FARK.com: (2481743) "The super-rich inhabit a world the rest of society can hardly dream of. It's a parallel universe"

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		"The super-rich inhabit a world the rest of society can hardly dream of. It's a parallel universe" (observer.guardian.co.uk)		515
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Robo Beat		2006-12-17 03:01:44 AM

Churchill2004: What do you do for a living?

He's got a point. America may be the only place in the history of the world where even the poorest among us can eat red meat, drink beer, and watch pay-per-view wrestling on their big-screen TVs.

Befuddled		2006-12-17 03:03:58 AM

I suggest everyone watch the Frontline called, 'Can you afford to retire?'. It is available online.

ComicBookGuy		2006-12-17 03:04:46 AM

Churchill2004: Dude, in case you haven't noticed, the rest of us are doing pretty damn well. It's only when you compare your life to the super rich that it seems inadequate.

And no, Bill Gates and Oprah aren't making people poor.

The world's resources are finite. Therefore, it follows that the wealthy can only exist if others do w/less.

Turtle Head		2006-12-17 03:05:02 AM

MWeather		2006-12-17 03:05:38 AM

Robo Beat: He's got a point. America may be the only place in the history of the world where even the poorest among us can eat red meat, drink beer, and watch pay-per-view wrestling on their big-screen TVs.

The poorest among us stole the big screen and use an illegal cable descrambler.

Valarius		2006-12-17 03:08:33 AM

Churchill2004

WalMart's only crime is resisting unionization. Given the current state of American unions, and the fact that the "service" at WalMart is already at union-standards, that might not be an entirely bad thing.

http://www.infowars.com/articles/economy/china_unions_triumph_at_walmart.htm

Chinese unions, on the other hand, have taken over their side of Wally-World completely. Granted, they're controlled by the state... but still.

EmperorTippy		2006-12-17 03:08:43 AM

Befuddled
And if walmart went out of business tomorrow those people would be a lot poorer than they are now.

They say that money can't buy happiness and they are right....but its a lot easier to be happy when you can blow 7,000 euros on driftwood.

And rich friends are the best. Once you fly in a Gulfstream 550 first class becomes a downer.

Befuddled		2006-12-17 03:10:08 AM

And if walmart went out of business tomorrow those people would be a lot poorer than they are now.

Which is why Wal-Mart should be allowed to pay shiat wages and not provide benefits?

Churchill2004		2006-12-17 03:12:24 AM

ComicBookGuy: The world's resources are finite. Therefore, it follows that the wealthy can only exist if others do w/less.

Not really. You're assuming that if the wealthy didn't have these resources, then they would be spread out evenly. In reality most of these resources would be wasted or wouldn't exist at all.

If you took all the wealth in the world and spread it out evenly, in ten years the rich would be rich again and the poor would be poor again. There would be exceptions both ways, but that would be the general trend.

Turtle Head		2006-12-17 03:13:53 AM

scrantonicity		2006-12-17 03:13:57 AM

Eh. All that money and they'll never experience the satisfaction/hallucinations brought from farming for 48 consecutive hours in WoW.

Losers.

Opiate of the Lasses		2006-12-17 03:14:15 AM

Had a long discussion about this with a friend. She's bitter about how much some people have just by sheer luck of being born to rich parents, while she's a poor coffee shop girl going to community college. I go to law school [poor myself, and on scholarship], so I see super rich kids daily. I was tellin her that most of them are waaaay more farked up than she could ever be, and worst of all they have no escape.

Yea, they can go to Europe for a weekend on a whim, but the problem is that since all their material, tangible issues are taken care of, they have nothing to do but focus on the shiat in their head that money can't fix. My point to her was that people will always have stuff to complain about, and the sooner you stop being fixated on money as a way of measuring overall quality of life the better for your sanity. It's arguably better to be happy and poor. Objective issues like income are IMO easier to fix.

/you wanna see parallel universe? watch the latest James Bond. The locations in that are just jaw dropping. didn't even think places like that existed on earth.

polecat_bastard		2006-12-17 03:15:20 AM

as long as i can retain a middle class existence without being overwhelmed by debt, they can do what they want. i'm sure it becomes a problem when you're trying to bag some super-rich hottie but that's not a good idea anyway unless you're a poor and hot woman.

You're a Mean Drunk R2D2		2006-12-17 03:15:24 AM

henry key
The Uber Rich don't post on fark. At best, they pay someone to post on fark.

keyspirate		2006-12-17 03:15:25 AM

As an astute German nobleman once noted, “No matter how rich you are, you can still only drink 16 or 17 liters of beer a day.”

nosehat		2006-12-17 03:16:28 AM

Robo Beat I'm not sure you've actually met "the poorest among us"...

Opiate of the Lasses		2006-12-17 03:18:05 AM

nosehat: Robo Beat I'm not sure you've actually met "the poorest among us"...

Yea I was thinking that too...

EmperorTippy		2006-12-17 03:20:03 AM

Would you rather have 20,000 people getting minimum wage or 10,000 people getting double minimum wage and have 10,000 unemployed people?

And wal-marts profit margins aren't that large at all. At a dollar an hour raise for say 50,000 people you are talking 400,000 dollars per day. That is 146 million dollars a year in lost money for wal-mart if you assume an 8 hour day 365 days per year. And an employee who worked all 365 days per year at 8 hours a day would make an extra 3,000 dollars a year. The net affect overall would be almost nothing compared to the cost.

The jobs don't exist to employ the people at a reasonable level so they are employed at a level that they can survive at. It is quite simple: 20,000 people below the poverty line but not starving or 10,000 people in the middle class and 10,000 people starving to death on the street. Take you pick because you can't have both.

Churchill2004		2006-12-17 03:20:18 AM

nosehat: Robo Beat I'm not sure you've actually met "the poorest among us"...

While exaggerating a little bit, he's generally right. Now, granted, there are always the extreme examples of the homeless and such, but with them there's usually some underlying factors at work that have nothing to do with economic reality.

MissCrystal		2006-12-17 03:20:55 AM

I'm on the "you've not met 'the poorest among us'" boat. The poorest among us are choosing between rent and food. The poorest among us die of pneumonia. The poorest among us can't afford warm clothing for winter.

All Apologies		2006-12-17 03:22:58 AM

Things are the way the are because...

Turtle Head		2006-12-17 03:26:22 AM

In keeping with the "you dont know what you're talking about" theme, allow me it introduce those of us who can't afford food every day.

JerkyMeat		2006-12-17 03:26:25 AM

off with their heads!

troyh1976		2006-12-17 03:31:36 AM

I consider myself lucky that so many of the things I value in life have basically been getting cheap at an accelerating pace, thus making my decidedly middle class income relatively tolerable.

For example, I can buy a cheap Core 2 Duo PC that delivers about 75% of the performance of the mega expensive version. I can buy a $7 bottle of wine that (to me, thankfully I am wine ignorant) tastes virtually the same as a $50 bottle. I can buy a domestic manufactured car that has 95% of the bells and whistles, if not the cachet, of a top of the range Mercedes for about 1/3 the cost.

I don't need a 7000 pound sterling piece of driftwood or hire some no talent ho to attend my (non existent) children's birthday party.

On the downside, I am pretty much locked out of the housing market, don't have a lot of insulation against unemployment in the long term and obviously I don't get the thrill of watching people stare and gasp as I alight from my Falcon jet or pull up at a local cafe in a Mercedes S600. And no doubt, I would be able to score a better class of ass if I had those obvious dollars, even though a lot of those friends and lovers would be 'fake'. Not that I'd care.

/Money is great but if you don't have it, do you choose to be happy? I try. Some of it is fooling yourself but if it works, that's gotta be worth something.

sycraft		2006-12-17 03:32:28 AM

The interesting thing is that really the opposite is true. More than ever before the rich do NOT live in a different world from the rest of us, at least when it comes to what really matters. You go back a few hundred years and it was just a totally different life between rich and poor, and there wasn't any middle to speak of. The rich had access to whole classes of things the poor didn't.

Professional music, would be an example. In the middle ages the rich could (and did) hire professional music groups to entertain them on a regular basis. The poor never even got to experience this kind of music unless they happened to work in the manor of a rich person while said entertainment was going on. Well, while the super rich still could hire their own musicians, if they desired, the rest of us can get pretty close with CDs. You get nice, high quality professional music in the style you like on demand.

Also as a side effect it has changed what the rich do as well. Sure the super rich still could hire their own performers for dinner, but they don't, they buy CDs like the rest of us. They may have $50,000 stereos, but the difference isn't a big deal.

So while the super rich certainly have quirky things they can do to display their wealth, the reality is that the world of today (in a first world nation) has less difference between rich and poor than ever before. Most of it just comes down to magnitude and shows of wealth. A rich person may buy a $27,000 platinum Rolex while a normal person might buy a $50 Timex but both will keep excellent time and last a long time. The only fundamental difference is the Rolex is showy.

Compare this to when only the rich could own watches, and they didn't even keep time all that well.

Turtle Head		2006-12-17 03:35:57 AM

never mind, now i remember why i dont post here or anywhere. its pointless. laters

Valarius		2006-12-17 03:37:19 AM

Would you rather have 20,000 people getting minimum wage or 10,000 people getting double minimum wage and have 10,000 unemployed people?

I don't know which side of the argument you're on, so I'm not sure what you mean here. I'd personally prefer that all get paid minimum wage with minimum health insurance.

Which would be more than they're currently getting at Wal-Mart.

At a dollar an hour raise for say 50,000 people you are talking 400,000 dollars per day.

U.S. Federal Minimum Wage is 5.15 an hour. Nevada Minimum Wage (a dollar more) is 6.15 per hour.

Using the calculator that comes standard in every PC and Mac computer since Windows 95 arrived in stores, I found out that it would actually cost Wal-Mart $307,500 to give 50,000 workers a dollar raise.

That's assuming Wal-Mart also kicks in for health insurance. If Wal-Mart doesn't, then Nevada law says the required minimum wage goes higher for each worker. Forget what that amount is.

The jobs don't exist to employ the people at a reasonable level so they are employed at a level that they can survive at.

Then what's the point of working them? Without a living wage, the concept of a service-based economy is ruined. America may as well switch back to the agricultural-based economy that we had pre-Industrial Revolution.

It is quite simple: 20,000 people below the poverty line but not starving or 10,000 people in the middle class and 10,000 people starving to death on the street. Take you pick because you can't have both.

Uh, no. We need both a working class and a middle class for our economy to succeed. We don't need starving people because that only increases crime and other strains on our society that tax existing resources in every city affected by it.

The rich feed the poor, as Adam Smith intended it.

locater16		2006-12-17 03:40:09 AM

The only unhappy rich people are the ones that have gotten there accounts banned from ultrafar***Carrier Lost***

AppleDane		2006-12-17 03:51:51 AM

"Lady Cosima Somerset, daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry and known as 'Cozzy' - will sack your cook."

I had to do a double-take on that one.

rush22		2006-12-17 03:56:05 AM

EmperorTippy

And wal-marts profit margins aren't that large at all. At a dollar an hour raise for say 50,000 people you are talking 400,000 dollars per day. That is 146 million dollars a year in lost money for wal-mart if you assume an 8 hour day 365 days per year. And an employee who worked all 365 days per year at 8 hours a day would make an extra 3,000 dollars a year. The net affect overall would be almost nothing compared to the cost.

If Wal-mart raised every single employee's salary by not $1, but $2 an hour, the company would still show a profit.

Coelacanth		2006-12-17 04:02:15 AM

I grew up in California when Ronald Reagan was the governor there. Let me tell you, there ain't nothing like trying to get by and pull yourself up by your bootstraps while some rich bastards who grew up having their asses wiped by nannies decide that what's best for you is to get cut off at the knees over and over again.

I dearly hope that I live to see a lifeboat situation here in this country where the passengers in steerage get to row away from the sinking luxury liner in the lifeboats, leaving the rich behind locked gates below decks.

polecat_bastard		2006-12-17 04:03:02 AM

Lady Cosima Somerset, daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry and known as 'Cozzy' - will sack your cook.

mr0x		2006-12-17 04:08:29 AM

sycraft

The interesting thing is that really the opposite is true. More than ever before the rich do NOT live in a different world from the rest of us, at least when it comes to what really matters. You go back a few hundred years and it was just a totally different life between rich and poor, and there wasn't any middle to speak of. The rich had access to whole classes of things the poor didn't.

Professional music, would be an example. In the middle ages the rich could (and did) hire professional music groups to entertain them on a regular basis. The poor never even got to experience this kind of music unless they happened to work in the manor of a rich person while said entertainment was going on. Well, while the super rich still could hire their own musicians, if they desired, the rest of us can get pretty close with CDs. You get nice, high quality professional music in the style you like on demand.

Also as a side effect it has changed what the rich do as well. Sure the super rich still could hire their own performers for dinner, but they don't, they buy CDs like the rest of us. They may have $50,000 stereos, but the difference isn't a big deal.

So while the super rich certainly have quirky things they can do to display their wealth, the reality is that the world of today (in a first world nation) has less difference between rich and poor than ever before. Most of it just comes down to magnitude and shows of wealth. A rich person may buy a $27,000 platinum Rolex while a normal person might buy a $50 Timex but both will keep excellent time and last a long time. The only fundamental difference is the Rolex is showy.

Compare this to when only the rich could own watches, and they didn't even keep time all that well.

Compared to people who are long dead is pointless.

Yeah, we get music and all that stuff but there are more important things that the rich have ... freedom to do what they want.

We can't even do something we want for one week at the risk of getting fired, screwing this or that up. We can so constrained in what's possible - either by this or that.

RidersOfLohan		2006-12-17 04:11:14 AM

OBSCURE?????//??11?

EmperorTippy		2006-12-17 04:11:28 AM

I don't know which side of the argument you're on, so I'm not sure what you mean here. I'd personally prefer that all get paid minimum wage with minimum health insurance.

I feel the same.

Which would be more than they're currently getting at Wal-Mart.
Sources?

U.S. Federal Minimum Wage is 5.15 an hour. Nevada Minimum Wage (a dollar more) is 6.15 per hour.
Ok. Your point?

Using the calculator that comes standard in every PC and Mac computer since Windows 95 arrived in stores, I found out that it would actually cost Wal-Mart $307,500 to give 50,000 workers a dollar raise.

8 hours a day times fifty thousand employees is four hundred thousand dollars. Over the course of a year that works out to one hundred and forty six million dollars.

And that doesn't include health insurance.

That's assuming Wal-Mart also kicks in for health insurance. If Wal-Mart doesn't, then Nevada law says the required minimum wage goes higher for each worker. Forget what that amount is.
So it costs wal-mart more money. My point stays the same. Every dollar more that wal-mart pays out for each employee costs them 146 million dollars a year.

Then what's the point of working them? Without a living wage, the concept of a service-based economy is ruined.
Agreed. The whole economic model will come crashing down within 50 years without some massive changes (which probably won't happen). It is an unsustainable economy.

America may as well switch back to the agricultural-based economy that we had pre-Industrial Revolution.
1% of our population can now feed 20% or the worlds population. We can't support an agricultural economy with todays farming technology. Hell the government already subsidizes the farmers we have because their are to many of them.

Uh, no. We need both a working class and a middle class for our economy to succeed.
And the jobs don't exist at this point in time for it to occur. The middle class is very large and the working class is also very large. Neither has enough jobs to support the lower class.

We don't need starving people because that only increases crime and other strains on our society that tax existing resources in every city affected by it.
Agreed whole heartedly but if you want to raise the people who make walmart salaries now to a higher economic class you will end up putting about half of walmarts employees out of work. So would you rather walmart employ all of the people it does and pay them enough so that they don't starve or freeze to death or would you rather walmart employs even 3/4ths as many people at a level approaching the middle class and the other 25% starve or freeze to death?

It really can't be both ways. And lets not even get started on what is better for the country as a whole. 50,000 people make the minimum wage and 100 people at the top of the company each make 10 million dollars each yeah that they have no need or real use for. Right now those 5,000 people invest it in to other companies that have good products and in the process they create new jobs and speed the development of new technologies. Lets say for arguments sake that the 100 million dollars that those 100 people control is invested and creates 500 thousand new jobs that pay the same as the walmart jobs. Now if they ad given that 100 million dollars back to their employees in the form of raises it would have amounted to 2,000 dollars per employee. Those people would not have invested it and while it is true taht the money would have made it back into the market through purchases, it would not have the same impact job wise. Those 50,000 people shop at 10,000 different stores to spend that extra 2K each at. That is 10K per company. That doesn't create a single job. But 10 million dollars to a small company with a good product that is in need of capital can spawn a whole industry.

true, the above is a gross simplification but the idea behind it is sound and solid.

The rich feed the poor, as Adam Smith intended it.
This is already the case. Where else in the world do most of the people living below the national poverty line have cable television?

ReverendR		2006-12-17 04:14:00 AM

Wake me when the guillotines start again.

Maybe we'll get to see Paris Hilton get the chop.

Now that would be worth shelling out for Pay-per-View.

mr0x		2006-12-17 04:16:53 AM

troyh1976

I consider myself lucky that so many of the things I value in life have basically been getting cheap at an accelerating pace, thus making my decidedly middle class income relatively tolerable.

For example, I can buy a cheap Core 2 Duo PC that delivers about 75% of the performance of the mega expensive version. I can buy a $7 bottle of wine that (to me, thankfully I am wine ignorant) tastes virtually the same as a $50 bottle. I can buy a domestic manufactured car that has 95% of the bells and whistles, if not the cachet, of a top of the range Mercedes for about 1/3 the cost.

I don't need a 7000 pound sterling piece of driftwood or hire some no talent ho to attend my (non existent) children's birthday party.

On the downside, I am pretty much locked out of the housing market, don't have a lot of insulation against unemployment in the long term and obviously I don't get the thrill of watching people stare and gasp as I alight from my Falcon jet or pull up at a local cafe in a Mercedes S600. And no doubt, I would be able to score a better class of ass if I had those obvious dollars, even though a lot of those friends and lovers would be 'fake'. Not that I'd care.

/Money is great but if you don't have it, do you choose to be happy? I try. Some of it is fooling yourself but if it works, that's gotta be worth something.

You exemplify the living in two worlds.

You are so out of the rich world that you don't even know what good is.

You think living in that tiny, paper-walled apartment eating what was on sale at your local grocery clicking around in your sub-par computer through a mediocre screen in a small desk with crappy lighting is good life.

You think you have 95% in you car but when you could be hit by a drunk rich guy's tank SUV who walks away with a headache and you'd have to be picked up a bucket it might make you think otherwise.

Friends and lovers could be fake anywhere. Being rich is not bling-bling, it's about the little things like freedom to do what you'd like, where to go etc.

EmperorTippy		2006-12-17 04:19:01 AM

If Wal-mart raised every single employee's salary by not $1, but $2 an hour, the company would still show a profit.
I agree.

The point is it is better for the economy and nation as a whole to have a vast amount of money concentrated in a few hands then it is to have a sufficient amount of wealth spread out over many many hands.

In a few hands it will be invested in to new industries and into the development of new technologies that will have whole industries based around them in 20 years.

In many hands it will be spread over so many companies that none will have the resources to expand or start these new industries.

The first situation creates more jobs and continues the cycle.

The second situation leads to stagnation and eventual collapse.

The third situation is what we are in now. That is a vast amount of money concentrated into a few hands and what would be considered a sufficient amount of money into the rest of the hands were it not for rampant inflation. This will lead to the same collapse as the second situation but the stagnation part won't happen and the whole process goes much faster.

Dialectic		2006-12-17 04:23:25 AM

'Our members are beyond rich,' said Somerset. 'They want the sort of access and experiences that money alone can't buy. Gone is the time when they were only interested in finding the right luxury villas, the best yacht, or entrance to the Guards Polo Club and the Automobile Club of Monaco.'

The truth is, really wealthy people hardly ever talk about money. Only the nouveau riche are the ones flaunting it like rappers drunk on Crystal. Yet, it is also surprising that Despite the lack of distinctive class boundaries and the vast majority of Americans seem to think that they are members of the middle class.

lurch_E_bean		2006-12-17 04:24:20 AM

Daddy, we're missing the fantasmapotomus! She only sings twice a day!

mr0x		2006-12-17 04:32:50 AM

EmperorTippy

If Wal-mart raised every single employee's salary by not $1, but $2 an hour, the company would still show a profit.
I agree.

The point is it is better for the economy and nation as a whole to have a vast amount of money concentrated in a few hands then it is to have a sufficient amount of wealth spread out over many many hands.

In a few hands it will be invested in to new industries and into the development of new technologies that will have whole industries based around them in 20 years.

In many hands it will be spread over so many companies that none will have the resources to expand or start these new industries.

The first situation creates more jobs and continues the cycle.

The second situation leads to stagnation and eventual collapse.

The third situation is what we are in now. That is a vast amount of money concentrated into a few hands and what would be considered a sufficient amount of money into the rest of the hands were it not for rampant inflation. This will lead to the same collapse as the second situation but the stagnation part won't happen and the whole process goes much faster.

You're thinking something like Bell labs I presume?

I think it's the government's job to fund research into 20 years down the road stuff - like universities and the energy dept. labs like Sandia, NASA etc.

I don't think Walmart spends money on R&D. Then, putting money in the bank by normal people or by a big corporation is the same thing.

I think an uneven distribution of wealth is the first thing to an economic collapse since most people won't bother doing anything since they can stuck in their income level and can never graduate above. The rich protect their income heavily and no matter how hard you work you're totally stuck where you are.

ambercat		2006-12-17 04:34:29 AM

Anti_Freak_Machine

I was so rich that I used to shove my feet up the asses of cashmere goats to use as slippers. Then I was arrested and sobered up and realized that I was merely raping farm animals in a blind PCP rage.

I forgot the question.

I think I might *heart* you.

Incontinent_dog_and_monkey_rodeo		2006-12-17 04:34:45 AM

Once more through the park, Bitterman! God, I love the park...

airzonk		2006-12-17 04:35:12 AM

Do they get to do two chicks at the same time?

Combat Medici		2006-12-17 04:45:28 AM

Die fetten jahre sind vorbei!

ChopsMIDI		2006-12-17 04:50:38 AM

A large gap between the rich and the poor is a sign of a HEALTHY economy

http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html (pops)

cypherspace		2006-12-17 04:54:28 AM

AppleDane

"Lady Cosima Somerset, daughter of the Marquess of Londonderry and known as 'Cozzy' - will sack your cook."

I had to do a double-take on that one.

I thought I was the only one.

NedwinHLongfellow		2006-12-17 04:54:31 AM

Damn I hate rich farks. The one lesson from history that gives me comfort is knowing that they'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

How you can let people starve while you live in such excess defies understanding.

The Southern Dandy		2006-12-17 05:00:08 AM

ChopsMIDI

A large gap between the rich and the poor is a sign of a HEALTHY economy

Mexico is the perfect example, right?

Languator		2006-12-17 05:00:22 AM

does that mean like 2 years from now everyone will live in their own parallel universe... you know... when its cheaper

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