unspeakably rich. In others, it's merely comfortable, just as $35k/yr/family is comfortable in some parts, while being borderline impoverished in others. And, lastly, $10k is merely poor in some places, and utterly homeless and destitute in others. Define your terms.

[Just don't tell me you're not rich]

Coupla troll clowns spouting nonsense they picked up elsewhere (those sheep brains, ya know). The income classes in the study are well-defined so the first troll isn't even making sense in calling for terms to be defined. They already are. I know you heard that argument made somehwere - define terms - but you should try thinking every once in awhile as you are carrying holy water for the right.

But more generally, people are laughing derisively at that argument - as they should - it's stupid:

Sorry, Pal, but You're Rich
By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Aug. 27, 2008, at 5:51 PM ET

. . .the business pundit class has been griping that people who make $250,000 a year aren't really wealthy, especially if they live in and around New York; San Francisco; or Washington, D.C. (Check out this CNBC debate, for example.) . . .

I have two pieces of bad news for the over-$250,000 crowd. First, the reversal of some of the temporary Bush tax cuts is probably inevitable, given the Republican fiscal clown show of the past eight years. Second, I regret to inform you that you are indeed rich. . . .

In dealing with aggregate nationwide numbers, we should of course take account of the significant differences in the cost of living from state to state. It's obvious that $250,000 doesn't go as far in Santa Barbara, Calif., or Manhattan—or in most places where CNBC viewers, employees, and guests live—as it does in Paducah, Ky. As census data show, state median incomes vary from $65,933 in New Jersey to $35,971 in Mississippi. But even in wealthy states, $250,000 ain't bad—it's nearly four times the median income in wealthy states like Maryland and Connecticut. And even if you look at the wealthiest metropolitan areas—Washington, D.C. ($83,200); San Francisco ($73,851); Boston ($68,142); and New York ($61,554)—$250,000 a year dwarfs the median income.

But people in Georgetown mansions don't necessarily compare themselves to fellow Washingtonians in Anacostia. . . . And here the CNBC crowd has a point. It is certainly true that in a few ZIP codes and neighborhoods, brandishing a $250,000 salary is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. There is a significant number of rich people—including a healthy contingent of filthy rich people—in places like New York City and San Francisco. If you want to live in a neighborhood where starter homes cost $1 million, and you want to send your kids to private schools, and you want to go on great vacations and have a beach house, then $250,000 likely won't cut it. For people in this situation, the knowledge that they're doing better than 98 percent of their fellow Americans is little solace when the investment banker down the street has just pulled down a $2 million bonus.

But the number of places where $250,000 stretches you is small indeed—certain parts of Greenwich, Conn.; several neighborhoods in Manhattan; some of California's coast. Even in the most exclusive communities where the wealthy congregate, $250,000 is still pretty good coin. Consider this: CNNMoney recently ranked America's 25 wealthiest towns. In all of them, someone making $250,000 would have a difficult time buying his dream house. But in all of them, making $250,000 means you're doing better than most of your neighbors. Even in America's richest town, New Canaan, Conn., the median income is $231,138.

I await the tidal wave of e-mails and blog posts from self-made, hardworking, accomplished people who earn $250,000 but who don't feel financially secure and who don't consider themselves rich, especially compared to the venture capitalist next door. Having spent my entire adult life in and around Washington, Boston, and New York, I feel you. I'm eager to listen and empathize. Tell me all about how home prices in areas with good public schools are insanely expensive. Tell me about how many other seemingly undeserving people make so much more. Tell me about your proposals to devise an income tax system that accounts for geographically divergent costs of living (the Alternative Yuppie Tax?). Just don't tell me you're not rich.

[Mr Duncan]

This article is about hiding the rich behind our sympathy for hard-working professionals.

I think a lot of people who are educating themselves and becoming highly paid workers are doing so in jobs that require that total devotion. Lawyers, doctors and MBAs are all getting overworked. It's wrong and I do feel bad for them. I also think overworked doctors are unsafe.

There is a big difference between "rich people" and highly-paid workers. Doctors may make $300,000 or so a year, but few people begrudge them of that. They went to school for 20 years, probably did a year's internship, had residency for at least 4 years (of 80-hr workweeks), and took on tons of debt in the process. Some doctors had a leg up from their parents who paid their tuition, but not most anymore.

Who really wants to be a lawyer? It's a very tough life. Although the schooling is shorter than doctor, it's followed by 70-hr slavish workweeks, usually doing the unattractive job of defending the bad guy against the people he hurt.

The real targets people want to hit are the overwhelmingly, ridiculously compensated folks. These businesspeople are all friends and sit on the boards of each others companies. When it comes time to adjust each others pay, they are quite generous. If the company is successful, they take all the credit, and maybe move that acclaim into a higher-paying job. If it fails, they are given vast sums just to go away.

Nobody operates with these sorts of compensation packages except those who really don't need them. The only way to correct them is to make them so tax-disadvantaged, they're too expensive.

That's what these articles are about: masking the real problem by conflating the rich with the well paid workers.

[Lafayette]

Marx would laugh himself silly

Article: In fact, a poll of New Yorkers found that those who earned more than $200,000 a year were the most likely of any income group to agree that “seeing other people with money” makes them feel poor.

Poor me, poor me. Breaks my heart, it does to think of the misery they must feel at being sooooo relatively poor.

We're supposed to feel sorry for them? Will wonders never cease ...

Because these forces drive each other, they trap us in a vicious cycle: Rising inequality causes us to work more to keep up in an economy increasingly dominated by status goods.

Aka, the Rat Race. Yup, we're suckers for money ... in order to keep up with the Joneses - who are trying to keep up with us.

Wow. What a crazy world we live in.

Veblen, if he saw this, would turn over in his grave. And, Marx would laugh himself silly.

[gordon]

Article: "...the better off you are in absolute terms, the more relatively deprived you may feel".

Maybe professional economists would like to comment on what this means for the value of the marginal dollar of income in the hands of well-off, wealthy and really rich recipients. What is the implication for arguments in favour of progressive taxation?

[ken melvin]

$10k/yr is destitute anywhere in the US. Anyone who thinks $35k is comfotable should try it.

[S Brennan]

Writing replies to hogwash can be such a chore...thank you PeonInChief for your efforts:
This argument--that the highest-paid workers suffer the most stress--reappears every 25 years or so. It hangs around, encouraging the highly-paid to take more vacations and practice yoga, until someone produces a study that shows the obvious--that lower-paid workers in jobs that provide no autonomy (line workers, secretaries, clerks and the like) actually suffer much greater stress. Then the articles appear that show that stress really isn't so bad and that paid vacations for lower-wage workers and subsidized yoga classes aren't necessary. Lower-wage workers handle the stress well--until it kills them.

Shall we all watch the trajectory of this go-round?

Posted by: PeonInChief | Link to comment | September 02, 2008 at 01:41 PM

[Lafayette]

This argument--that the highest-paid workers suffer the most stress--reappears every 25 years or so.

Typically written by a stressed-out sociologist in the NYT Opinion column ...

[gordon]

Ah, Peoninchief, you make me think of stomach ulcers. Remember when stressed managers complained of their ulcers and implied that those ulcers proved how stressed they were and therefore how hard they worked? Then a medical researcher showed that these ulcers arose from infection by Helicobacter Pylori. Oh, dear.

[Real Person from the Real World]

Icky, I do have a work ethic, which is WHY I have lasted as long as I have where I am at. AND, my choice to care for an elderly parent for 10+yrs prior, was not an easy choice but one I think made my parent's last years better, to my own loss. However, I invested in education, and continually find less educated people being paid more (like sales people) unable to write business emails, and do more technical skills, like use a VMS portal. This crap detail work is constantly dumped on me, while because of my conservatism with money and bills, keeps me from dumping this crap job for something better. Meanwhile, because I know technology, my employer discusses it with me. He cannot do that with some others, as they are still confused by technology. I am continually called upon to show them how to do something. I am support desk, office manager, front end, receptionist, content writer, etc all rolled into one low wage.

[Real Person from the Real World]

Icky, bottom line, don't make assumptions about someone you don't know. There are a lot of reasons people make choices, and some that are not economically advantageous, are made for higher reasons then personal gain.

[Kaleberg]

First of all, the rich don't have to work. That's a good definition of being rich. If you HAVE to work for a living, then you are not rich. If a rich man or woman wants to work longer, they can just go for it. If they don't want to work at all, then they don't have to. The number of hours worked by the rich are a matter of fashion and psychology and only weakly related to economic forces.

The fact is that better paid workers are indeed working longer hours, while less well paid workers are working shorter hours. My reference is to "Measuring Trends in Leisure: The Allocation Of Time Over Five Decades" - Mark Aguilar and Erik Hurst - The Quarterly Journal of Economics, August 2007. If you can't get a copy, you can read my take on it at: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/6/12411/05257/1023/381387
(You might not buy my take on it, but I do have some nice charts and some numbers).

Basically, it comes down to exempt versus non-exempt workers. Most better paid workers are exempt from overtime laws. The marginal cost of an additional hour of labor to their employer is zero, so they have been working longer hours.. Less well paid workers are subject to overtime laws. The marginal cost of an additional hour of labor is positive, so their hours have been cut. It's simple economics.

Why would anyone take a non-exempt job? That's easy. They usually pay more, even on an hourly basis. Most of the fun jobs are exempt. They are more likely to be mentally challenging than biologically stressful. (For example, exempt workers have more control over their working conditions, and they get a fixed monthly salary, rather than worrying about how many hours they'll get each week).

[Lafayette]

The idle rich

Kaleberg: First of all, the rich don't have to work. That's a good definition of being rich. If you HAVE to work for a living, then you are not rich.

That depends upon how you define the monetary value of "rich". At what point of income does one no longer need to work?

If the average annual salary, defined by the BLS (as anyone employed over 16 years of age), was a wee bit less than $35K (in 2006) a year, then at what point is earned income, qualified as "rich", mean one can become a member of the "idle rich".

Double that amount? Triple? Quadruple? Quintuple? Where should marginal income tax be increased on the "idle rich"?

[Patricia Shannon]

Lafayette,
It's 3:26 am, and I want to go home, so I won't claim this is thoroughly thought out.

Maybe a person has to support a family w/o working, to be "rich"?

If a person has to work to live at a reasonably comfortable level, they're not rich. They wouldn't be rich until they have saved up enough that they can live at a reasonably comfortable level indefinitely, without working any more. And maybe be able to support a small family. "I'm not going to define "reasonably comfortable", but it doesn't include buying a new Mercedes every 6 months. But it also doesn't mean only having enough money to be able to exist.

[Real Person from the Real World]

There is always something to buy that always requires money. If that were not so, I imagine there might be people who lived at home, like peers of the realm. In reality, I doubt these people exist anymore. Governments are alway cash hungry.

If we used the definition of rich as "not having to work," you would have to be someone collecting money from very large investments or paid by a trust that paid out so much, you could afford to buy indefinitely, because, as I've said there is always something more to buy. No one just sits in a box somewhere.

So, by what definition is Bill Gates NOT rich? He works/ed, altho he is retired now. While he is retired and could stay at home, I am sure he still works, if only to flit around and practice his philanthropy.

Some retirees MUST work. Take a look at all the aged sample ladies at Costco. I've seem them there, in their 90's! Even some who could live reasonably on less and not work, do work.

I think rich is when you can afford to spend on reasonable non-essentials without fear you will have to cut back somewhere on essentials.

[Icarus]

Real Person,

Your explanations just don't make sense. You blame other's for your 'low wages', and yet, after all this purporte deducation and experience, you still are help desk or a receptionist? ? Really? That just doesn't make any sense.

Either you just didn't manage your career well, and didn't "read the tea leaves", and acquire the skills which would add value to the economy (ie, like learning some module in SAP, or Hyperion, or even something basic like .Net work), or, you CHOSE to avoid such maneuvering in the name of 'family' or something else.

Either way, it's your doing.

I work in consulting, and run a sliver of my company's practice. I hire/fire all the time. People with decent skills, and good business sense get hired, and they get kept.

Likewise, there are others, who are essentially cranks, who bitch at the coming brown wave, and imagine themselves to be this high value asset, screwed by 'the new brown man'.
It's just a joke, this excuse.

We all have parents to take care of, families to manage, tough decisions to make. In that atmosphere, our obligation to the security of ourselves, and our loved ones, is to make financially practical and prudent decisions.

It's just not that hard. Don't confuse not having the right skills, or making poor choices, with the problems of H1b servitude (which, isn't all that bad in the scheme of global labor), or off-shoring.
If you really were of great value, companies would have competed to keep you. If you're working the front desk, and ordering lunch for the others...well, there's a reason.

[Lafayette]

PS: They wouldn't be rich until they have saved up enough that they can live at a reasonably comfortable level indefinitely, without working any more.

I launched this subject (regarding the "idle rich") somewhat mischievously. Because, we really don't know what "rich" means, that is, just where does it begin. Whilst me know what "richer" means, in a comparative sense with regard to our neighbors.

For tax purposes, however, being richer is not a good enough definition. Obama proposes to raise taxes on those who earn $250,000 -- as I recall in his proposal. That is certainly not the idle rich. Some professionals make that kind of money. A few specialist doctors make that much, but work wearisomely to do so. Many lawyers and some finance executives.

Wherever that threshold is, the progressiveness of the tax should rise sharply. I keep harping on this and, in a way, I apologize -- but I feel it has become apparently necessary.

There are -- at least -- three reasons:
1) In some sectors, namely Finance, it prompts people to be greedy by risking aberrantly other people's monetary values. I'm sure that the US will try to find a way to regulate away the reckless abandon demonstrated by the Financial Golden Boys. But, in fact, it would be far simpler just to tax it way. Besides, it would produce a tax revenue stream that would otherwise go unused, that is, not return immediately to economic activity.
2) It has polluted our political process by introducing cronyism into government, for purposes of patronage. It has made a rot of our political class and even our governmental process. Lobbyist lawyers prowling the halls of Capitol hill to assure earmarked monies for states ... and getting paid handsomely for it. Or, doing the same for companies, and getting paid VERY HANDSOMELY for it. They are behaving like pimps.
3) The tax revenues can be spent on both reducing the national debt and Infrastructure Spending that WILL put people back to work and give the economy a boost. Enough of this tax rebate nonsense -- it goes mostly into savings for middle class and gives the economy only a mediocre boost. Getting people off the dole and into jobs would be far, far more preferable as an economic policy goal. And likely more lasting as well.

No one wants the government micro-managing the economy. As usual, there has to be a middle ground by which people CAN indeed get rich. But not as rich as Croesus ... or Bill Gates. It is neither necessary nor economically suitable.

I've yet to see here in this forum one cogent argument for the status of being Super Rich. I can think of a dozen for doing away with the status. (Sweden taxes the piss out of them. The economy seems untroubled.)

[hari]

Both you and Icy have good points....

Let me relate to developments thirty years ago or more when we professionals were being recruited at 10k/mth taxfree!
Recall DM/FR were at parity for a while when I was at OECD, and we also had taxfree access to the wine cellar of OECD Chateau de la Muette.

Marquis you can't get it better today, I would guarantee you that.

At EEC/EU, the budget was calculated in ECU (european currency unit) which is equivalent to Euro (after Maastricht). Rates for top professionals were at 10k/mth duty-tax free, etc.

I recall my friend reminding me that German Chancellor didn't make that much a month (at the time). But things have changed a lot since then with paucity of not only EU leaders with merit but also the professional cadres.

Sometimes ideas cost a lot of money...and nations are prepared to accomodate it (Bill Gates' comes to mind!). However, in context of globalization, I suspect the trend is downward given the macroeconomic pressure from mainland China and South Asia (with billions still in poverty!).

[Real Person from the Real World]

Icarus: I am not TITLED help desk. You are a fool. This is a small 3rd world entrepreneur, not a big corp. I wear many hats and do what has to be done, mainly because those one or two (hired specifically for sales) just don't do it, because it doesn't add to their personal bottom line, so if they are asked to do it, they do a poor job at it, it they get around to it. I am FRONT END for this business, actually more of an executive admin, except without the title, pay, or benefits. You work for some huge company with secretaries and sales people and they are all titled with a specific job role. You don't have that in one of these foreign outposts for the 3rd world, here in the US. Furthermore, there are much more specialized aspects to my job. Especially my ability to use ENGLISH better than my employer. One problem I have is that my main job reference IS MY EMPLOYER who will not be happy if I try to leave. I have to find another job first, and it is made more difficult my the various barriers put up to job hunters, you, of course, being an exception that is so high and mighty, your employer kisses your feet every day.

[Icarus]

Real Person...

Jeez, your excuses are sillier than I even imagined. Exec Admin? Really?

Real Person...there are great jobs out there, for qualified people. The first step in getting one is knowing the difference between real qualifications, and the pointless rantings of a person, however "real", who simply didn't not make it in the game.

As I've mentioned, I constantly hire, and keep up with the hirings of the big 4, and a handful of boutique consulting firms, and, the Indian consulting firms. If you really are smart, and experienced, getting a job making $80-100k is easy. I mean, really easy.

I mentor some younger college grads. So far, I've been able to place 9 of them in such entry level jobs. Get a master's degree, and get certified in some area of SAP, and post your resume on Monster/Dice. Voila. You'll get 10 calls within 2 weeks.

It really isn't all that tough. People just find excuses, and reasons to whine. Instead, why not actually pursue, and employ a strategy towards success?

[Lafayette]

Icky: Jeez, your excuses are sillier than I even imagined. Exec Admin? Really?

Really, Icky? Sillier than yours?

I smell burnt feathers ....

[Icarus]

Lafayette...

You should beward of people in the industrial west, who lament the great opening which is 'globalization' in the 21st century, while claiming they have skills and talent, and hence 'should' be rewarded.

This is the problem, and "real person" (an apt name, as he does seem to represent the cluelessness of a tired american middle class) is a great example.

If you follow many of his posts, he expresses great anguish and vitriole at foreign owned, or foreign run 'body shops', which he then chooses to work for. He claims he does the work of others, but is paid a bit above minimum wage. He says he has a master's degree, and has a ton of experience, but, is not rewarded due to the greed, or selfishness of the owners. And this little sob story somehow becomes representative of labor migration issues which american labor faces.

It's just all BS, and I hope you see that. What it does show is that the US has a caste of underqualified, and quasi-delusional laborers who wish for non-competition. They feel entitled to jobs they can't get, and the profess skills they really don't have.

Such delusions allow us to imagine an evil bogeyman, which is the H1b, or the foreigner in general.

Lafayette...this is no different than semi-skilled half literate frenchman vilifying the potential eastern european or african migrations. Just beware such falsh-anguish. What they're really saying is that they simply can't get the job they want, because the skills they have just don't warrant it, and they want to blame the victors of global migration.