Comments on: Income Inequality

By: Rob T

Rob T — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:43:25 +0000

I sincerely hope that this is a joke - some sort of satire maybe?

Last I checked, $3.00 gallon gasoline and $5.00 gallon milk doesn’t really affect those who make north of 7 figures.

Please tell me how blue collar workers across the once great industrial United States complex can adapt to the outsourced, globalized, gotta-have-money-to-make-money neo-fascist state that we are all currently enduring?

Better yet, please ask my mother, a career waitress, what tactics and strategies she’s employing to create wealth these days?

How can it be that such well educated people act so ignorantly?

By: PB

PB — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:51:26 +0000

Seriously, is this a joke? I’m appalled. Not only is it really absurd that someone would say this, but that you’d send it out to a distribution list with the caption ‘well put’.

I’m speechless.

By: Dr. Pete

Dr. Pete — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 21:16:29 +0000

I’m not someone who thinks everyone with wealth was born with a silver spoon in their mouths or just got lucky, but all of us who have been successful in one way or another need to recognize that we’ve caught a break here and there, met the right people at the right time, and gotten help or advice from many of those people. The solution to income disparity isn’t to tell the poor to “make more money”; it’s for those of us who have been successful in life to remember the breaks we’ve gotten and to try to return the favor. That doesn’t mean throwing out cash on the streets, but there are plenty of great initiatives on the internet to, for example, help fund worthwhile projects (www.donorschoose.org) or provide micro-loans to entrepreneurs in poor countries (www.kiva.org). It doesn’t take much to help people help themselves.

By: justin

justin — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:54:05 +0000

I would challenge your acquaintance on such a sweeping generality, specifically asking about inequalities in education, access to information, access to transportation, good old fashioned racism, and a host of other factors that aggravate the wealth gap. If eliminating this gap was simply a matter of “everybody working hard”, then we wouldn’t see a country where the wealthy can live off of their investments while those who perform back-breaking menial labor are forced to live check-to-check.

Please think before posting crap like this - that is, assuming this is not a joke.

By: DNS

DNS — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 17:21:17 +0000

Even your follow up is short sighted (your piano analogy is very poorly thought out, btw).

I agree with justin; you assume that everyone has the ability or wherewithal or opportunities to “just start a new business”, as if it were just a matter of a day-in-the-life-of.

Get over the Puritanism mentality of “work hard and wealth shall follow” - it’s a fallacy and I’m always shocked to see people believing in it today.

I’d suggest you find new acquaintances too.