Forum Post: Valuing hard work vs. financial investment
Posted 13 years ago on Nov. 1, 2011, 10:42 p.m. EST by jliv1
(11)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
First post on forum so sorry if this is something already commonly discussed.
The 1% is not making its money from working harder than the rest of America, it's making money because it's invested money and get paid simply for spending that money. This can clearly be seen by the gross discrepancy in the percentages of those who own stocks and bonds: http://www.businessinsider.com/facts-about-inequality-in-america-2011-11#half-of-america-owns-only-05-of-americas-stocks-and-bonds-the-top-1-owns-more-than-50-3 We are not rewarding hard work, we're rewarding the possession of wealth.
My proposal is that we start valuing hard work instead of investment. How do we do this? By creating some type of percentage regulation on the amount of profit which goes to investors vs employees. Employees deserve to make money for the hard work they do. Without employees there would be no company. Of course without investors there would also be no company, but that doesn't justify the disproportionate returns investors reap.
I stated this as simply as I could without getting too into the details and economic terms right off the bat. Hopefully the idea is pretty clear.
Start a public ad campaign that states the contributions of the lowest skilled workers are equal to that of the company founder and engineers.
And then have an 'equal pay for equal work' law. Ergo, everyone gets paid equally.
and did you know that dividends are tax free? soo all that money and no one paying taxes on any of it.
Woah that's crazy. I hadn't heard that before
no thats true. ill look up a llink
That'd be awesome. That'd really reveal what we reward in this country.
i posted what i found on another post.. dividends are tax free income.
Protesting to obtain revenue sharing like the NBA might work if we didn't have to pay so much for entertainment. Is being an artist hard work; real artists don't do it for the money so it must be the pretenders raking in the money we pay!
Anyone can work. Very few can invest well. The market is simply paying the going rate for a rare talent.
Very few have money to actually invest. Did you look at the statistic?
Money is easy to get. There is tons of money in the world. Getting the right investments to get a good rate of return with minimal risk, that takes A LOT of research, time, oh and RISK.
Ok I'm not saying that it doesn't take research, time, and risk to invest wisely. That's obviously the case. I am saying that you have to already have money in order to get money. Most people enter our system as working adults with NEGATIVE money in the form of student loans. How are they supposed to invest when their hard work won't make them enough money to pay off their student loans?
Investment is really the only way to make serious money in our economy and the only way to invest is to have serious discretionary income. It's a circle and it screws over the working class every time.
I guess. But I mean if you willingly started your adult life in hock, I'm not sure who you have to blame but yourself. And really, a student loan is an investment; it's just always been a poor one.
How else is one supposed to pay for an education? Most people aren't fortunate enough to have had their parents save $40,000+ A number of schools charge that for just one year. And it's become necessary to have a college degree to get hired at all, or move up in a company. I worked at Starbucks for a number of years and the only people who moved up were ones with college degrees. You can't even start a company without some type of education, or you're pretty likely to fail.
I personally was fortunate enough to have gotten huge scholarships which have paid for my education so far, but most people are not so lucky.
I went to a state school and only took classes when I could afford to. Still haven't finished, but the only debt I carry is my mortgage and I have plenty of investments. Tuition at our in state schools is only about 3k a semester. If you Work full time and go half that then it's incredibly affordable. But you have to be willing to give up the name branded school to do it, and work full time. College won't be one big party but it can be done.