I get called a lot on my intolerance and stereotyping, believe it or not, for holding certain opinions. Namely that the working class and the employing class are polar opposites in terms of economic interest, or that very few people get genuinely rich through honourable means. I have maybe even suggested on occasion that the rich aren’t just regular folks like you and me. And that they may, in the privacy of their own mansions, cackle and jump up and down in piles of their own gold and/or hundred-dollar bills.
Anyway, read this article and you’ll get a sense where I’m coming from.
It’s not that the rich are evil, you see, any more than a shark is evil for being a predator. But their insulated lives lead to them living in an alternate reality of sorts. The article is illuminating—despite being apparently great with calculating figures on spreadsheets, rich people have no idea how those numbers apply to the real world:
We hoped to gain an insight into their notions of fairness – what might persuade them to share more of their wealth with others. What we encountered was a startling demonstration of ignorance. Here were professionals who deal daily with money, yet know next to nothing about other people’s incomes. When asked to relate themselves to the rest of the population, these high-earners utterly misjudged the magnitude of their privilege.
How much, we asked our group, would it take to put someone in the top 10% of earners? They put the figure at £162,000 [$314,911 USD). In fact, in 2007 it was around £39,825 [$77,416 USD), the point at which the top tax band began. Our group found it hard to believe that nine-tenths of the UK’s 32m taxpayers earned less than that. As for the poverty threshold, our lawyers and bankers fixed it at £22,000 [$42,766 USD). But that sum was just under median earnings, which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay.
When pressed, of course, the vicious ideology that underlines our economic system emerges. It becomes a matter of ethics to them. They are astronomically richer than us, not because they’re better exploiters or because they’ve been born into it, but because they’re just better people. And that, well, that’s just how life is.
“We work harder and aspire the most,” one said. The longer we talked, the more they turned to moral reasons for success and failure, moving away from the structural globalisation reasons given above. One banker said: “It’s a fact of modern life that there is disparity and ‘Is it fair or unfair?’ is not a valid question. It’s just the way it is, and you have to get on with it. People say it’s unfair when they don’t do anything to change their circumstances.” In other words, they see themselves as makers of their own fortune. Or, as another banker said, “Quite a lot of people have done well who want to achieve, and quite a lot of people haven’t done well because they don’t want to achieve.”
Despite the fact that they have more money than they’ll even know what to do with in their lifetimes, this curious species begrudges the working class a penny:
Whatever, the poor didn’t deserve it. Masters of the universe our groups might be, but their outlook was pure Daily Mail: “Single people . . . get pregnant and get a flat and more money. You just see everybody pushing prams, then they’ll get more income and a little flat that they can stay in for life.” There was much talk of the perverse incentives for single parenthood, with one banker complaining that the 18-year-old mother on benefits “doesn’t get that much less money than another 18-year-old working in a shop”. It didn’t seem to occur to this speaker that the shop worker’s pay might also be too low. They were contemptuous of anything that gave extra money directly to poorer people: “This thing of giving pregnant women £200 for dietary supplements. Like, as if they’ll really spend it on fruit.” Most were adamant, along with this banker: “We don’t think just chucking money at the welfare state is the answer.”
I don’t think we ever really moved that far from feudalism, you know? I’m not too surprised at this look into the lives of the ultra-rich, but I wish that the lower- and middle-class dupes who buy into the idea that capitalism is in any way fair, efficient, or the only viable economic system, would take a good hard look at who their votes and compliance support.
Hat tip: Flintultrasparc.
Having known several financial professionals on both sides of the Atlantic, I just have to say that this is the rankest kind of horseshit. The imagined 100% correlation between “working harder” and “increased reward” never ceases to piss me off.
For example, I’m writing this comment during a short break from my 14th hour of working today. And I’m sure as hell not making banker money.
And I have never worked harder or for longer hours than I did when I worked as a labourer-teacher on a farm, making just above minimum wage for the farm work, and no money at all for the teaching. It’s not that I don’t think someone wealthy could do this work—the farm-handing, at least, was minimally skilled labour (though I was hella slower than the people who’d been doing it for years, that’s for damnsure)—but the level of skill required is not actually a measure of how overall taxing the work is, especially after 12–14–16 hours.
So much word. And, that ignorance? We can lay that at the door of the British media, which rarely describes the society of people who earn less than £50k a year.
Fuck, I just read more of the article. “I don’t think we should sit here and say London should be guilty for being successful.” London? London? You mean, this London? The London where the minimum wage is a joke and even non-immigrants are too squeezed to even speak up about that? Where my aunt, for all she has a PhD and two jobs, scrapes by from month to month by diddling her housing benefit? Go stab yourself in the head, you sick little moran.
But Scrooge looks so happy! Surely you wouldn’t take away his gold coins. He loves them like children, every one.
One of the people interviewed in the linked article justifies the huge salary gap because these financial professionals sometimes have to pull all-nighters to get work done.
He really thinks that that is such an amazing thing that ordinary folks have no experience with and justifies a half-million dollar per year salary.
He ought to tell that to pretty much every college student who works. Or your run-of-the mill parent with an occasionally sick or fussy kid.
I make 20,000 dollars per year and I know what a damn all-nighter is like. I guess somebody owes me a check.
Word. I’m finally getting around to accepting that regardless of all the blood, sweat and tears that I expended busting my ass to get a science degree, I will never have a career in my field or make more than 22,000 dollars a year unless I go bust my ass some more at grad school.
More disturbing? My professors making 40,000 dollars a year, despite the 70-hour workweeks they regularly pull, the gazillion tasks they have to do to keep their jobs, and the research they do that benefits humanity.
Sigh. Life is definitely not freaking fair, is it?
Mmm…you gotta get to know these folks intimately to understand ‘em. I have in the past…what they mean by they work harder is that they work smarter. As in, they save like demons and then start investing. Their blind spots in terms of why everyone else can’t do the same are fascinatingly monumental. I may write a piggyback blog and I blame Sabotabby.
They’re right about one thing: living on the average wage may not technically count as poverty, but for many people it means living from hand to mouth and not being able to save or invest.
Regardless of how many extra hours one works.
Having just finished A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, I’d say living hand to mouth and not being able to save or invest was definitely the definition of poverty for WWI-era Brooklyn. Whoever these fuckers are who think it’s not need to try it.
Ironed Orchid, I have to ask where you got that name…
Lisa Kansas: It’s like The Iron Orchid from Michael Moorcock’s End of of Time series, but much sillier.
Hee! I was hoping it was from the End of Time series, I hardly ever meet anybody else who has read them!