Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If this was true, with the popularity of McDonalds, those workers should have a LOT of value!
What you're saying is that basically a nurse making $50k saving someone's life as not as valuable as Beyonce's latest single?
That is MAJOR BS. Sorry.
The fact the celebrities make such insane amounts of money is a side effect to the dumbing down of the population...nothing more...people end up like this: Photoshopping Real Women Into Cover Models - YouTube
....because this is what is being promoted. You don't see ads for "be customer oriented, work hard, be responsible, show personal accountability before blaming others for your problems" etc etc etc....no, you see these little stupid movies being promoted to the masses as if someone would actually buy a magazine filled with pimples and fat hanging! None of these women apparently ever heard of make up, or a GYM!
The reason celebrities make such insane amounts of money is simply because people have been shoved in their subdivision homes, spoiled with big TVs to watch the dumbest reality shows, and place "celebrities" on pedestals when most of them should be locked up for drugs, and too much drinking etc etc etc. it is a declining society that does NOT promote morals. Mothers are kicked out of "public places" for breastfeeding, while dog owners get to bring their stinky poodles at the tables with them!!!....I mean how much lower can we get?
It is what the lowest class + politicians are telling you to put value on, and you're listening because in America nobody has a desire to IMPROVE upon themselves, and rise and promote good morals based on COMMON SENSE and not some religion that was relevant thousands of years ago before Google and the iPhone. For some reason, we are evolving technologically, but our brains seems to want to live with the cave people!
The reason these people have become the 1%, is simply because the masses have ALLOWED THEM TO BECOME THE 1%. If the masses would act like the French, and HOLD THEIR GOV ACCOUNTABLE FOR DESTROYING THEIR LIVES, the 1% would have never existed, and "wealth" would be distributed evenly, and people would be paid based on their jobs difficulty and performance. Employees here are treated like disposable diapers, and not like humans.
First of all nurses in NYC and parts of CA start at $75K and can reach over $100K per year.
Next my statement is exactly true. One is paid "compensation" because that is just what it is; you are compensated by the company, business, board of directors, or whatever for your time, efforts, education and so forth.
Now as to who is worth more a football player or nurse, or an actor or nurse, am not going down that route with you. Society and others make that call, was personally gobsmacked to find out a GMA anchor will pull down *twenty million* each year, but obviously person or persons at ABC/GMA see the value of the Robin Williams woman.
I know Forbes comes out with the highest paid couples, and the following make the list almost every year:
Jay-Z & Beyonce
Tom Brady & Gisele Bundchen
David & Victoria Beckham
Angelina & Brad Pitt
I wonder what would happen if these people donated just one year's salary to our poor economy.
Well the Pitt's devotion to charities is well documented, so wont' go further on that score.
Besides having a rocking body and great beauty Gisele Bundchen has proven to be a very smart business woman. Turning her modeling money into assets that have made her a very wealthy woman. Buying and selling on Manhattan property and so forth.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
44,550 posts, read 81,117,303 times
Reputation: 57755
I have to scratch my head in bewilderment when I hear people complaining about the disparity between the rich and the working poor, or that the minimum wage should be made $15, when the same people are paying hundreds of dollars for tickets to concerts by their favorite singers, helping them to stay in the 1%. There are evn those that can barely afford the rent that will spend thousands for season tickets to their local football team, where they contribute to nearly every player being in the 1%. People who the CEO of a large corporation or who wisely invest their money and make a lot more of it are earning it. Professional athletes, actors, and singers that provide entertainment are certainly not doing work as important as a firefighter, EMT or even teacher, but as long as the masses idolize them they will continue to make obscene salaries. And don't get me started on the salaries of college football coaches.
The reason these people have become the 1%, is simply because the masses have ALLOWED THEM TO BECOME THE 1%. If the masses would act like the French, and HOLD THEIR GOV ACCOUNTABLE FOR DESTROYING THEIR LIVES, the 1% would have never existed, and "wealth" would be distributed evenly, and people would be paid based on their jobs difficulty and performance. Employees here are treated like disposable diapers, and not like humans.
Have you ever been to France? I lived there for a year. Talk about the haves and the have nots. If we're going to rant about workers rights lets pick a country where there is actual income equality like say Denmark. Not a country where the rich hang out in Paris and Cannes and the poor are truly destitute in the crime ridden suburbs.
I have to scratch my head in bewilderment when I hear people complaining about the disparity between the rich and the working poor, or that the minimum wage should be made $15, when the same people are paying hundreds of dollars for tickets to concerts by their favorite singers, helping them to stay in the 1%. There are evn those that can barely afford the rent that will spend thousands for season tickets to their local football team, where they contribute to nearly every player being in the 1%. People who the CEO of a large corporation or who wisely invest their money and make a lot more of it are earning it. Professional athletes, actors, and singers that provide entertainment are certainly not doing work as important as a firefighter, EMT or even teacher, but as long as the masses idolize them they will continue to make obscene salaries. And don't get me started on the salaries of college football coaches.
People who complain about the top 1% should basically stop living their lives and become hermits, because most things you spend your money on in America end up benefiting the very rich - even food, shelter and clothing.
The top 1%, in general, are mostly a bunch of self-made Millionaire-Next-door types.. maybe once you get to the top 0.1% or the top 0.01% does old money come into play as a significant factor but even then there are example of people who started out dirt poor and made it there.
If you live in a middle class neighborhood, chances are, there's at least 1 1%-er living there.
If this was true, with the popularity of McDonalds, those workers should have a LOT of value!
I don't know if this is a reading comprehension error or a social structure misunderstanding, but you are talking about a very different thing from "perceived value"
Quote:
Originally Posted by BugsyPal
When persons *work* they receive compensation based upon the perceived value of their contribution.
What is perceived value? When you are willing to pay $200 to go to a Kanye concert, then the concert is worth $200 to you. If you are willing to pay 2 bucks to get a McDonald's burger, the burger is worth 2 bucks to you. This is perceived value.
Let's take a homeless person for another example. How much is he willing to pay for a Kanye concert? Let's say a buck. So the perceived value of the concert to him is a buck. Perceived value is an individualistic judgement.
Taken as a whole, society values Kanye more than a McDonald's worker, why you ask? Because there is only one artist like Kanye, there is no replacement for him. Even if he serves only 1% of the population, the aggregate of the perceived value is quite large, and therefore he makes a boatload of money. He doesn't have to have any value to the rest of the population.
A McDonald's worker, though he makes food for people, is easily replaceable. There are millions of people like him that don't have special skills. Even though he nominally serves the entire population, the number of people that actually get food from him is small, and if his product is perceived to only be worth 2 bucks, when you add up all the value he adds, it's not even as much as the value of one Kanye concert.
If it sounds illogical to you that society perceives entertainment as more valuable than food or other necessities, it usually comes down to one of two cases. Either it's a supply thing, where someone has such unique skills that people have no option but to pay for his service or product, or it's a demand thing, where something is so necessary that people have no option but to pay a premium for it.
For Kanye, it's a supply thing; there is only one Kanye, and he serves millions of people in multiple countries. For a McD worker, it's a supply thing: there are so many McD workers out there that there is no supply constraint. Even when McD as a whole is worth more than Kanye, because you have to divide the value over all the workers, each worker is worth only a tiny fraction of the corporation. For a nurse, it's a supply thing and a demand thing working in opposite directions: a nurse's service is very much demanded, but there are so many nurses out there that the perceived value of each individual nurse is inevitably lower than that of Kanye.
I don't know if this is a reading comprehension error or a social structure misunderstanding, but you are talking about a very different thing from "perceived value"
What is perceived value? When you are willing to pay $200 to go to a Kanye concert, then the concert is worth $200 to you. If you are willing to pay 2 bucks to get a McDonald's burger, the burger is worth 2 bucks to you. This is perceived value.
Let's take a homeless person for another example. How much is he willing to pay for a Kanye concert? Let's say a buck. So the perceived value of the concert to him is a buck. Perceived value is an individualistic judgement.
Taken as a whole, society values Kanye more than a McDonald's worker, why you ask? Because there is only one artist like Kanye, there is no replacement for him. Even if he serves only 1% of the population, the aggregate of the perceived value is quite large, and therefore he makes a boatload of money. He doesn't have to have any value to the rest of the population.
A McDonald's worker, though he makes food for people, is easily replaceable. There are millions of people like him that don't have special skills. Even though he nominally serves the entire population, the number of people that actually get food from him is small, and if his product is perceived to only be worth 2 bucks, when you add up all the value he adds, it's not even as much as the value of one Kanye concert.
If it sounds illogical to you that society perceives entertainment as more valuable than food or other necessities, it usually comes down to one of two cases. Either it's a supply thing, where someone has such unique skills that people have no option but to pay for his service or product, or it's a demand thing, where something is so necessary that people have no option but to pay a premium for it.
For Kanye, it's a supply thing; there is only one Kanye, and he serves millions of people in multiple countries. For a McD worker, it's a supply thing: there are so many McD workers out there that there is no supply constraint. Even when McD as a whole is worth more than Kanye, because you have to divide the value over all the workers, each worker is worth only a tiny fraction of the corporation. For a nurse, it's a supply thing and a demand thing working in opposite directions: a nurse's service is very much demanded, but there are so many nurses out there that the perceived value of each individual nurse is inevitably lower than that of Kanye.
Most of it is luck, some of it is personality. Some of the very rich are excellent leaders and hard workers, while others are complete sociopaths who's only real skill is manipulating others.
Don't get me wrong - there are some folks who are very rich out there who put in plenty of honest work to get there, but for every one of them, there's a host of glorified robber barons and social parasites who have happily funneled the wealth out of this nation and into their own hands.
There are many ways the rich are created. Some examples include:
1) Being born into it: The Walton family is one example, and there are countless others. They "earned" their money by being born into the right family. While it's impossible to hate somebody for that, what they they do with that legacy is often worthy of ire.
2) Money makes money: The more you have, the easier it is to get more. Nothing good or evil about this - it is a simple fact.
3) Exploiting the law - technically it's legal: The rich have far more options to get huge amounts of money while paying low taxes than the rest of us. It's a dirty system, but since it's built by the rich, what can you expect?
4) Climbing the corporate ladder using knives stuck in the backs of coworkers: Sociopaths excel in corporate environments - it's a proven fact. Those that can easily use and discard other human beings have a much easier time reaching top level positions because they are not burdened by: ethics, morality, responsibility, or guilt. They will do whatever it takes to achieve their goals. These types always exist in societies - in lesser nations, they end up tyrants or warlords - but the problem here in America is that people often mistake these forked-tongued devils for "true leaders" because they are unable to separate the result - he's a VP, so he must be a good leader - from the action that got them there - he's a VP because he threw his team under the bus, took credit for their work, and then brown-nosed the CEO to gain his position.
5) Working hard and investing wisely: Hey, sometimes it actually can lead a person to wealth, though that's less common these days with all the effort being made to extra wealth from the workers and funnel it to the elite.
6) No consequences - they are above them: This is the one that infuriates me. Millions of Americans are out of work today, and the vast majority are in that situation through no fault of their own. It wasn't their job performance, skills, or work ethic that was lacking - the economy has simply collapsed and they are "surplus population" now. Meanwhile, everywhere you turn, executive big-wigs are being paid each year more money than one could spend in a lifetime *regardless* of their success or failure. There's simply no excuse for this. Some C-level clown will run a company into the ground and still walk away with millions of dollars in bonuses. Meanwhile, a huge chunk of the company's employees will be tossed out the door with little more than a box for their office possessions.
Then, to top off the insanity, the same failed executive will have no problems finding well-paying employment elsewhere, perhaps by running another company into the ground, or perhaps writing a book or becoming a "consultant," while the people he laid off will languish in unemployment hell for months or years while society labels them all as "lazy bums."
And we have a winner!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
