Forum Post: 'Drink Less, Work More', Billionaire Tells Non-Rich
Posted 11 years ago on Aug. 31, 2012, 2:10 p.m. EST by LeoYo
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'Drink Less, Work More', Billionaire Tells Non-Rich
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/drink-less-more-billionaire-tells-152654355.html
By Robert Frank | CNBC – Thu, Aug 30, 2012 11:26 AM EDT
Gina Rinehart seems to court controversy - from her family lawsuits to her battles with Australian media.
Now, the Australian mining heiress, worth $19 billion and earlier this year thought to be the world's richest woman, has sparked another controversy in her latest column in Australian Resources and Investment magazine. (Yes, I am a registered reader online.) Rinehart rails against class warfare and says the non-rich should stop attacking the rich and go to work.
"There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she writes. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing and more time working."
The comments were part of a treatise on what she sees as Australia's decline due to high taxes, high wages and over-regulation. Rinehart said taxes should fall, red tape should be cut, environmental rules relaxed and the minimum wage should be lowered. (It's currently AUS $15.06 an hour or $606 a week, about the same in U.S. dollars).
Her quotes are sure to escalate the already heated debate in the United States, Britain and Europe over class warfare, taxing the wealthy and "fair shares."
Rinehart's remarks drew immediate fire from senior Australian ministers. Treasurer Wayne Swan said in a statement that Rinehart had delivered "an insult to the millions of Australian workers who go to work and slog it out to feed the kids and pay the bills."
But Rinehart warned that when governments target the rich, they really hurt the middle and lower classes.
"The terrible millionaires and billionaires can often invest in other countries. And if they do suffer, what does that really mean? Maybe their teenagers don't get the cars they wanted or a better beach house or maybe the holiday to Europe is cut short; But otherwise life goes on for these millionaires and billionaires."
Those who really suffer from anti-business and anti-investor policies are regular workers who "usually vote for the anti-business socialist parties," she writes. "If you want to help the poor and our next generation, make investment, reinvenstment and businesses welcome."
She also tells the stories of her two grandfathers and three of her wealthy friends, who all started at the bottom and worked their way to the top. One grandfather, James Nicholas, started cleaning stables and launched a transportation company. Another granddad built a sheep station with 25,000 sheep.
Her pal Michael Kailis came from a poor Greek immigrant family and became Australia's crawfish king. Friend Jack Cowin borrowed from friends to found the Hungry Jack burger chain, and is now the country's "king of fries."
"The lessons are the same," she writes. "You can't get rich without working hard, taking risks, investing and reinvesting your profits." Of course, as Rinehart knows, you can also become very rich from inheriting and expanding your father's company.
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One of Most Dangerous Cities in US Plans to Ditch Police Force
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Employee Shoots 2 Dead at N.J. Supermarket before Killing Himself, Police Say
Police report at least three people are dead after a gunman opened fire at a Pathmark grocery store in Old Bridge, New Jersey. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
By NBC News staff and wire reports
Updated at 11:33 a.m. ET: Three people are dead after an employee shot and killed two coworkers before turning the gun on himself at a New Jersey supermarket Friday morning, authorities said.
Police said the shooting happened Friday just before 4 a.m. inside a Pathmark grocery store on Route 9 in Old Bridge, N.J., a suburb about 25 miles from New York.
The victims were an 18-year-old woman and a 24-year-old man, both from Old Bridge. The gunman, Terence S. Tyler, was 23 years old. All three were working the night shift at the Pathmark with 12 to 14 other employees. The store was closed at the time, scheduled to open at 6 a.m.
Police believe the suspect may have gotten into an argument with a coworker at the Pathmark before he allegedly left the store around 3:30 a.m., and retrieved an AK-47 and a handgun from his car. Store employees told authorities that when they saw the suspect returning with weapons, they locked the doors to the supermarket. The gunman then shot out the windows and went inside and fired at least 16 shots at different places in the store, police said, killing two people. He then killed himself.
Police said the victims were not necessarily targeted. They are currently investigating the motive for the shooting. Some employees ran out of the back of the store to escape.
No shots were fired by police when they arrived to the scene.
Tyler was a former Marine, who earned several medals for his service between March 2008 and February 2010. At the time of his discharge, he achieved the rank of Lance Corporal. He was an Old Bridge resident and had been working at the Pathmark for about two weeks. Police said Tyler may have had a history of depression and mental illness.
Employees who were in the store at the time of the shooting congregated later in the morning outside a TGI Friday's restaurant in the shopping center where the supermarket is located.
New Jersey Transit closed its nearby park-and-ride lot, the Associated Press reported.
News chopper footage showed heavily armed police on the ground outside the supermarket and several windows broken.
SWAT teams had set up a command post in the parking lot of a nearby restaurant.
The store was closed Friday. Pathmark officials had no immediate comment on the shooting.
NBC News' Jonathan Dienst, Brynn Gringras and Brian Thompson contributed to this report.
Less taxes for the rich and lower minimum wage for the poor.
The opportunity to put her money where her mouth is should be given to her by cutting her off from all of her wealth (including wealthy friends and family) and giving her a minimum wage job so she can prove just how right she is. If she doesn't accumulate a certain amount of wealth according to a performance schedule that she herself could produce, she should be cut off from her wealth permanently.
Leo you are right. It's easy to be successful if someone gives you billions $$$!
To top it off, she is one disgusting troll of a woman. Ugly inside and out.
I can see where she might come to believe everyone around here is drunk. I would certainly need a drink to share space with that.
Hahahahahahahahahah. Not that we should be focussing upon a person's appearance, Richard.
Gina is one of two individuals in Australia who are making the most out of mining, yet they refuse to invest in educating Australians for their workforce.
The plan is to fly in workers, 2,000 no less, from Malaysia, to work in HER new mine. It's outsourcing in reverse, really, and completely against the feelings on the ground. These workers will live in her little mining town, and get flown home again.
Gina also tried to buy her way into a newspaper, trying to get control of the board of directors, but they shunned her attempts.
She would gain a lot more ground here by donating to charity, and establishing training centres for indigenous people who can handle the conditions of working in the harsh climate where her mines are situated.
There is no way she is saving money by flying people in. Obviously an attempt to show her ass, wrinkles, pimples and all. Some people will cut their nose off to spite their face. And it looks to me that there is much to spite. Don't get me wrong, my x-w was chubby and still nice to look at. Butt, ugly is ugly man.
These mines are in the Pilbara, and it was stinking hot when I visited in the middle of Winter. Pretty much all of the workforce is FIFO, or fly-in, fly-out, and housed in portable buildings we called dongas, which have to be air-conditioned. Catering has to be arranged, swimming pools, air-con gym, etc.
Mine workers get paid quite well to put up with these conditions, and most are in one union or another. Average take-home pay would be seven grand a month.
Gina would triple her income if she could fly in workers from Indo or Malaysia.
Despite earning the annual minumum wage every 53 seconds herself, she wants more. Greedy bitch needs armed protection to appear in public.
I don't think the protection is because her wealth. Probably because she uses her money to beat up on people. I usually don't make fun of appearances because it's shallow but she seems like a bully so there is no reason to give her any better.
She is, and you're right.
Her own children tried to have her declared unfit to manage her fortune.
Her father's wife has been at war with Gina from the start.
It's ugly in many more ways than the cover.
The aristocrats have disdain for the commoners whha whaa whhat? Say it ain't so ... If we cut off the wealth's monopolies then we would not need to rely on anyone like her for work - they'd simply be able to begin their own business (have a barter system entrepreneur society) and tell her to go fuck herself and the horse she rode in on. But she needs your labor to maintain her monopoly and she doesn't need innovation or intelligence to do it she simply needs to make certain no one else can compete. And how to do that ? Hmmm gather as many politicians in your pocket as possible and create enough red tape and fees and gear the tax system against them to drown them into oblivion so people must now come looking for work from her.
I don't drink
I resent the characterization
Water?
Drink less is good advice. It should lead to not having to work as hard for the same shit.
In the old Soviet Union people suffered many privations including bread, clothing, and fuel for cooking and warmth. The government was careful however to to permit a ready supply of vodka; a properly imbibed populace being the best way to keep the tyrants in power.
http://www.treatment4addiction.com/blog/featured/russian-drug-czar-blames-beatles-for-nations-drug-problems/
In U.S. culture, looking beyond the traditional drugs like speed and heroin, TV, movies, computer games, internet porn, even online forums, are the drugs that soften the hard reality of stagnant wages, joblessness, poverty, and loss of freedom.
As long as we are addicted to these other drugs, all manner of tyranny will continue to be implemented, while the population in it's drug induced euphoria will not question but obey every new restriction of our most basic rights.
Agreed, but what came first, the chicken or the egg? (BTW you left out spectator sports (~ $ 600 billion including legal and illegal gambling).)
What matters is that we kick the habits that allow our sense of justice to be overridden.
All that works best if you inherit a fortune like she did.
It also helps to be able to get aborigines to work the mines for a pittance.
A lot of Indigenous workers already in her mining ventures, Shooz. They get the same pay as everyone else, and work just as hard as everyone else.
Gina wants (and probably will get) the right to fly in her workforce from another country. I expect union trouble, and strike action over this.
I knew that was the way of it today, but was the work force in her earlier "expansion" days, the same? Or was it mostly made up of lower paid workers.
It sounds like those are the days she want's to return to.
In her father's day (he discovered all the deposits she mines) it was dynamite and dragline mining. Hardly any indig workers in mining back then. They were mostly ringers (cattlemen) and very good at that job too.
She's just getting greedy is all. There's thousands of Aussies who've paid to have their own training to be ready for the mines, but the megacorps are all whinging that they can't find workers.
They want to import cheap labour, and some of the offshore gas plants have been busted for it already. Outsourcing of another kind is all it really is.
I'm sorry. It was an assumption on my part.
I find it hard to believe anyone made that much money in that amount of time, by being honest and doing honest things.
If her current desire to "import" workers is an indication, a closer look at her past practices could be revealing.
Her father, Lang Hancock, knew a little trick for spottiing iron ore deposits from the air. A particular native shrub only grew where the ore was closest to the surface. He could safely stake a claim to a whole mountain, without setting foot on the ground. Then it was dynamite and dragline. Some of the richest iron ore deposits are in the northwest of Australia. The latest "find" is on an island just off the coast. I believe it is an American subsidiary that is taking on that lease, employing one-for-one indigene to whitey.
Anyways, back in Lang Hancock's day, Japan was our largest trading partner, and the price for iron ore was huge. The Japanese had nowhere to stockpile all this ore, so they used is as road base, and built up their hiways metres above their old level. To my knowledge, that iron ore is still there. Such was the trade imbalance between Japan and Australia back then, and Lang pretty much sold them the lot. He was ridiculously wealthy way back then.
His daughter has simply jumped into the driver's seat of an operation that was already established, and the money just keeps coming, only China is now the major purchaser, of course. Apparently Gina makes the average annual minimum wage every 53 seconds, but she still wants more.
Money becomes a casino game when you have too much of it.
Thanks for the Aussie history lesson.......:)
It stops being a game when they purchase our governments for the purpose of profits..
Hmmm, I'm thinking that in their minds, it's still a game.
Slightly more dangerous, but when the stakes are higher, the risk should be too.
Though when the SHTF, nothing really seems to happen. When the fines are a fraction of the profits, that's why it's called a "fine".
Or just another cost of doing business, and if the SHTF hard enough, they just buy another judge, another politician, or even bribe communities with "business" promises.
They are used to getting their way, whatever it takes.
Yep the punished seem to be ok with it. Just a cost of doing business.
It would be just another tax deduction, in all likelihood.
No doubt - written off as a business expense. So they get to claim it as part of a yearly deduction. How awesome is that - they get another reward. F'n Bastards.
Dude, everything you write is based on assumptions.
Says the sock puppet that speaks no truth.
Is violence in America simply being reported more often or is America becoming far more violent?