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It takes little more than "personal efforts" and first class "citizenship" in the class system like this. Personal efforts and and rugged attitudes are good for unlimited expansion into the lands occupied by savages. In the complex civilized societies where everything is owned by somebody, it takes more than that to function and get closer to the trough. And no matter how everybody adjusts himself class structure demands that significant portion of the population would occupy lower floors of the social pyramid. In the past those lower classes could ship themselves to America to kill some Indian butt and climb to the upper levels of the American pyramid. Those days are long time gone.
Then how do you explain about 80% of millionaires being first-generation wealthy, meaning they didn't inherit their wealth they earned and amassed it themselves?
Then how do you explain about 80% of millionaires being first-generation wealthy, meaning they didn't inherit their wealth they earned and amassed it themselves?
How would you explain roughly 30% of Roman slaves earning their freedom and owning slaves of their own? What's so hard to understand about class based society? It's a pyramid, it has narrow top and very wide bottom. Miniscule probability of one moving from the bottom to the very top does nothing to affect the shape of a pyramid. The only way for one to move up is to appropriate fruits of labor of the thousands and millions humans manning lower floors of the pyramid. Sorry, you can't amass billions yourself, it's way beyond human abilities. You must appropriate fruits of labor of others (using all kinds of rationale) to move up the ladder. Think, can you single-handedly operate 100,000 Wall Marts to amass a multibillion fortune? Nope, you must have millions of the desperate people at the bottom to work for you.
It's largely irrelevant who occupies the top of a pyramid, hereditary money or upstarts. They would fleece you just about the same. 100% of the Russian, Ukrainian and Chinese billionaires are the first generation. Arguably, Chinese peons have it the worst despite having miniscule probability to join upper caste. It's not about "opportunity" to join upper caste, it's all about probability. In the past, America was called "The Land of Opportunity" because it offered much greater probability for the European outcasts to achieve some measure of comfortable existence.
Hint, in the darkest days of Middle Ages, an English peasant had a miniscule probability to become a noble and get serves of his own. There was "opportunity" in Europe, it's probability that was lacking. Alas, class based societies are built upon limiting "probability" while utilizing all the power of propaganda and indoctrination to tout dwindling "rags to riches" stories.
Last edited by RememberMee; 01-24-2013 at 09:21 AM..
How would you explain roughly 30% of Roman slaves earning their freedom and owning slaves of their own? What's so hard to understand about class based society? It's a pyramid, it has narrow top and very wide bottom.
There's plenty of evidence that those willing to work hard and smart and sacrifice by living below their means, delaying starting a family, etc., CAN and DO change their class from one level of the pyramid to another here in the U.S.
About 80% of millionaires are first-generation wealthy. They earned and amassed their own wealth. There may be SES classes, but they aren't static. Some people strive and achieve more, others are complacent to sit back and force others to fund their existence.
They're truly disappointed and disheartened that such a large irresponsible class has evolved in our society.
When was the seance?
(Translation: You have no idea what the nations founders would think about today, if they had lived through the intervening two centuries, and if they hadn't, they'd be more shocked at what you're wearing than anything else.)
There's plenty of evidence that those willing to work hard and smart and sacrifice by living below their means, delaying starting a family, etc., CAN and DO change their class from one level of the pyramid to another here in the U.S.
About 80% of millionaires are first-generation wealthy. They earned and amassed their own wealth. There may be SES classes, but they aren't static. Some people strive and achieve more, others are complacent to sit back and force others to fund their existence.
You refuse to understand what class based society is about. 100% of the Chinese billionaire are first-generation wealthy, beat that. 30% of Roman slaves could get slaves of their own if they played their cards right. How many of the wage slaving peons in USA could get wage slaves of their own? 30%? are kidding or something?
You invoke Roman underclass forgetting to mention that Roman aristocracy annihilated free Roman peasantry to appropriate almost all its property thus locking dispossessed masses in the Roman slums. Large scale, slave labor, Roman agricultural enterprises made sense to the Patricians. Externalities of the slums didn't bother them. Reminds you something? I know it does.
Neither Roman slum dwellers nor American ghetto dwellers owned/own resources sufficient to secure their own survival. All they could/can do - to make their desperate wage slaving arses pretty hoping somebody would buy them at a good price (or extract minimum subsistence using a threat of revolt). You postulate by default that if everyone would make his wage slaving arse pretty, everybody would land a successful sale. That's nothing but irrational belief that goes against mechanics of the class society. You can make your wage slaving arse pretty, you cannot make people (who own the country) to buy it. Who would breeze toxic chemicals for minimum wage in this case? That's the MAJOR difference between pioneers and wage slaves. Pioneers actively changed their environment, wage slaves change themselves in order to adjust to the environment of not their making, and they have no guarantees of the successful sales.
You CANNOT produce $1,000,000 of goods in services using nothing but your brain, hands and feet. You must have lower ranking employee working to produce $1,000,000 goods and services (unless you are a financier and can create money out of thin air). It's possible to come up with average number of the unemployed, underclass, minimum wage earners, low, medium & high income earners per each billionaire. It takes tens, hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of wage units to provide for a single billionaire. What's your point? Fighting poverty by means of joining upper class? It's absurd, it takes poverty and many thousands of modest earners to make accumulation of 1 billion possible.
Then how do you explain about 80% of millionaires being first-generation wealthy, meaning they didn't inherit their wealth they earned and amassed it themselves?
That book defines a millionaire as someone with a million or more in ASSETS. That's how they are able to say this:
Quote:
* Our household's total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000 (median, or 50th percentile), while our average income is $247,000. Note that those of us who have incomes in the $500,000 to $999,999 category (8 percent) and the $1 million or more category (5 percent) skew the average upward.
Someone who earns $131,000 a year isn't a millionaire in my book.
When you talk about those who a truly rich, like those on the Forbes 400, you get a truer picture:
Quote:
Half of those on the Forbes 400 list started their economic careers by inheriting businesses or substantial wealth. Of these, most inherited sufficient wealth to put them immediately into Forbes' heaven. Only three out of ten on the Forbes list can be regarded as self-starters whose parents did not have great wealth or own a business with more than a few employees.
A breakdown:
42 % Born on Home Plate: inherited sufficient wealth to rank among the Forbes 400. This percentage is higher than that listed by Forbes for inheritors. The reason: Forbes listed as "self-made" people who actually inherited substantial sums or property and then later built that stake into a greater fortune. One example is Philip Anschutz (1997 net worth: $5.2 billion) who is listed as "self-made" even though he inherited a $500-million oil and gas field.
6 % Born on Third Base: inherited substantial wealth in excess of $50 million or a large and prosperous company and grew this initial fortune into membership in the Forbes 400.
7 % Born on Second Base: inherited a medium-sized business or wealth of more than $1 million or received substantial start-up capital for a business from a family member.
14 % Born on First Base: biography indicates wealthy or upper-class background that was to our knowledge less than $1 million, or received some start-up capital from a family member. Due to the study team's conservative coding rule, it is likely that some of those listed as born on first base actually belong on second or third base.
31 % Born in the Batter's Box: individuals and families whose parents did not have great wealth or own a business with more than a few employees. source
America is both especially unequal and has especially low mobility.
Then how do you explain about 80% of millionaires being first-generation wealthy, meaning they didn't inherit their wealth they earned and amassed it themselves?
There are lies, damn lies, and the worst lies of all statistics.
Your question is easily explained. It is called inflation. Being a millionaire is no longer synonymous with being wealthy.
Having a net worth of a million dollars now puts you squarely in the middle class.
Now if you are talking about true wealth in the 20 million and above bracket you will find that the percentage of self-made truly wealthy is nominal.
The truly wealthy inherit their money for the most part, the next most popular way to become really wealthy is by illegal activity, the next most popular way is to marry into it, only a fraction of a percentage of the really wealthy are self-made.
You refuse to understand what class based society is about. 100% of the Chinese billionaire are first-generation wealthy, beat that. 30% of Roman slaves could get slaves of their own if they played their cards right. How many of the wage slaving peons in USA could get wage slaves of their own? 30%? are kidding or something?
Whoever is willing to work hard and smart, and sacrifice by living below their means, delaying starting their families, etc.
About 80% of millionaires are first-generation wealthy. They earned and amassed their own wealth.
That's only possible if the SES classes are NOT static.
Quote:
You invoke Roman underclass forgetting to mention that Roman aristocracy annihilated free Roman peasantry to appropriate almost all its property
No different than the exorbitant federal income taxes those who strive to achieve and earn higher salaries have to pay. It's the same thing... Their property earned income) is confiscated and appropriated. Talk about annihilating anyone who dares to move up the SES scale.
And yet 80% of U.S. millionaires are first-generation wealthy. They earned and amassed their own wealth.
Quote:
That's the MAJOR difference between pioneers and wage slaves. Pioneers actively changed their environment, wage slaves change themselves in order to adjust to the environment of not their making, and they have no guarantees of the successful sales.
So where does that leave those of us who are tax slaves? You know the 49% of us who actually pay any federal income tax whatsoever. We slave for various amounts of time every year, up to over 4 months, for free because those earnings are confiscated from us by threat of imprisonment. Meanwhile, there's an increasingly larger class that does NOT have any of their earnings confiscated for federal income tax.
Whoever is willing to work hard and smart, and sacrifice by living below their means, delaying starting their families, etc.
About 80% of millionaires are first-generation wealthy. They earned and amassed their own wealth.
That's only possible if the SES classes are NOT static.
First, as I proved above, 80% of of millionaires are not first-generation wealthy. The source of that said that the average "millionaire" has $250,000 in income. Those are ordinary workers, with good jobs, who have accumulated $1 million in assets. That is easy to do in California and the east coast, where housing bought decades ago have made huge gains.
Second, look at these graphs:
Quote:
...
College graduates have made only modest gains, and basically nothing after 2000; even advanced degrees [gains +30%] weren’t giving anything like the gains we see for the top 1 percent {+276%] (and the much bigger gains of the top 0.1 percent).
Yes, college grads have done better than non; but inequality in America is mainly a story about a small elite pulling away from everyone else, including ordinary college grads. And we’ve know this for a long time! There is no excuse for getting it wrong. source
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