Do people with money work harder than everyone else?

[kentuck]

Just as an example, Mitt Romney has not worked for ten years and he has made hundreds of millions of dollars. Donald Trump is another.

But there are sod carriers and construction workers and carpenters and plumbers and highway workers that have sweated and toiled for the last 10 years and have nothing.

Which of these have worked the hardest?

I would say that these folks that take their showers at night instead of in the morning work more in 8 hours than most of these crybabies work in 16 hours?

Some of these small business people work very hard, there is no doubt. But it is not hard labor. They do not usually sweat and stink or are not usually covered with grease, grime, and dirt. There is work and there is labor.

But these folks should stop their whining about how "hard" they have worked for what they have and they don't want the government taking it away. If those sorry ass people would get out there and work as hard as them, they would have money also...

[liberal N proud]

1. The Romenys and Trumps of this world wouldn't know what physical labor was.

Most of them have never lifted a shovel except at the ceremonious groud breaking.

[Justice wanted]

2. As a General rule- HELL NO! ABSOLUTLY NOT-however you do have rare exceptions who than

honestly help those who help him/her become a success.

[quaker bill]

3. What would be the point of having it then?

The hardest I have ever worked was for minimum wage. These days I work smarter, fewer hours, and many times the money.

[JSnuffy]

4. ... and apparently you should be ashamed of yourself.

Go dig a ditch or something.

[kentuck]

5. And just for clarification....

You probably think Mitt Romney should pay a higher tax rate than 14%, right?

[lunatica]

12. Wow!

A newby defending Mitt and the rest of the non working wealthy.

[hifiguy]

25. Enjoy your stay.

It will likely be short.

[lunatica]

14. I don't dig ditches but I work pretty hard

and I'm living from paycheck to paycheck because life throws us curves.

[DonCoquixote]

6. One point

"Some of these small business people work very hard, there is no doubt. But it is not hard labor. They do not usually sweat and stink or are not usually covered with grease, grime, and dirt. There is work and there is labor."

As someone whose family has tiesd to both the restaurant and plumbing biz, I disagree, and I say this as one who has cleaned hot grease and gotten mouthfuls of sewage. Your point about the mega ricvh does hold though, as there is nothing they do thaty justifies the slalaries and bonuses they get.

[sorefeet]

7. WORK

I hate the way rich people use that word. I am disabled from hard physical work. Years of lifting and working in places the human body was not designed for. I was used as a tool and when it broke I was disguarded and called a nusiance claim by PRIVATIZED workers comp.
Makes me sick when I hear Limbaugh or Hannity talk about how hard they have worked. I have worked ten thousand times harder than them and have never earned 50 million a year.
Hard work does not make one wealthy. Corruption and a crooked streak can sure help though.

[lunatica]

16. My sincere welcome to you to DU

As someone who is struggling I recognize you for being in a worse position than I'm in. I'm lucky to have a job, but one catastrophic event that would make it impossible to work would be the end for me immediately. I have used up all the saving and retirement and home equity I have taking care of my mother who had dementia and then pancreatic cancer before she died.

edited for spelling

[Bonhomme Richard]

8. I have a strange circle of friends. Most work for themselves, one way or the other.

A couple are carpenters, one is a Doctor, I manufacture, one a farmer, another has an upholstery business, and one works for an equity firm. They all work their asses off but the returns are quite different. I have to say that I couldn't do what the equity friend does. She has been in that industry for years, makes a comfortable 6 figure income but she has to live in an apartment 2 1/2 hours from home (paid for by the company) during the week. At least once a month, sometimes more, she is off to China, Germany, or elsewhere, dealing with company issues. She has also stood up for the employees at the company the equity firm invested in saving as many jobs as she could. I like to think I had a small part in that with conversations while drinking a lot of alcohol. Complained when the firm sent in upper management that the company could not afford to carry. Basically she is a good person. She puts on no heirs, doesn't do the salon thing, is extremely generous, basically just a normal person. Well, she is getting ready to retire because they are selling the company and she has an equity stake. She is going to do very well, even jokes that I can be the caretaker of their house, but I know she did help save that company. I also know that she worked her ass off with only the potential for a big payout. I doubt her bosses worked anywhere near that hard. My point is that work may be physical and it may be mental but it is still work.
I hold no grudge against her.
Don't take this as a defense for the wealthy as I believe that they are truly leaches on society. I just wanted to give a little personal perspective.
My own business? I am barely hanging on.

[lunatica]

17. Being rich isn't the sin

It's how you get wealthy that constitutes sin in the public's eyes.

[kentuck]

18. I'm always amazed...

with this discussion on a "Democratic" board.

[Bonhomme Richard]

20. ? n/t

[abowsh]

9. I don't think generalities work like that

For example, a friend of my father's created a construction company that now employs a few hundred people. Now, he just goes from site to site making sure things are on schedule. But that isn't how it started. At one point, it was just him. He was only doing heating and cooling work and was the only employee for 6 years. He got a big project and hired 3 other guys, and it took off from there. Now, he is probably worth about $10 million (if not more), but he worked as hard as anyone to get it.

On the other hand, a friend of mine was given ownership of a private mental hospital upon completing college. So of course, he went to the easiest school and took the easiest major he could find and now makes at least a million a year because his dad gave him the business.

Conversely, there are very hard working people doing construction that never really see it pay off. There are also lazy people who could better themselves, but don't want to make the effort to do it. People are all different and lumping everyone into groups just creates inaccuracies.

[kentuck]

10. So to say the wealthy got their money by working harder...?

...is also a generality?

[abowsh]

11. Yes it is. Some did, some didn't.

.

[woo me with science]

13. Those 400 who have more than the 150 MILLION at the bottom

must not only be working harder, but also skipping coffee and bathroom breaks.

[kentuck]

15. Rust never sleeps...

...and neither do the wealthy.

[NNN0LHI]

19. These kinds of threads generally don't go over well here at DU

Notice it received one Rec? Mine.

I really don't think we have a lot of people here who have done a lot of manual labor over the years and therefore do not really understand what those who have and why they deserve to be well paid.

They don't seem to understand that yes, while I can't do their job, they probably could do mine either. I understand this but some others seem to have a difficult time wrapping their minds around this fact.

I agree that too many people are overworked for low pay.

But you will not find much of a consensus for that here.

Another sign that DU isn't really very representative of the real world.

Don

[kentuck]

22. Considering that much of our economic difficulties...

are because wages never kept up with productivity for almost 30 years, I would think it would be viewed more favorably on DU but you are probably correct "that DU isn't really very representative of the real world."

[treestar]

21. No. They exploit the puritanical value we have

Most of us want to claim to work hard and would feel embarrassed to admit it if we don't.

They have got us with this, and we let them.

Same with "envy." Why is that so bad? Because they say it is and we buy it. We start defending ourselves from this charge.

Same, we all claim to work hard. Why not admit we'd like to work less hard? Be more like Mitt. He has it good, doesn't he?

But his kind exploit our feeling that we must "work hard." Mitt knows he does not work hard. But he knows he can use that with the rest of us.

[kentuck]

23. Work is good...

for everyone that doesn't have to do it. They will tell you so.

[Bluerthanblue]

24. usually no. It's a rare exception that those who 'work hard'

are wealthy in my experience.

Some of the hardest working people are among the poorest paid.

Luck has more to do with wealth than anything. imo. We don't have much say into the life we are born into. And that impacts us more than we like to admit or believe. (with rare exceptions).

[ProdigalJunkMail]

26. depends on your definition of work

and it seems here that you equate physical labor with work. i don't do physical labor...but i work damned hard and am usually exhausted at the end of the day. is THAT work to you? how DO you define work?

sP

[CJCRANE]

27. I don't begrudge small business owners

I think they generally work hard.

It's the people who make $20 million a year from interest payments. How exactly does someone deserve to earn that much while doing nothing?

Even then, I don't begrudge them that much, as long as they pay their fair share back into the economy.

[nadinbrzezinski]

28. If you mean physical ewwww

But other kinds of work, not Romney. He is at the point he can live from investments, but there are even wealthy people who keep very long hours.

[ieoeja]

29. The reward for hard work is more work.

This holds true even in the office environment. My boss's boss decided to explain to me why I was "not successful" a few years ago. She pointed out that I did not take the right people out to lunch, buy them gifts, etc.

I don't disagree with anything she said (except that "not successful" part). I was somewhat surprised to hear her admitting it though.

Sadly, she completely fails to realize that she would not have been successful had there not been someone like me doing all the work while she was having lunch with the boss.


Basically, you get what you choose-and-are-capable-of working for. If you work hard, you get hard work. If you work at moving up the ladder, you move up the ladder. If you work at making money, you make money.

Me? I came from that blue-collar, hard-working background and find it impossible to entirely beat out of myself. So I am self-limited.

That is why I am trying to teach my kid to be the laziest piece of shit imaginable. He seems to be an adept pupil. Boy was I lucky to find a naturally lazy 15 year old. What were the odds of that?

[Populist_Prole]

34. Yeah, "more successful" on paper

I've found that out after working 20 somewhat years. I work as hard as I have to ( in terms of number of hours ) to maintain my comfort level. I live modestly, debt free ( other than a soon to be paid off mortgage ) and value as much time for myself as can be had. To my workoholic father and other peers I can tell I'm seen as not as "successful" as them because my house is modest and I'm not constantly at work, or pursuing work-related issues at home, and I'm blue collar. But they are rat-race contestants who have nary a minute to themselves. Certainly they can't enjoy all the scads of material stuff they own.

I'm sure this is true: I challenge anybody to claim that on the late-winter of their years, if not the last words on their death beds, that amongst the things they wish they could have done: Working more would be one of them.

[One_Life_To_Give]

30. Hard work creates it's own luck

If you start off with $10million your odds of turning that into $1billion depends on your work ethic among other things.

There are also people who receive a paycheck and think first about how much they can tuck away and never spend.

All things being equal someone who works hard and lives below their means is the most probable to acquire wealth. That doesn't mean that there are not exceptions to the rule. But it's what one is able to accomplish given their starting position. Both George W and Obama became President. But Obama had a much more difficult road to get there. So I don't see those as equivalent accomplishments.

[kentuck]

31. There is much truth in what you say...

As I have tried to explain to my brother on several occasions. Wealth and the concept of money is very much relative to where you start in life. Poverty is a difficult hole to get out of. Not only is it a material obstacle, it is also a mental obstacle.

When a family lived off the land and had less than $1000 per year in cash, $20,000 a year looked like great wealth. As I have explained to my brother, if you look at where you are now and where you came from, you have traveled a much greater distance than many millionaires...

[Whisp]

32. no. if a Romney makes 400 times more than a person

that does, say, car repairs that means Romney works 400 times harder? no. He'd be dead.

[Nikia]

33. I think that a lot of factors are at play

Many low wage jobs require hard work, whether it is heavy lifting or working quickly. Middle income jobs may require less physical work, but some are more stressful than others. Some small business owners work very hard and meet with varying degrees of financial success. Luck and having the right connections do have a lot to do with financial success. This could be starting a business just when the demand for your product is starting to take off. This could be knowing someone in the transportation business if your product needs to be shipped across the country. For a new graduate, it could be securing an internship at a good company because a high ranking alumni insisted that a few internships for that company go to students from their alma mater. It could be that a local company is rapidly growing just when you are fed up with your current job. Then there are always young people who know that they will take over a business or be given a good job as long as they get a degree.
For those who have a lot of money, regardless if they worked hard or not, they should be thankful. Even with a lot of hard work, they could have just as easily been not very well off if they would have had bad luck rather than good luck.

[ItNerd4life]

35. Small business owners - Yes. Corporate fat cats - No

That is the issue. Corporate executives get pay increases based upon being buddies with other corporates executives.

Small business owners have everything on the line. They put in a lot of risk for the potential rewards. Corporate executives have no risk yet get all the rewards.

[hfojvt]

36. doesn't matter

nowadays they just spit on the hard workers and say "you are supposed to work smarter, not harder".

Thus, even though they don't work hard, they deserve the big bucks because they work smart.

[Puzzledtraveller]

37. How about..

Do people who earn money work hard? I am not concerned about Mitt Romney. I know one thing, I work hard for my money. That is all that matters to me.

[cbdo2007]

38. Most of them do or have....

or have come up with a great idea and had the know how to implement it. No fault in that.

The number of people in Romney's boat are very, very few when looking at the total number of "wealthy" people out there.

Like the CEO of my company, he's very wealthy and after my interactions with him I am very impressed and think he deserves every penny he's making. Is he in the customer service call line taking 75 calls a day??? No. But will he spend 3 months working with the CEO of another company to sell them our services?? Absolutely. Who is working harder, and who provides the bigger company payoff???

[kentuck]

39. Is he worth 400 times as much as you?

Some CEOs make that much and more over their average employee. Of course, if he wasn't getting it, they might have to split it up 400 ways?? That would be some hard arithmetic.

[cbdo2007]

40. If he wasn't doing what he is doing, our 250 employee company wouldn't exist.

He brings in accounts that pay us Millions of $$. Our customer service reps talk to individuals in that account about mundane questions most of the day.

In other words, he's absolutely worth 400 times more than our customer service reps because no one else here could do what he does, but he could find 1,000 people this weekend and train them in a few hours that could replace any of them.

[kentuck]

41. So he's worth at least 250 times the average employee...

to say the least?

What happens if he is in an accident and dies, God forbid?

[cbdo2007]

42. Well, obviously he isn't the only one "running" the company....

but this industry is one that he created so I have no problem with him making a shit load more money than the rest of us.

If anything does happen to him though, I would much prefer they promote one of the VP's or bring in someone from the outside rather than give control to one of our customer service reps who could never do what he does.

[kentuck]

43. Of course.

He is valuable but not irreplaceable? Could a customer service rep with the required education and business savvy do his job?

[mainer]

49. If the customer service rep has the same education and business savvy as the guy in charge...

why is he still a customer service rep?

[kentuck]

50. Maybe he's no longer a customer service rep?

Maybe he was a customer service rep at one time but got his degree and business experience? Are we to assume that customer service reps stay in their jobs forever? Sorry for the confusion.

[NoGOPZone]

44. No nt

[sylveste]

45. how do you

define hard work? which is harder, brain surgery or road construction? one is clearly more physically demanding but i don't know that it's necessarily harder work. i see what you're saying but it's a bit hard to quantify "hard work".

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

46. "Hard work is good for you." Usually said by rich people who don't work.

[kentuck]

47. A quote attributed to John Kennedy and others...

It's true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure, why take the chance?
Ronald Reagan

[mainer]

48. It's not just "hard work", it's whether you have unique skills/training

Obviously a ditch digger works hard, long hours and physically he's taking more of a toll on his body.

The brain surgeon or neuroscientist may work long hours, but it's not nearly as physically taxing.

People don't get paid big bucks because of how physically taxing their work is. They get paid because they do something that not many people can do. It's the scarcity of skills and knowledge that adds up to a big paycheck for some.

[badtoworse]

51. What is so great about sweating and stinking?

I went to school because I once had a job doing that and I didn't like it. There is no disgrace in doing that kind of work, but there's no great honor in it either. No one does it by choice.

[SomethingFishy]

52. LMAO.. NO... Check out my post from today:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002264068

[kentuck]

53. Sometimes I think there are people that think they are superior...

to these common working folks. That's why they would never do such work. That's why they got an education so they could perform easier tasks at more money. That's the capitalist system and they love it.

[badtoworse]

54. Are you suggesting it's wrong to want a good paying job where you don't have to sweat and stink?

I've had both kinds of jobs and the good paying desk job is better by a mile. I respect people who do physical labor, but that doesn't mean I want to do their job.

[SomethingFishy]

55. Respect That's where the problem is..

Because you have been on both sides you respect the other. Most people making decisions that affect us all have not been on both sides and have no clue what it's like to work hard for little pay. If they did the minimum wage would be a lot more than 7 bucks an hour.