Almost (not all, but almost all) everyone reading this has access to their own computer and internet which already places them way beyond the world mean. The odds are very high they’re in the global 1% (household income >$34K) and they were raised by those who also were 1%-ers.
By any rational measure that puts us in the front car and still wanting more. And that’s not a condemnation. That’s a reality, which means perhaps we shouldn’t try to pretend that where particularly different from the people we choose to paint as greedy. We can pursue policy just as effectively without a false sense of moral superiority.
Wanting, waiting, or worrying are all activities a preoccupied person thinks they are doing, instead of paying attention to what they are actually doing right now. They are not quite actual plans in themselves.
Requiring fairness is not the same as trying to acquire anything. It would be wishful thinking to say that it matters how much I get simply because I am me and I think I am special. No economy which puts the needs of the individual before that of society is ever going to succeed in managing resources.
Kind of a sideline (I don’t disagree that we have it good and still want more), but the numbers are relative in both space and time. There are big differences between $34K in a 3rd world country, $34K in Mudpuddle Mississippi, and $34K in San Francisco or Boston. $34K for a young single person just starting out on their own is different from $34K for the head of a family looking ahead at retirement and increased medical bills due to aging. It’s reasonable to want more if your lifestyle is relatively precarious and difficult.
Kind of rambling, but cost of living differences, inflation, lack of a social safety net, smaller household sizes, etc., all make us not just want but actually need more, even though we are pretty well off, and even if we weren’t greedy.
Part of the point that I’m trying to make is that greed is a fundamental problem for everyone, and that our culture, which has been indirectly crafted by the wealthy to maximize profit extraction, makes the problem worse. Money and its accumulation is at the center of life because our society makes it necessary for living and directly proportionate to that amount of power/ choice one has in life. Money means you can afford heat so you’re not cold, medicine so you aren’t sick, electricity so you can function in the modern world, a car so you go where you have to go, rent so you have a roof over your head, water so you can drink and bathe and cook, the list goes on, and these are the basics. If you have issues that prevent you from getting a regular job, and you don’t have wealth to fall back on, you are screwed.
Money is power, power is choice, choices make life worth living.
If money was not the basis of power, it would matter significantly less, and the lengths we would go to in order to get it would be significantly less.
Every person needs a base measure of power, like, a vote, but that vote needs to be meaningful, it needs to be more than choosing the lesser of two evils every single time, so everyone must be enabled to run for office. Not everyone will run. Some will exploit the system. People already exploit it and we suffer for it. Holding office should be portrayed as a dutiful position with a moderate wage and the oversight of the entire community, which means the people need to be informed. Money should be separated from politics to ensure that the wealthy do not accumulate even more power at the expense of the community.
As a note: I don’t find it hypocritical to want to not have to scramble every month to meet basic needs, I don’t see that as greedy, I see that as the shallow end of the pool of desperation. Greedy is when you go beyond what you need at someone else’ expense.
Every single person I talk to says that they find more security in being exploited by somebody else - even when they have no trust for them. It galls me because that’s like saying that one’s own work has no value! So why should you then expect businesses to treat you fairly if all you bring is a warm replaceable body? The middle classes get conned the worst. On the streets where people don’t expect to get those jobs, some hope for them but many are less gullible.
So much of this. If someone who doesn’t know what you know, who doesn’t have your experience, who can’t generate your ideas, if that person can still claim exclusive ownership of what’s in your head, you are valued on the dumbest corporate criteria and end up having no value at all.
Surely fairness is that we earn median world wage. My earning north of $60K instead of $10K is simply a matter of where I was born: unearned privilege if there ever was one.
Yes, it is reasonable, although there’s a difference in precarious in “will my child starve”, “will my family be out on the street next week”, and “if I’m outsourced (again), how will we pay rent in two months?”. I’m lucky enough to be in the last category (a typical 1%-er), but yes, I still want more.
Pretty much everyone earning $500/year to $500K/year feels precarious (okay, I don’t really know anyone above $100K, but I’m pretty certain security doesn’t change). The only thing that changes is the definition of difficulty and risk.
Again, I’m not saying one shouldn’t fight for what you believe is best. I simply believe that people as wealthy as we are shouldn’t be throwing stones.
(There also seems to be a misconception that you can get the same lifestyle in low cost countries at a lower price. You can’t (in fact most of the comforts we assume are more expensive). What you can get is some sort of lifestyle at a lower price. But let’s not pretend that life at $10K a year doesn’t involve a great deal of relative privation.
Actually, no, they’re not. They’re basics for you and me, because we’re incredibly wealthy as a product of a materialistic lifestyle. But for the majority of the world, these are luxuries. Let’s not pretend we can get all these luxuries without putting money at the center of our life.
There’s all sorts of things that we need to produce a better, fairer society. But pretending we’re morally different from those earning more than us is not one of them. I’ll happily advocate for a 50% tax rate at $60K. Do I expect lots of people to disagree with me? Sure. Are they greedy because they don’t agree with me? Not any more than I am.
Totally confused. I’ve not been demonized at all. My apologies if I conveyed that impression.
Not you, clearly . But what level of calling out of the Kochs amounts to demonization? The clearly stated motivation and results speaks for itself. Let me ask you something: how much tone-policing and false equivalency should we have to put up with?
Yes, thank you for pointing that out. If that “if you can’t afford it, then move” logic worked then the obvious solution would be for everyone in North America and Western Europe to move to Nepal and somehow live like hundreds of millions of kings. Which when you picture it, is ridiculous.
That’s true. That number caught my attention - it’s about what a full-time minimum wage job paid until quite recently (2007, really?!).
As long as my safety and the safety of everyone I know is threatened, I will throw (proverbial) stones at those who threaten that safety.
As for whether or not we can get these ‘luxuries’ no lets actually not use that term, because luxuries are relative and it sounds accusatory, without putting money at the center of our lives, it can be done, it is being done in social democracies where happiness is higher and the relevance of wealth is lower. Money doesn’t have to be the center of every effort in our lives, and the more that it isn’t, the more those of us who don’t have a ton of it can be happy.
As for wanting more: I’d like more, sure, you’d like more, but what exactly are you willing to do to get more? That’s the question.
I’m all for calling out exactly how Koche, Trump, etc. policies are destructive to my view of what society should be. But hazarding a guess as to motivation is the gateway to a long, slow descent. Hatred of the “other” is the meth of any political movement (and God, it is tempting). It makes the practitioner feel good. And it rots their soul.
I’m on the older side and I’ve yet to see (in my lifetime) a positive outcome to a movement that embraces hate. Even when it is well deserved, hate is the soul-killer.
Recent elections have shown just how successful that is (and no, Trump is not a Republican victory - it is everybody’s loss.)
Well, probably the same as the investors mentioned in the original comment that were pushing for greater returns. Use the unspoken threat that if I don’t feel my compensation is adequate (and there happens to be a job that pays better elsewhere) to take my services. Others will verbalize the threat. Investors are no different. The threat is investors sell the stock and go elsewhere.
I’m trying my best not to embrace hate of the other, as I know it leads down a dark road, however, I do believe that we should rally against ‘greed’ as a concept; we should rally against the undermining of everyone for the temporary benefit of a few. It is those that contribute to our future that should be rewarded and admired.
My point about what are you willing to do refers as much to the ends as the means, but you provide a perfectly rational (in the short term) response within a money driven culture. What I’m getting at is, that short term mind set that we have to overcome. An investor wanting increasing returns is a seemingly benign desire for them to have, but you can’t keep getting more from an increasingly small pool without it running out, which is detrimental to everyone, including the investor, but in a long term sense.
If money is not the only means of power, it becomes less important, it becomes secondary and the desire for more money becomes secondary, and we come one step closer to a better world. It’s a big step, and a significant hurdle, but it may be one of the few ways we can keep our civilization alive.
I’m all for calling out exactly how Koche, Trump, etc. policies are destructive to my view of what society should be. But hazarding a guess as to motivation is the gateway to a long, slow descent. Hatred of the “other” is the meth of any political movement (and God, it is tempting). It makes the practitioner feel good. And it rots their soul.
I’m on the older side and I’ve yet to see (in my lifetime) a positive outcome to a movement that embraces hate. Even when it is well deserved, hate is the soul-killer.
Hate is a motivating force for the intelligentsia ('sup, Marxists) and drives discussion. It is, indeed, bad for public policy, which is why those without impunity on the left come up with compromises that work. The piles of motivated cash from the rich right, dispensed over generations, have actual impunity, so history and consequences are removed from policy consideration.
. But what level of calling out of the Kochs amounts to demonization? The clearly stated motivation and results speaks for itself. Let me ask you something: how much tone-policing and false equivalency should we have to put up with?