It's NOT Work That Makes Rich People

[kpete]

http://jobsanger.blogspot.com/2023/03/its-not-work-that-makes-rich-people.html

[czarjak]

1. Being born rich or marrying rich have much better odds. Believe me.

[EYESORE 9001]

2. A wise elder once told me

that if hard work were the path to riches, a ditch digger would be rich as King Croesus.

[Tribetime]

3. I was watching shark tank when one of the sharks made

The 10 million mark in sales from the show. They said their hard work paid off and I was thinking the same thing I work like crazy and am still paycheck to paycheck.

[Maeve]

4. You get rich by having someone else work for you

[brooklynite]

14. Did J.K. Rowling (on welfare when she wrote "harry Potter") oppress her typesetters?

[jaxexpat]

18. They were the grist in her magic mill.

Most of it was done by proles and minions. Excel and Word did the rest.

[Maeve]

23. Artists are a separate group

And didn't use to get rich, before modern mass marketing. Feel free to follow her model to your own wealth

[brooklynite]

28. I don't need to follow a model...

I've retired from a 30+ year career in public service with a guaranteed pension and health care. My wife has moved on to a second career in public service after great success as a private attorney. Not aware of any oppression on either of our parts.

[whathehell]

54. That's nice, but maybe this conversation

Last edited Tue Mar 21, 2023, 06:45 PM - Edit history (1)

isn't about you.

[japple]

56. Try relating to someone in a different world: blue collar worker who humped for big corp.

for 30 years where he didn't receive guaranteed pension and health care (no maternity benefits.) And his wife did house cleaning for for someone who paid her cash under-the-table so he/she wouldn't have to report them as wages.

I'm glad that you are living the good life. Seriously, I'm glad to read about DUers who are successful.

[brooklynite]

89. I'm not disputing that working class people should be paid an appropriate wage and benefits

I challenging the shallowness of a meme that alleges that higher income people are, as a group, responsible for lower pay for the working class.

[Maeve]

75. Stepping back slightly

I do not equate having others work for you to oppression. Nor do I (and many in this thread) think upper-middle class oe "well off" is the same as "rich". (Also, I was quoting an old saying I heard my dad say that I think still is true, but ...whatever)
My step-dad was worth a million or so when he died 10 years ago. He was helped to that by the postwar boom, the GI Bill and his hard work as an engineer. Also having inherited generations-held land. He did not consider himself "rich" and lived very middle class.(million isn't what it used to be) He was able to save when he was young and his money worked for him...nothing wrong with his story UNLESS it is used to blame others without his advantages for their own poverty, to blame them as lazy when the did the best they could in the circumstances No great athletes before the 20th century were rich by their own efforts: few artists were either. Not because they weren't great, but because they weren't born at the right time.
It ain't about the work, its about so much more. And the really wealthy? Even more so.

[progressoid]

53. Yeah, all of those "collectible" figurines and toys were made by happy muggles making middle class

wages in a bucolic middle class world.

[bdamomma]

67. ......

[ananda]

5. This is the mythology, treated as reality, behind white racism and oppression.

My dad's brother used to talk about this all the time, he and his wife
were SO racist, that whole side is very racist and many of them are
biblethumpers as well.

My dad got more racist and rightwing after my mom died and he took
up with a biblethumping Texan who I couldn't stand.

I have nothing to do with them.

[whathehell]

52. The drive to exploit is basically about power and greed..

The profit gained from your labor has no color.

[brooklynite]

6. This is why I hate memes....

First, they're focused on people who already agree with the message. Second, they posit an extremely simple message framing (in this case, "management" vs "labor" or "hard work" means "manual labor" ). Plenty of people (my wife included) have earned a lot in their careers without oppressing the working class.

[BlackSkimmer]

9. Thank you. nt

[multigraincracker]

33. It is never black and white.

It is all gray.
I consider my self rich. The last 5 years of working I ran my butt off. Work ungodly hours. 3 weeks in a row I clocked in 136 hours per week. It was outside at night in all kinds of weather.
I retired 21 years ago. Have no bills. Drive a 23 year old van and a 12 year old focus. Paid cash for them when I bought them. Live in a 1,000sf home I paid cash for.
I feel rich. If you make $12 and hour and only spend $10 of it you are rich. If you make $12 million a year and spend $15 million a year, you are broke.

But that is just me.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

39. Completely agreed.

[whathehell]

81. Perhaps the "opression" you're unaware of might

be glimpsed in the salary gap that exists between you and your wife and that of your respective support staffs...Just a thought.

[brooklynite]

85. IOW different salaries are inherently unfair?

I don’t recall having “support staff” and my wife’s law firm wasn’t paying them minimum wage.

[whathehell]

86. Lol. No, I'm not saying that "different" salaries are inherently

unfair..The unfairness often lies in the DEGREE of difference.

I'm glad your wife's staff wasn't paid "minimum wage", but I would guess their pay to be a VERY small percentage of what she was making.

[brooklynite]

87. How do you propose to value different jobs?

My salary was approximately 1/20th that of my wife’s. Was that unfair in some way? Or are we going with”too much salary is arbitrarily bad”?

[whathehell]

102. I can't answer that question in the context you've presented

since I know what your wife did but not what you did.

I'd answer your last question, by stating that "too little salary is bad" -- The extent to which the large salaries of the few are financed by the small salaries of the many is the issue.

[ret5hd]

7. Kinda long story:

Yesterday spouse and I visited the Dawson Cemetary in New Mexico:

https://www.google.com/search?q=dawson+cemetery+photos&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari&si=AEcPFx5jpOaz0i-pibnxThIHDmlA3HpgxHUymfZH__hhRVeP2RYRP27sf0hPqLTqSEOpFBU5knhSA3E7xqeQp4G0zI0oMc-dut5FqAdb45MVhs74CcZxH4ZkH8P8bkzsMXs3LyE_SloBq3Hb7kckYDJdYL9uvqKVPQ%3D%3D&ictx=1&ved=2ahUKEwiN_6mWh-39AhXuI0QIHUvSD_UQvsQGegQIKxAC#lpg=cid:CgIgAQ%3D%3D

We often do this…not true history buffs, but always interested in local stuff.

Dawson was a coal town, now deserted but definitely NOT forgotten by the locals. Dolores Huerta of UFW fame was raised there. There are yearly reunions of the families from there.

As we walked there were Greek names, Italian names, Spanish, Polish, and other Eastern European names. But the most striking part was the ages of death. Yeah, lots of children etc. But of the men, 25 to 40 years old seemed to be so so so common.

And then there is a section of the site with iron crosses, the victims of two mine explosions back in the early 1900’s. 200+ victims from the first, 100+ from the second.

My point is:
The owners brag about “putting everything on the line”. They deserve their riches because they invested and risked their fortune on an idea, as if an idea is everything.

But, as that flag/bumper sticker/etc says, referring usually to our military, “All Gave Some, Some Gave All”.

And ALMOST 100% of the time, those who gave all were not owners. Only the workers. And those workers are almost always hungry. And cold. Wet, hot, sweaty, dirty, dismembered, scarred, blinded, etc.

That almost never happens to the owners. Yet, according to them, they “deserve” what they have. And sneer at us.

[Evolve Dammit]

19. same is most industries until OSHA and EPA required some serious improvements

[ret5hd]

22. Still the same today:

Oilfield workers lose their hands/fingers…not the owners.

Machinists also.

Linemen get electrocuted, as my cousin did, and a childhood friend lost an arm.

Ditch diggers get buried. Field workers get sprayed with insecticides. Lab workers get exposed to chemicals.

Those knives at the slaughterhouse don’t always limit their reach to the intended, but they never reach all the way to the corporate office.

[orthoclad]

29. You see very few old weldors

[Evolve Dammit]

37. I worked in multiple factories pre-OSHA and most companies are way safer now. Most. I've been in

hundreds over the last three decades. The ones that were sub-standard were fined and made to come into compliance. I acknowledge some states can be different depending on who is at the top of the environmental health and safety agencies. We know who cares more about worker safety.

[electric_blue68]

72. Wow, that's scary. OSHA was enacted when I was finishing HS, and heading to college...

Something I didn't really pay attention to at the time. It was also called (looked up) the Williams-Stieger Bill for the Senator & Representative who championed it.

While we maybe think of it as a factory or outside worker protector, it probably helped office workers, too.

[Evolve Dammit]

74. yes. Asbestos, lead paint and radon to name a few. I do not want to go back to willful ignorance.

[electric_blue68]

76. Yes, thanks for adding that in there.

[Evolve Dammit]

78. I lived it for 32 years. And you're welcome!

[markodochartaigh]

79. "Those knives at the slaughterhouse..."

After high school I worked at the slaughterhouse, the only unskilled job which paid above minimum wage, for a year and a half to save money for college. I have Asperger's and I'm fairly obviously gay. I got stabbed in my hand about an hour before the end of the shift. The foreman came over and fired the guy who had stabbed me, but then he told me to work until the end of the shift and go to the hospital on my own time. So I kept working, bleeding all over. I also have pain from crapal tunnel 45 years later. It was mostly refugees who worked there. I'm so fortunate to have been able to make it out of there, very few workers there were able to escape that life.

[whathehell]

84. I'm so sorry to hear that happened to you

and that you're still suffering with the consequences so many years later. I AM glad, however, that you made it out.

[allegorical oracle]

43. So sadly true. Thanks for that post. nt

[ret5hd]

47. A very short history:

https://www.abqjournal.com/1361033/dawson-cemetery-beautiful-reminder-of-those-who-came-before.html

[BlackSkimmer]

8. Ridiculous. Both my parents were born in Britain to dirt poor families.

Mom grew up in Wales in a family of 6 kids, outhouse in the yard, and no money. Dad grew up in the council housing (the projects) in London. Pure cockney, though he worked hard to lose that accent.

My mother worked like a demon to do well in school, and she graduated from Cardiff University where she got a degree. She then took a job in Canada, where she met my father, who had done the same thing by a different route.

They came to the US, and they worked like hell to achieve "the American Dream", which they did very successfully. I grew up very comfortably because of their hard work. Mom even went back to work after raising us, worked as an accountant until the age of 70.

They taught me the value of hard work, as well as education, and I'll be forever grateful.

[Wednesdays]

21. It depends on how one defines "rich."

I'm sure you're not a billionaire.

As my old sig line said, "No one worth billions ever earned that wealth themselves."

[ret5hd]

24. It is hard, almost impossible...

to break the decades of indoctrination given by everything from schools to churches to parents to media. No matter how many examples to the contrary are shown.

[treestar]

32. one personal example and not the point

how much hard work makes a person a millionaire? Successful American dream is middle class. And even so, some jobs are harder and pay less. Physically harder.

[allegorical oracle]

44. One of my best friends refers to himself as "a street urchin" because he came up in the East end

of London. (Delivered by a midwife.) When my friend was 14, his dad died, so his mom went to work cleaning houses. His mom was Welsh and he stays in contact with his Welsh cousins. He is a good liberal -- proud of the NHS. And he has come to the US and done well, altho' he lost his wife of 35 years this past December and is deeply mourning her. The UK has some really good folks.

[whathehell]

58. What is "ridiculous"?

Do you consider yourself "rich"?

I ask because we're talking about real WEALTH here, not bringing oneself out of poverty and into the middle class. That's something many in America were able to do in post WWII America by virtue, not only of hard work, but of organized labor and FDR's New Deal.

[former9thward]

63. Do you think our economic system had nothing to do with bringing people out of poverty?

[whathehell]

66. Under which administrations?

Reagan era "trickle down" did litte to nothing to discourage poverty.

[former9thward]

73. Our economic system does not change with administrations.

We have a capitalist system no matter the administration. There are changes at the margins but nothing fundamental.

[whathehell]

77. No, what you've deemed "changes at the margins" are more

significant than you seem to realize...What do you think are the core differences between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party?..Why, for instance, do you think there are Labor Unions and a Minimum Wage and a Democratic Party that supports those and a Republican Party that does not?

[former9thward]

83. When a adminsitration changes we do not lose the minimum wage or labor unions.

Labor unions, for example, have been declining as a percent of the workforce since the early 50s -- no matter the administration. The parties put pressure for their interests on the margins but neither tries to change the economic system. Unlike Europe there are no credible socialist parties in the U.S.

[whathehell]

99. ..Not for lack of trying on the part of Republicans.

Please understand that the Labor Movement and the Minimum Wage, like our Social Security and Medicare programs are not "givens". They were instituted by Democrats over STRONG objections on the Right who continue to try to GUT them, if not eliminate them entirely. This is is reflected in things like "Right to Work" laws which try to defund unions, and the GOP's routine refusals to raise the Minimum Wage

The "decline" in union membership, which began in the
early 70's, not the early 50's, did not "just happen"..It was aggressively pursued by Republicans and their Corporate donor base.

Yes, we have a capitalist system but there are different
kinds of capitalism, namely, Regulated and Unregulated and most of our laws are enacted through regulations.



.

[former9thward]

100. The White House disagrees with you on union membership.

Union membership peaked in the 1950s at about one-third of the private sector workforce, but is just over 6 percent today.


https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/09/05/the-state-of-our-unions/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Union_Membership_in_the_United_States,_1960-2020.svg

[whathehell]

101. Lol

While the onset date of the unions' decline isn't
relevant to my overall point, the Whitehouse
would agree with this:

"The percentage of workers belonging to a union peaked in 1954, but the total number of union members peaked in 1979".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_unions_in_the_United_States.


Have a nice one.

[newdayneeded]

90. No offense, but there are CEOs out there

that probably make you and your wife's total career gross income in one bonus. That's the Point about this whole thing, people are made to believe 80k a year is successful (in non California, New York states). When it's 1/400th (per Bernie) of what these upper CEOs make.

Should CEOs, CFOs, etc make more than the 8 to 4 30 workers? Of course! No one's disputing that, but making 400 times those workers amounts? No way!

[Shipwack]

11. "We have fed you all for a thousand years..."

We have fed you all for a thousand years,
And you hail us still unfed,
Though there's never a dollar of all your wealth.
But marks the workers' dead.
We have yielded our best to give you rest
And you lie on crimson wool.
And if blood be the price of all your wealth,
Good God! We have paid in full!

There is never a mine blown skyward now.
But we're buried alive for you.
There's never a wreck drifts shoreward now,
But we are its ghastly crew.
Go reckon our dead by the forges red
And the factories where we spin.
If blood be the price of your cursed wealth,
Good God! We have paid it in!

We have fed you all for a thousand years -
For that was our doom, you know;
From the days when you chained us in your fields
To the strike a week ago.
You have taken our lives, our husbands and wives,
And we're told it's your legal share.
But if blood be the price of your lawful wealth,
Good God! We have bought it fair!
- Source obscure; possibly Rudyard Kipling

[ret5hd]

15. Thank you. ++ to IWW also.

[yonder]

50. +1.

[Upthevibe]

12. Kick. N/T

[panader0]

13. I was a bricklayer for almost 40 years.

My riches are my children and my house and land.

[kpete]

16. I love this

thanks,
kp

[AllaN01Bear]

17. hear hear. rec. my riches were my family and friends and my du friends .

[allegorical oracle]

45. That's so nice. nt

[orthoclad]

30. An old weldor told me

if you take pride in your work, you're working for yourself.
There's some truth to that, but the suits still took home most of the fruits of our labors. Then they closed the factory to go offshore.

[DFW]

49. Amen to that!!

None other than the late, great Stan Lee referred to my wife and daughters as "your fabulous females."

No matter whether you have a billion dollars and consider me a pauper, or have nothing, and consider me wealthy, NOTHING can buy what luck has provided me in the way of my immediate family. THAT is wealth far beyond what many VERY rich people never manage to acquire. Skill and luck may have rewarded you with a huge bank balance, but if you are spending every night alone, wishing you weren't, then your "wealth" is only a number on a computer screen or a bank statement. Some will envy you for it, but few would trade places with you.

[Farmer-Rick]

55. It's all about luck not talent or hard work

Those lucky enough to have gotten on the ground floor of the computer revolution made tons of money. While those who do it today make far less. It was the luck of the draw not the hard work that counted.

Decades ago corporate lawyers were considered greedy, money hungry hacks. Today they are considered valuable professionals. It's all about getting into the right job at the right time at the right place. There are hundreds of millions of artists and writers but how many even make enough to live on? The average good writer barely makes $39,000 a year. But there are a few that make huge amounts. It's all based on luck.

That's what makes capitalism so awful. It's Not your talent, though you would like to credit that, it's Not your careful decisions or hard work that got you rich or a decent life. It was merely luck. And no one wants to admit that.

The luck of being born into a family with excess capital; the luck of working at the right company, the luck of picking the right field to study; the luck of being born when your skills were valued; the luck of being born the right skin color and the right sex and the right religion. So much luck went into your success that to claim credit for it is almost delusional.

Yet you you have trust fund babies all so proud of their success at getting born out of the correct womb. In my next life I will be more careful about the parents I get...oh wait.

[DFW]

88. I don't look at it that pessimistically

I still believe it's true that if you "build a better mouse trap, the world will beat a path to your door." Smarts do help, and I think that careful decisions make a lot of difference. Bill Clinton style. Barack Obama style. Not everyone makes it that big, but not everyone has to. Just that fact that you CAN is enough. I've met them both. They are both pretty intense, driven guys, who have the discipline to channel their ambitions. I sure couldn't, not to that degree. But if they do, well, good for them. Bill Clinton, who grew up in poverty, now says, "I've been rich and I've been poor, and I like rich better." Considering how he grew up, I can understand. Luck sometimes rewards ambition. It never rewards a lack of it.

Working at the "right" company only helps IF you are smart enough to distinguish yourself there. The many millionaires at Microsoft are surely far outnumbered by the ones who never will be. Not everyone succeeds at making their own luck. Some will. They may well sacrifice their own stable family life to get there, but if their ambition for success puts material success above personal happiness, so be it. Their call. I don't see capitalism playing an immense role in that. Is socialism and its promise of egalitarianism responsible for the immense alcoholism in places where it was the dominating ideology (most notably the Soviet Union)?

As for claiming credit for something that should be attributed to luck, I know no one, and I know OF no one (except Trump) who says that their success (those that can claim it, that is) is not at least in part attributed to luck. Of course that is a factor. In that old Yiddish song, a calf is gloomily being brought to be slaughtered, while the farmer asks "who told you to be a calf? Why not be like the swallows flying freely?" But I reject the notion that everyone who made out well only did so because they were lucky, and at the expense of others. I also don't think that all people who are not well off are all necessarily unlucky, any more than Buddhist monks, who have made a vow of poverty, are unlucky. Trashing people who who have made out far better than I did (or ever will) won't make me richer, or them poorer.

Ninety years ago, a political party in the country I now live in convinced enough of the population, devastated by war, to let themselves be talked into mass jealousy. They wanted revenge on the group they were told were responsible for the devastation. I don't want to let myself get talked into that mindset. It got my father in law drafted at age 17 and a leg blown off at age 18. It got relatives of friends of ours gassed at Auschwitz/Birkenau. It can't be allowed to descend to that level again. Now, ninety years later, after the country rebooted its economy, giving everybody 40DM to start out with in 1948, it has let the father of one of my daughter's classmates become worth a hundred million euros because he got the idea to supply car manufacturers with some part he thought would become indispensable if the car manufacturers could be convinced of its benefits. He was persistent, and they ended up agreeing with him. He was smart. You can always claim he was lucky because Germany builds a LOT of cars. But with smarts like that, I have to think he would have come up with some other smart idea, had this one not worked out. Good for him. I'll never have 100 million euros, and don't know what I'd do with it if I did, beyond inviting all of DU to three weeks on Hawaii. He pays his taxes, which are 50% in Germany. I'll never know what he intends to do with it. I'll never care, either. I know his family life isn't great, and his daughter has drug problems. Mine does not. He may have more money than I ever will, but I don't consider him richer, or luckier than I am. This business of "the rich" being some class of uniformly unpleasant, evil, greedy control freaks just doesn't hold water when you take them one by one.

[Abolishinist]

91. Thank you, very well said.

Working hard does not guarantee success, but the more you do it, the better the odds. And in the end, being happy and healthy is the gold standard. In the last month alone, we've had three fairly close friends experience absolutely horrible medical maladies, and all three are very well off financially.

[Farmer-Rick]

97. You have an interesting take on life

Last edited Wed Mar 22, 2023, 01:49 PM - Edit history (1)

But jealousy Is not something I'm interested in. And it is not what I'm saying. I don't care if the filthy rich are nice people. It is not what I'm getting at.

Why is success through luck somehow wrong? If you're lucky there's no shame in that as long as you don't punish those who aren't lucky.

I live a great life. Great children, nice farm, good friends. I wouldn't trade my life for anyone's trust fund. But I know my success is only due to good luck.

Have you ever read the book Freakonomics?

https://books.google.com/books/about/Freakonomics.html?id=mXQVbIRkHegC&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&gboemv=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

He explains how even successful athletes are really just very lucky to have been born in the correct month of the year.

Something as small as having a stupid name can change your life in major ways.

I don't care if the filthy rich got money by being born into free capital. I care that we honor them as if they are some kind of genius. I care that their excessive lifestyles are emulated. I care that people who are unlucky are made to suffer. I care that we ridicule the poor with statements like "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" as if they are not working hard enough.

In the US we give tons of subsidies to the filthy rich in everything but not the unlucky who were born into circumstances beyond their control.

Hitler was a white supremacists. He was not advocating jealousy. He was advocating murder, abuse, genocide and war. He was advocating pride in things we are just lucky to be born into, like skin color, religious heritage, sexual preference and appearances. And he was advocating abusing and killing the unlucky who did not meet his warped standards.

[ck4829]

20. K&R

[Pete Ross Junior]

25. Of course it's work that makes rich people rich.

Other people's work.

Otherwise known as labor being the source of value.

[nuxvomica]

26. There are only two sources of great wealth: luck and theft

And most wealthy families are not all that lucky. Part of the mythology is the way we describe tax increases as a "burden". Taxing the rich is said to "increase their tax burden." But the metaphor is strained and misleading because we think of a working person as literally having to carry heavier weights to pay their taxes but for wealthy people how can you say they are hobbled, their backs broken, by any increase in their taxes.

[allegorical oracle]

46. Umm...would add inheritance. A friend of mine inherited $90,000 from her grandma and has parlayed it

to more than a million now through real estate. All some people need is a leg up.

[meadowlander]

80. Inheritence is luck.

It depends on being related to someone rich enough to leave you something.

[world wide wally]

27. When you look at the hierarchy of the workplace, what you will find is

that the harder the work, the less money an employee makes. A laborer works the hardest and earns the least. The job superintendent hardly works at all and makes the most. The owner does nothing and he is rollling in dough.

[ShazzieB]

64. Absolutely true!

[bdamomma]

82. that

is so true.

[orthoclad]

31. My favorite graph

?itok=fh64bNke

from those flaming radicals at the Congressional Budget Office. Guess which group does all the work?

[FakeNoose]

34. It's possible to become rich through one's own work

For example, Stephen King and John Grisham to name a few, have become wealthy by writing "bestseller" books. Also actors and performing artists such as Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Billy Joel, or Bruce Springsteen to name a few, have become wealthy. Also a small percentage of athletes such as Tom Brady or Alex Rodriguez, to name a few. It's also possible to win a lottery.

Yes it's possible, but it's not how most of the rich people in America have accumulated their wealth. They make their money from the work and inspiration of others, and they have gone to great lengths to keep the rest of us from finding out about it.

[Locrian]

35. ergodicity

https://taylorpearson.me/ergodicity/




This type of "systems" are in place and all around us.

The probabilities of success from the collection of people do not apply to one person. You can safely calculate that by using this strategy, Theodorus has a 100% probability of eventually going bust. Though a standard cost benefit analysis would suggest this is a good strategy, it is actually just like playing Russian roulette.

[tinrobot]

36. You get rich by getting other things to work for you

Money can be put to work through investments.

Ideas can be put to work through patents, copyrights, and intellectual property

And yes, you can hire other people to work for you.

Some routes can be hard work, some not so much.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

38. I dislike this meme.

First of all, all or almost all of the people pictured are men. All of those whose ethnicities can be discerned are white.

Second, what is it saying? That only physical or onsite work is hard? Engineers, doctors, teachers, accountants, scientists, architects, don't work hard?

Some jobs pay more than others because they're in demand and the necessary skills are harder to find. There's nothing wrong with working with one's mind.

[ret5hd]

41. But most of those you listed...

the jobs themselves don’t kill them.

[BlueCheeseAgain]

42. The meme didn't say anything about jobs being dangerous, just "hard".

[BlueCheeseAgain]

40. Adding on...

This meme feeds right into right-wing framing about "real" America-- factories, manufacturing, the industrial heartland, etc.-- versus soft, liberal, coastal elites that work in cities.

[whathehell]

65. The Right Wing doesnt like Labor Unions, though, do they?

Theyre all for "workers" when those workers avoid unions and cluelessly vote Republican...I'd guess, in fact, that they yammer on about "coastal" or "cultural" elites" purposely to DEFLECT from the economic "elites" -- their Zero Point One Percent who are actually running things. They push resentment and "culture wars"..Those don't COST anything, i.e. their profit margin.

[lpbk2713]

48. Being born on third base helps a lot.

Like Shrublet.

[whathehell]

68. Yes..

It's what Thom Hartmann used to call "The Lucky Sperm Club".

[Emile]

51. I had an elitist snob tell me you get rich by

managing your family fortune.

[Just A Box Of Rain]

60. Right up there with "If you write a best-selling book, you can be a millionaire, too."

[honest.abe]

57. Most rich people have no idea the benefit of being born into a stable safe family situation.

They never had to worry about food or housing or decent schools or crime right outside their door. I am sure many of them worked hard to get where they are but they had a tremendous head start compared to those born into poor and lower middle class families.

[Lithos]

59. I get the meme

It's very simplistic. It is meant to describe how obscene wealth is easily accumulated on the backs of others.

* It is meant to illustrate why today's CEOs make on average 400x the base salary of their least paid worker.
* It is meant to illustrate how families like the Trumps, the Koch's, have money far beyond their current generation's work output.

It is not the case of people who started their own careers, worked hard and ended up being able to send their kids to college, can afford their "pint a day" and their occasional trip while not having to worry either where their food nor their insurance is coming from.

It is about the billionaires or near-billionaires and not the millionaires.

It is the analogy of the pig and chicken who open up a restaurant where the pig provides the bacon and the chicken the eggs. And why the chicken tells the grandchildren of the pig that with hard work they can be just like him.

L-

[BlueCheeseAgain]

61. I agree with what you're saying.

I don't know if that's what the meme is saying.

The person at the desk doesn't look like a billionaire. Just some office worker, who unlike his hardworking counterparts, wears glasses and apparently doesn't deserve to make a good living.

[whathehell]

70. Yes, it's not just about "hard physical labor" Women are

historically, and presently, underpaid, especially in " pink collar " jobs.

[bdamomma]

62. hmmm...

they don't work hard, they either acquire wealth from a family member (inheritance) or some other devious way....

[ShazzieB]

69. If hard work was all it took to get rich...

My husband would be rolling in dough (and not the kind you can bake into bread).

He works as hard as anybody I've ever seen, and is very good at certain things. Unfortunately, none of the things he excels at are things that can command a fat salary, no matter how good one is at them or how hard one works at them.

You have to start somewhere. If you're not born into money, you can build wealth IF you can earn enough money to enable you to invest, and acquire the skills to do so effectively. (OR if you just happen to get lucky and invest in the right thing at the right time.)

Hard work alone guarantees absolutely nothing.

[old as dirt]

71. ChocQuibTown - Oro (Official Music Video)

[Ms. Toad]

92. This meme, as many do, reduces complex issues to a one-liner.

[haele]

93. People become rich due to multiple factors, the primary being luck.

Hard work, Parent's status, Talent, a "Eureka!"moment, a chance meeting - any two of these things can bring one wealth.

Haele

[Wahyee]

94. All the depicted hard workers are male

What’s up with that?

[Victor_c3]

95. Work IS what makes people rich

It’s just not their own hard work that makes rich people rich - it’s the hard work of others.

But at what threshold does a person become rich? My little brother and his wife have close to $1.5 million in their retirement accounts and they are 42 years old. They live a comfortable middle class lifestyles and aggressively save. Is $1.5 million rich?

My in-laws have $3-5 million in their retirement fund and they’re about 70. They live off of the proceeds and live a very middle class lifestyle. Does that make them rich?

[Emile]

96. The same assholes who kept baby boomers hourly wages low

so they could get their yearly bonuses are now starting to double wages to find workers. Fuck these assholes!

[Kid Berwyn]

98. HOW do you think the Capitol got built?

Slave Labor Commemorative Marker

https://www.aoc.gov/explore-capitol-campus/art/slave-labor-commemorative-marker