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I just hope when i finish my degree i'll be one of the richer!!
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Re:Oh well.... (Score:3, Insightful) by Marc2k (221814) on Friday September 19, @08:48AM (#7002792) (http://www.emopirates.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 16, @11:46AM)

"The last I heard, the median for income earners in America was $27,000 per year... doesn't sound so poor to me." True enough, until you account for the cost of living in America. /* Imma squeeze out some more karma by putting a C-style comment in my sig */

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Think *wealth*, not *dollars* (Score:3, Insightful) by Tackhead (54550) on Friday September 19, @11:01AM (#7004020)

> > > "The last I heard, the median for income earners in America was $27,000 per year... doesn't sound so poor to me." > > True enough, until you account for the cost of living in America. This all started when someone posted that Marxian meme that "The rich get richer, the poor get poorer". BULLSHIT. Then people started talking about median and/or average incomes in dollars. Nice, but you're missing the point. You're thinking about dollars, but dollars are useless without wealth. If you want to know how "the poor" are doing, you've gotta be talking "wealth". My grandparents were working class. Their idea of a "fridge" was a block of ice. Their idea of "luxury" was cranking ice cream by hand in a steel container surrounded by rock salt and ice chunks. And it took days to cross the Atlantic, a trip that was only for the Filthy Rich. My parents were working class. Their idea of "comfort" was when they got air conditioning. Their idea of "luxury" was when they went from black and white to a color TV. And took hours to cross the Atlantic, and that was only for the Pretty Well Off. I'm working class. When I was a kid, my idea of "cool" was the 3D graphics in "Tron", and my idea of "luxury" was a Cray Supercomputer I could call my own. And from my 2.0 GHz laptop with 3D card with T&L capabilities, I can alt-Tab out of Max Payne, and with a few mouse clicks, cross the Atlantic (alas, it still takes a few hours) for half the price of the laptop. And I can show my grandparents that laptop. I don't mind if Bill Gates has enough money to fly to the moon for his vacation. Because if someone builds commercial space tourism for the Bill Gateses of the world, I can rest easy knowing that by the time I'm in my hip-fracture years, I'll be living them in 1/6 gravity. The rich are getting richer, but only linearly. One can eat only so much caviar per hour. Wherever capitalism has flourished, however, the poor, on the other hand, have done fantastic.

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Re:Think *wealth*, not *dollars* (Score:3, Insightful) by EvilTwinSkippy (112490) <yoda@etoCOMMAyoc.com minus punct> on Friday September 19, @11:19AM (#7004274) (http://www.etoyoc.com/~yoda | Last Journal: Tuesday June 10, @11:53AM)

That brought a tear to my eye. Especially when you consider the contents of my fridge right now contains an assortment of food that would make a King from earlier times weep. The contents of my spice cabinet would be under armed guard. My wife and I are having a baby. There is no doubt both she and the baby are actually going to survive the birthing process, and it's a pretty solid bet the kid is going to live to adulthood. That cannot be said of many places in the world, or even here before modern medicine. (And gripe what you will about the cost, but we HAVE it.) Morning has broken, put in a workorder.

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Re:Yes, the way to help the economy is cut taxes. (Score:3, Interesting) by murphj (321112) on Friday September 19, @11:01AM (#7004029) (http://slashdot.org/)

Yeah, I'm real outraged about the injustice of the people who control 40% of the wealth, and 50% of the of the financial wealth paying nearly 25% of the taxes. I'm not at all outraged that 38.9 million Americans, including 7.2 million children, have no healthcare. I'm too busy worrying about the rich. SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.

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Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful) by digitalunity (19107) <zeroskill AT comcast DOT net> on Friday September 19, @08:28AM (#7002668) (http://slashdot.org/)

Because in the past, it was Media tycoons, publishers, industrialists, bankers who got rich. It often took them their entire lives, their childrens lives. It was 'old money'. Now, it seems many on this list managed to go from zero to super rich in a matter of a few years. Look at Bill Gates. He hasn't always been rich, now he has more money than anybody. It seems the seperation between rich and poor is getting far wider. Most people scrape by, day by day, week at a time. The super rich have more money than they could spend in a lifetime, 10 lifetimes. This isn't the bad part, the world has always been like this. The bad part, it seems the middle class seems to be getting smaller. In times of recession, those who were once well to do are now finding themselves just as broke as the rest of us while the super rich just keep getting even more obscenely wealthy. And it is always on the backs of the poor that they tread. Even the poorest Americans today are living far better than years before. Really? Are you sure? The socioeconomic seperation that existed in the 60's and 70's wasn't nearly as pronounced as it is today. Have you seen the unemployment rate recently? Millions of jobless people. Declining benefits, declining salaries, shaky job security, citizen's apathy for the declining political system. I can't say I'd agree with you. digitalunity:A character whose behavior is predictable or superficial; see banality

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Re:News for Nerds? (Score:5, Insightful) by AKnightCowboy (608632) on Friday September 19, @08:33AM (#7002698)

Look at Bill Gates. He hasn't always been rich, now he has more money than anybody. Well, actually yes, he was always rich. His parents were lawyers. Do you think he just got an academic scholarship to Harvard and decided to flunk out? Now, he probably wasn't super-rich like he is now, but most of us would kill someone for $1 million. With the right investing you could live nicely on that for the rest of your life without working.

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Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful) by ILikeRed (141848) on Friday September 19, @09:47AM (#7003225)

It never ceases to amaze me that people somehow assume that Bill Gates started life in squalor someplace and pulled himself up by his bootstraps. It is simply not true. His daddy gave him millions to start his little software company. Dell is the same way. Yes he started in a dorm room and his parents garage, but how many college students get enough of an allowance from daddy that they can buy chips from Intel directly, by the semi-load. Most people starting a small business do not get to do so with millions of dollars in gifts sitting in the checking account. I am not saying they did nothing, but it was not rocket science... these kind of gifts makes it a lot easier to get started.

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Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Insightful) by t482 (193197) on Friday September 19, @08:55AM (#7002831) (http://xminc.com/linux/)

Take wealth rather than income, and America's disparity is even more startling. The wealthiest 1% of all households controls 38% of national wealth, while the bottom 80% of households holds only 17%, according to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI). Around 85% of stockmarket wealth is held by a lucky 20%. That's capitalism at work. World wide statistics are show the top 1% holding even higher % of wealth. Not that there is anything wrong with it. US is the most unequal of the OECD, followed by Switzerland and socialist Canada.

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Re:News for Nerds? (Score:3, Interesting) by Marc2k (221814) on Friday September 19, @08:56AM (#7002837) (http://www.emopirates.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 16, @11:46AM)

Read much? [amazon.com] There are many, many Americans who would disagree with you. Granted, the lot of us aren't losing fingers to meat grinders, which are subsequently fed back to us in hotdogs anymore, but there *was* a recent article on Slashdot (I believe? maybe I read it somewhere else) that this generation is the first in a long, long time to have less than their forebears. /* Imma squeeze out some more karma by putting a C-style comment in my sig */

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"Jerry Yang of Yahoo! found himself in a 16-way tie for 162nd place."

Re:16-way tie? (Score:4, Funny) by mccalli (323026) on Friday September 19, @08:38AM (#7002726) (http://www.eruvia.org/)

C'mon, Jerry! Go mow a few lawns or something. Break that tie! Reminds of a sketch on an old UK comedy series, The Two Ronnies. They had a regular sketch where a couple of tramps would muse about the world in general. Probably the best remember is: First tramp: "If I were Rockefeller, I'd be richer than Rockefeller" Second tramp: "How's that then? How do you reckon that?" First tramp: "Well, I'd do a spot of window cleaning on the side..." Cheers, Ian

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What do people do with all this money? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'd really like to know what these people intend to do with such fortunes. I assume part of it is really stocks, and so it's company worth rather than personal worth, but still, I can't see ever needing more than, say, $2-3 million over the course of my entire life.

--
fclose(FILE *f) { if (f->eof) return EOF; assert(f!=NULL); }
-- Windows libc (Visual C++ 6.0)

I'll tell you what I would do with all that money. (Score:5, Funny) by CausticPuppy (82139) on Friday September 19, @08:19AM (#7002620) (http://j.bruce.home.mindspring.com)

Two chicks at the same time. -CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know

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Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Interesting) by kinnell (607819) on Friday September 19, @08:27AM (#7002662)

What do people do with all this money? The more money you have, the more you can imagine spending money on. You and I never think about buying our own private luxury yacht, complete with crew, helicopter, etc., because it's so beyond what we can afford. When, however, you look at your bank balance and realise that you can, but you just need to double your estate to make it worthwhile... If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets

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Re:I've always wondered... (Score:4, Interesting) by ojQj (657924) on Friday September 19, @08:29AM (#7002672)

I'm sure anyone could think of ways to spend more than that... I mean think about it. Would you like a house on South Beach? Another one in Greece? Maids for both? A Delorian? A yacht? A yacht for your maids? A small fleet of luxury airplanes? A large reputable university? A President? A cure for AIDS? A solution to world hunger? Any one can give out any amount of money. Because in fact money is not really paper bills, but rather power to do as you please.

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Re:I've always wondered... (Score:3, Insightful) by sql*kitten (1359) * on Friday September 19, @10:43AM (#7003773) (http://www.kitten.org.uk/ | Last Journal: Monday September 15, @11:23AM)

What do people do with all this money? This isn't a rhetorical question; I'd really like to know what these people intend to do with such fortunes. Bill Gates donates $100m to UN fund to fight Aids [ananova.com]   Bill Gates Donates $37 Million to Combat Hepatitis B in China [hivandhepatitis.com]   Donates $25m to help fight AIDS in Nigeria [wtps.co.uk]   Gates Donates Millions to Schools [wired.com]   Gates donates $70 million to develop meningitis vaccine [canoe.ca] Mostly, wealthy people give their money away. Heard of Carnegie Hall? "Fascists divide in two categories: the fascists and the anti-fascists" -- Ennio Flaiano

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Rich Get Richer (Score:4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19, @08:38AM (#7002723)

From the CIA World Factbook entry for the United States:- Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.

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Re:While I remain unemployed.....since January. (Score:5, Interesting) by Evil Adrian (253301) on Friday September 19, @08:26AM (#7002656) (http://asdasd/)

Why didn't you take the job in Indiana? --- evil adrian

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Re:While I remain unemployed.....since January. (Score:4, Interesting) by Newer Guy (520108) on Friday September 19, @08:33AM (#7002694)

Because there were no good jobs there for my wife, who would have had to give up her well paying job. We would have wound up making less than 10k more without her salary. We decided to tighten our belts a bit more instead. Also, my friend had an opening at his company, but his boss pulled the job literally at the last minute. Of course, now HE does the work of two people.

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Re:While I remain unemployed.....since January. (Score:3, Interesting) by Mr_Silver (213637) on Friday September 19, @08:37AM (#7002714) (http://www.uberworld.org/user_info.cgi?name=Silver)

I've sent out 1001 resumes and received but one job offer...in Indiana (UGH!)! If you really have sent out this many resumes then you could do a few things: Look at your resume again. Why are people not interested in it? What can you do to make it better? Get advice from friends and family who aren't afraid of being critical. Look at the roles you are going for. Are you being realistic? Can you do that role? Does your resume emphasise the fact you can do that role? Look at the way you go to interviews. Do you dress smartly? Do you research the company beforehand? Do you make sure that (without looking like you're licking someones backside) you stand out from the crowd? Look at the area you are trying to get a job. You may have to face the unfortunately reality that you have to move. I've never been to the US so I don't know - but is Indiana really that bad? How open are you to moving? You've probably heard all this a million times. If you were based in the UK (and maybe even if you're not) check out a very good book called "Great answers to tough interview questions [amazon.com]". Best of luck. IRC for the intelligent [uberworld.org]

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Re:Sounds pretty bad to me (Score:3, Insightful) by KirkH (148427) on Friday September 19, @09:13AM (#7002967)

I would wager that a majority of thier wealth is in stock -- especially for Gates, Allen, Bezos and the like. With the rebound in the stock market, they've seen significant increases. Particularly Bezos -- Amazon's stock has been soaring and his net worth is up more than 100%. Plus, that 10% average return figure is bogus -- or at least has been for a few years now. Just being non-negative has been a goal for a lot of mutual funds of late. Also consider, if you have $5000 to invest, it's a lot easier to get a better percentage return that if you have $5 billion. You would need to get a decent return on every last dollar of those billions -- not an easy task, especially when a lot of it will be tied up in safe investments like bonds or cash.

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It can be quite sobering to find out that you are in the top 0.9% richest people in the world. Thats a hell of a lot of people poorer than you.

I'm sure people will rip this apart because it's based on global data, doesn't take into account cost variations in countries and 101 other things - but give it a go anyway.
IRC for the intelligent [uberworld.org]

Re:You too can be a millionare (Score:4, Insightful) by chrisbw (609350) on Friday September 19, @09:13AM (#7002966) (http://www.bitter.net/)

This, of course is operating under the "your salary is your worth" model of richness, which I would argue isn't incredibly accurate. Wealth is typically recognized through one's net worth. Once you reach a high enough net worth to be of note, your annual income becomes somewhat trivial to your total net worth. Somewhat related is how amusing it is to hear people talking about "tax cuts for the (rich | poor | etc)," when they're actually talking about "tax cuts for the (high income | low income | etc)," which is more accurate. Just because someone has a high salary or a low salary does not mean they have a high net worth or low net worth. Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/

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Re:What bothers me (Score:5, Insightful) by salesgeek (263995) on Friday September 19, @09:01AM (#7002869)

What bothers me is there is no conceivable way these individuals could have performed over a billion dollars worth of labor, ever. I'm not advocating communism or socialism, I'm just pointing out a basic truth. None of these people could have conceivably done more useful work than the entire lifetimes work of thousands of people. Sure they can. They've provided work for a lifetime for thousands of people. $G

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Re:What bothers me (Score:3, Insightful) by ShooterNeo (555040) on Friday September 19, @09:11AM (#7002949)

This is an example of a logical error. Yes, they lead the tiller on the ship...but simply because the decisions they make touch the wheel, does this mean they are 10,000 times as useful as anyone else? Is it somehow a rare trait for an individual to be able to understand and lead a corporate mechanism? Of course not. It's like saying the hand on the wheel is 100,000 times as important as the lookouts in the crow's nests or the actual tiller man in the engine room. Sure, the captain's hand perhaps is a litle more important than the less trained hands of the kitchen boy's....but not thousands or millions of times more as in corporations. Plenty of educated people exist who can provide these sorts of decisions, some no doubt better than the executives we have in place. The reason they are paid more is because the executive has name recognition in the minds of the company shareholders, not because his services are thousands, millions of times more valuble. A possible analogy might be Formula 1 racing cars. Every last part on those cars from the tiniest minutae in the engine firmware to suspension tuning has to be right for the car to win the race. Yet, the fans only remember the names of the driver, even though his labor is only a small portion of the work required to reach the finish line in time. Sure, driving a car is tough...but so is tuning the fuel system and making these machines even survive the race. Sure, leading the next level of workers as a corporate exec isn't easy...but neither is debugging code or designing candy colored computer cases.

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Re:What bothers me (Score:3, Insightful) by JaredOfEuropa (526365) on Friday September 19, @09:09AM (#7002935) (Last Journal: Saturday July 19, @08:15PM)

The money was not earned, it was stolen. In most cases, the money was stolen from the shareholders of the corporation in question, who by rights should have either had the money in dividends or seen the money re-invested in the corporate machine. For the largest part this wealth isn't in the form of money, it's in stock, mostly shares in the company they have founded. Most of these super-rich simply own a goodly chunk of a company that has become immensely valuable. What remains is the question of whether or not it is right that these people do so well out of founding a company and making it successful. You can look at it two ways. some would say the success of these companies was due not just to the founder, but also due to the hard work of the other employees. Others will point out that the risk and effort taken by the company founder is what enables all these employees to earn a living in the first place. Whatever the case; these company founders are not particularly productive, not to the tune of billions of dollars anyway. But they founded their respective companies and own them... that's where their fortune derives from. Should that ownership be taken away from them when the company takes off? I think not. Just remember that one of the best ways to become rich yourself is to start your own business and make it successful. Even a moderately successful small-scale company can be worth a nice deal of money; not billions, but enough to keep you comfortable. You don't even have to start the company yourself. I've been invited to help with a startup... and if I am going to pour my sweat and tears into the company (and with a startup, I can expect to have to), my efforts will be a large contribution to the success of the company. That means I want to have a stake in the potential success as well: not in the form of a large salary, but in a part ownership of the company. Live free or don't

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Re:What bothers me (Score:5, Insightful) by chrisbw (609350) on Friday September 19, @09:22AM (#7003037) (http://www.bitter.net/)

Now hold on a minute here, accusing these people of stealing is taking things a BIT far. What you're failing to recognize is the difference between net worth and salary. Salary is generally recognized as a compensation for labor. Gates and Jobs, for example, were founders of their companies. They took risks, they had good ideas, and they had the leadership to drive their companies to financial success (you can argue amonst yourselves about the technical success of their products, but the financial accomplishments of their companies is pretty evident). Most of their net worth came about through equity that they have as the founders of these companies, NOT through their salaries. Yes, their salaries are high, but not $40 billion high. Most of this net worth was accumulated through the appreciation of their equity. Chris -- http://www.bitter.net/

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What a @#%!*ing myth. (Score:3, Insightful) by Damek (515688) <adam@NOSPaM.damek.org> on Friday September 19, @09:45AM (#7003209) (http://www.damek.org/)

The American Dream is about freedom to pursue your own life, it's not about getting rich. Any given newborn in America has probably a better chance of winning their state lottery (when they're of age to participate of course) than of getting rich and/or famous through any of the means you mentioned. The "you could do it too" dream is a lie we sell ourselves so we don't get all upset about all the rich who actually control things, who take our money and don't have to run because we all love them. The master/servant relationship is alive today in America. The middle class are the servants. Each day we get one step closer to returning to out-and-out feudalism as those in power work to concentrate more and more power. We have to work against them to get back to the REAL American Dream - freedom, democracy, and equal opportunities for all. The Ayn Randian everyone-for-herself, you-too-could-be-a-billionaire world view is not equal opportunity for everyone. There is no equality when you start from an immensely unbalanced power structure. We can build a better world, we just have expend some effort to get there. Effort we can't be bothered to spend if we're all deluding ourselves about our chances of one day being a master over our own little band of slaves. (I would start by imposing percentage-based salary caps on the richest citizens - there's no conceivable way that any human can be worth as much as the super-rich make. It's ridiculous. And no, just because they can dupe others into allowing them to have that much is not an excuse. Just because a thief can grab somebody's wallet does not give him the right to that person's wallet.)

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Re:They did it, why can't you? (Score:3, Insightful) by Maul (83993) on Friday September 19, @10:12AM (#7003475) (Last Journal: Saturday December 28, @03:25AM)

Sure, it is technically possible to start from nothing, work hard, make the "correct" decisions, and make it to "the top." However, it also takes a huge amount of LUCK. Even you say that Gates got lucky. He not only was lucky enough to find a hastily put together OS that he could buy for $80,000, but he was also lucky enough that IBM was in such a rush that they screwed up their contract with MS. If not for that, MS would probably have been just another software company that made programming languages. A lot of people start from nothing, work hard, make sound choices, and still fail because of the various random factors surrounding them that they have absolutely no control over. I can assure you that if I took $1,500 and started a business with it, the likely outcome (no matter how hard I worked or how wise my decisions were) would be me going out of business in a very short amount of time. Who knows, maybe tommorrow a lightbulb will go off in your head and you'll think of a way of doing something innovative or different. People think of that all the time. However, the chance of taking that idea and turning it into a fortune 500 company is slim. "You got whacked, 'cuz you're weak." -Magus

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Seriously, while I have no problem with capitalism rewarding those who take the risks (and often screwing other risk takers), the scale *is* a bit off.

It's just a bit disgusting when these guys will get a few million dollar bonus for keeping the salaries of the people who helped made them rich down for example. Or get millions of bucks even if they run a company into the ground, bankrupt it, and screw all of the stockholders and employees.

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This phrase is really starting to annoy me. If you define "the rich" as "everybody who pays taxes", then yes, the recent tax cuts were "tax cuts for the rich". But that definition is obviously ridiculous, so the phrase "tax cuts for the rich" really doesn't apply to the Bush tax cuts. Please learn the definitions of the words you use before you speak again.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this post are not necessarily mine, as I've not yet had my medication today.

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Re:Why do you think Bush gave them tax cuts? (Score:3, Insightful) by KingAdrock (115014) on Friday September 19, @09:36AM (#7003144) (http://www.layble-inc.com/)

I think the point of giving the middle and lower-class a larger portion of the tax cuts is the fact that the money they get back could make the difference in sending their children to college, or improving their standard of living. The money will most likely make no immediate difference in the lifestyle of the upper-class.

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Re:which taxes? Income taxes? Social Security tax? (Score:3, Insightful) by jimsum (587942) on Friday September 19, @10:10AM (#7003449)

I still don't get why rich people would invest their money in expanding businesses if no one can afford to buy anything. Which is better, giving the money to the rich for them to invest in products they think people will buy; or giving the money to people to spend, and thereby directly showing what products they are interested in buying? The dot com bubble was all about people investing in businesses that had no customers; did the Bush administration think this was a good thing? So why would rich people stop hiring just because they have to pay taxes? So far, given the millions of jobs that have disappeared over the last few years, I'd say cutting taxes for the rich does not create jobs. I find it very interesting that we're told we must all sacrifice and work extra hard in this tough economic environment. We don't need extra money, we're just happy to have a job. Yet this sort of thing doesn't work with the rich; they need cash for motivation. -- Pot is safer than Beer

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