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Do Higher-Incomes Work Harder than Lower-Incomes?

Do higher-incomes work harder than lower-incomes?

  • Yes, the higher-incomes work harder

    Votes: 7 15.9%
  • No, higher-incomes don't work harder

    Votes: 25 56.8%
  • Other

    Votes: 12 27.3%

  • Total voters
    44
College is not for everyone and usually to get white collar jobs you must have a degree. Just because you are math smart does not make you smarter than the average blue collar worker out busting their ass doing hard labor. As a matter of fact some of those blue collar workers may be able to out debate you on any given subject.
Back before our current and recent generations when everyone assumes you need college for any kind of white collar jobs, there was a position that used to be called apprenticeship. This was used as a position for a freshman to be taken under the wing of a senior employee and be taught the inner workings of the business. Same also applies to the blue collar field, this position used used to be called journeymen. Some where down the line we picked up the assumption that we now need higher education to be successful in life, and with that we have turn our higher learning centers into diploma factories. Although there is a different need and requirement for higher education, in the fields of science, engineering, mathematics, medical and others.
 
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Poor people work hard. Rich people work smart.

This is the difference of human capital. Anyone can push a broom or make change in a cash register. The number of people who can do what I do is significantly lower.

This is the general trend. I am sure, since you are supreme in intellect, that trends have outliers. The point that I am trying to convey is there are men and women out there that do everything right and are forced to work jobs that under-pays them in order to put food on the table.

I will give you two examples.

My father has an Engineering Mechanics degree from Virginia Tech as well as a MBA from Washington University. He does not have a PhD, however it would be alright to consider him educated no? Through both of his degrees, he created business plans that were approved and were sent twenty five years ago to the government. The government have programs that supposively funds humanitarian projects. Humanitarian is defined by a certain number of jobs that the project creates. If you create a project that fits this definition, you are then able to by law to receive funding from the federal government. This was twenty five years ago.

Of course, my father had to do something else after a certain point because he was not getting paid for his work. And so, he even worked as head of the marketing department for a small business where I live. Once it was feared that he would be a better CEO than the current CEO (which he could of easily done) he was fired for something very stupid. Eventually, he had to go back to loading and unloading trucks to make sure I had food when I got home from school.

Why wasn't my father paid? George Busch Junior said something like, "We can't have these trailer trash get all this money!" So apparently someone with an undergraduate degree and a masters degree is trailer trash. It's funny though, the project is moving forward since this recession because the government is desperate for jobs.

I will now go to my second father.

My best friend's father lost his job due to this horrible economy, and he has been a graphical artist for over thirty five years. When he was looking for a job, he wasn't even considered because of his age. Companies figured the cheaper health care premiums was worth the less experience. He was finally able to get a job, but he had to alter his resume to show less experience than he had so he would get the interview, and currently he is making about a third that he is worth, even though he has been doing graphical art longer than the lives of some of his co-workers.

The reason why I am sharing this, is there are people that do everything society ask them to do. They are law abiding and they get an education like everyone else. My father had to resign NASA because he was doing his job so well! He got a promotion where he was the boss of men who have been in the agency twenty some odd years longer than him. When I was a NOC technician at a datacenter, since I was the favorite to get a promotion, my co-workers made it known that they did not want me there. It would increase the probability of their promotion if I was gone!

And so if you were to define the American dream as you go to school and work hard you become successful, there are millions of Americans that goes against this ideal. Which means, the dream is dead and has been dead for a long long time.
 
My experience, hell yeah!

If I defiine poor to have an income under 35,000 NZD and rich to have an income over 100,000 NZD. The rich do so many hours, while many of the poor don't even work or work part time. Also, the rich have to do tough courses at university.

Of course, if I compare the superrich against the poor, I may get a different answer.
 
Back before our current and recent generations when everyone assumes you need college for any kind of white collar jobs, there was a position that used to be called apprenticeship. This was used as a position for a freshman to be taken under the wing of a senior employee and be taught the inner workings of the business. Same also applies to the blue collar field, this position used used to be called journeymen. Some where down the line we picked up the assumption that we now need higher education to be successful in life, and with that we have turn our higher learning centers into diploma factories. Although there is a different need and requirement for higher education, in the fields of science, engineering, mathematics, medical and others.


Apprenticeships and Journeyman from what I remember mostly applied to the trades...electricians, plumbers, ironworkers, etc and I believe they still have those distinctions.
I do agree that now they want college degree's where years ago they were never needed and still arent....somehow they have this notion that if you go to college for years...where you do more partying than hard work....somehow your a better person and will be a better employee...I dont buy that. if your going to college for a specific profession...and go beyond the basic 4 yrs in training...Ok...we all agree that Doctors need to be as trained as possible...but two years in some community college then metriculating to some half arse state college or univ for another two...isnt all that...
I have an associates degree 3 yrs of credits total...and I did it with a full time job plus a moonlight job and 3kids...
 
Kali said:
No Gipper everybody CANNOT push a broom or make change in a cash register.

This whole thread is yet another classism thread.

Um...yes. For all intents and purposes, anyone and everyone can push a broom. It's unskilled labor, and demands a wage due an unskilled laborer.

It also has nothing to do with class. I'm middle class. I'm not some bourgeois lightning-hurler smiting the poor with my anger-bolts. I'm someone who went to college, paid my dues, and live a comfortable existence due to it, which allows these undereducated fleebs to pump my gas and take my money at Burger King.

You also seem to forget that I speak in economic terms. You need to brush up on some stuff if you're going to have point-counterpoint. Things like "but that's not fair!" and "you're a classist!" are not legitimate arguments. Logic beats emotion every time out of the gate. You need another leg to stand on.
 
The harder the work, the lower the pay. I'll guarantee that.
 
No...the more physical the work, the lower the pay.

I wouldn't want to lift cinder blocks any more than the construction worker would want to come into my air-conditioned office and do this week's payroll and bank reconciliation.
 
The harder the work, the lower the pay. I'll guarantee that.

Thats true and thats OK...if the pay is fair and reasonable and the worker can survive on it....but that is not the case any longer...
 
You kidding me? My dad is retired GM. I've seen his paychecks. For unskilled line workers, he and his co-workers were making eye-popping amounts of money.

It's not hard to go find a labor job that pays extraordinarily well. Problem is that not all of them pay that well, so you have many fighting for few.

And the wheels on the bus go round and round....
 
Some yes, some no. In the aggregate, I'd say no.
 
The harder the work, the lower the pay. I'll guarantee that.

No...the more physical the work, the lower the pay.

I wouldn't want to lift cinder blocks any more than the construction worker would want to come into my air-conditioned office and do this week's payroll and bank reconciliation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a construction worker makes more than a burger flipper. I think this is a counterexample to both of these claims.
 
Poor people work hard. Rich people work smart.

This is the difference of human capital. Anyone can push a broom or make change in a cash register. The number of people who can do what I do is significantly lower.

That's how I see it, too. It's about production value and not how "hard" you work.
 
No...the more physical the work, the lower the pay.

I wouldn't want to lift cinder blocks any more than the construction worker would want to come into my air-conditioned office and do this week's payroll and bank reconciliation.

That is not true either


The less skilled the work the lower the pay. Basically the higher number of people who can do the work of a particular field the lower the pay. Working in a meat packing factory used to pay well, but with higher levels of immigration, (legal and in the US also illegal) has made it a lower paying job, difficult, dangerous and one that most people do not want to do, but now lower paying. A skilled welder working on location can earn over $100 000 a year, over and above his expenses. The same for pipefitters working at large industrial projects.

Skilled trades that take years to learn can earn large amount of money, the same goes for highly technical white collar positions (accounting, geology).


Overall a position that is easy to learn, and has a large number of potential candidates will be lower paid
 
That is not true either


The less skilled the work the lower the pay. Basically the higher number of people who can do the work of a particular field the lower the pay. Working in a meat packing factory used to pay well, but with higher levels of immigration, (legal and in the US also illegal) has made it a lower paying job, difficult, dangerous and one that most people do not want to do, but now lower paying. A skilled welder working on location can earn over $100 000 a year, over and above his expenses. The same for pipefitters working at large industrial projects.

Skilled trades that take years to learn can earn large amount of money, the same goes for highly technical white collar positions (accounting, geology).


Overall a position that is easy to learn, and has a large number of potential candidates will be lower paid

Well said. It's as simple as supply versus demand.
 
It's a very tough question to answer because there are a lot of subjective variables. Is somebody who spends 8 hours a day doing back breaking manual labor working harder than somebody that sits at a desk? Is somebody who has responsibility for the fate of a company, and has all the stress that goes with that, working harder than somebody who doesn't? Is it harder to convince somebody to buy a product or is it harder to carry 50 lb bags of shingles all day? There aren't really right or wrong answers to those sorts of questions.

On top of that, the rich are dramatically split. Many of the rich don't work at all and draw their income from the labor of others through investments, so obviously those ones work much less hard than working people, but at the same time there are many high paying jobs that require extreme amounts of work. For example, a lawyer at a major law firm or a doctor will often work 70-90 hours a week doing incredibly demanding work. A CEO often works even more than that. So, I wouldn't say that the rich work harder, but I wouldn't say that they work less hard either. Depends on if you're talking about working rich or non-working rich, and it depends on how you define hard work.

What I can say for sure is that the rich do not work proportionally harder. Somebody who makes $1m/year might even be working twice as hard as somebody who makes minimum wage to get $20k/year, but they aren't working 50 times as hard.
 
I continually hear people expressing this sentiment, and it has never seemed true to me. If work is defined as "effort over time", then how could someone like Bill Gates live long enough to earn his fortune, relative to that enjoyed by other people? Many doctors, example, seem to put more "effort over time" into their careers, without ever gaining anywhere near the sum of money Bill Gates enjoys.

Bill Gates obtained his wealth, not because of his own "effort over time", but because, in accordance with the conventions of capitalism, he networked himself into a position where he could compel others to sign a portions of their "labor over time" to him via contract. As long as this practice isn't pushed to its excesses, I don't have a problem with it, but getting wealthy through good networking is a significantly different process than earning your money through hard work.
Whahahahahahahaa...waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......waaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Here's a box of tissues. Your whole spiel about Gates is a lie.
 
More like the reality you are getting at it at cross-purposes with the point I'm making.

And there's a lot more to getting rich than that.

Oh, you mean like it isn't easy?
 
No, on average I don't think that people who make a lot of money work any harder than those who only make a little. The salary difference is made up by a couple things. Generally people who make more are more educated (or educated in things that actually matter) and the ability to get that education is a bit of luck, a bit of desire, and a bit of hard work all on its own. People who make more (especially when we start talking about the super rich) are also simply lucky. For every Bill gates out there, there are probably a hundred, or a thousand, guys who were just as smart, just as educated, and worked just as hard, but just weren't as lucky.
 
Um...yes. For all intents and purposes, anyone and everyone can push a broom. It's unskilled labor, and demands a wage due an unskilled laborer.

It also has nothing to do with class. I'm middle class. I'm not some bourgeois lightning-hurler smiting the poor with my anger-bolts. I'm someone who went to college, paid my dues, and live a comfortable existence due to it, which allows these undereducated fleebs to pump my gas and take my money at Burger King.

You also seem to forget that I speak in economic terms. You need to brush up on some stuff if you're going to have point-counterpoint. Things like "but that's not fair!" and "you're a classist!" are not legitimate arguments. Logic beats emotion every time out of the gate. You need another leg to stand on.

You may need to brush up on your REAL WORLD skills as there are plenty of folks right now with sheep skins having to flip YOUR burgers and pump your gas.

Again in the real world not everyone can push a broom. Kinda hard to do if you have no arms!!
 
I see no correlation between between how hard someone works and how wealthy they are. They tend to work smarter (like knowing what skills are in demand, networking with the right people, and being able to invest in such a way as to generate wealth while minimizing risk). There's a certain amount of luck involved too.
 
Kali said:
You may need to brush up on your REAL WORLD skills as there are plenty of folks right now with sheep skins having to flip YOUR burgers and pump your gas.

That's because college degrees have lost intrinsic value.

Two things create value for a college degree - utility and scarcity. Forty years ago, colleges were not as populous as they are now. The majority of people going out of high school just entered the work force. To get a college degree was to invest your time and money for an assuredly higher payoff years later with a career above that of factory work or whatever. Nowadays, everyone goes to college it seems. There has been a saturation of college degrees in our society, and not enough growth in the white-collar segment to provide for them.

Also, utility plays a factor. If you go get a degree in art, music, or some other liberal arts subject, you should not expect to go around flashing your papers and walk into a good paying job. That's what business, engineering, law, and medicine degrees are for.

Again in the real world not everyone can push a broom. Kinda hard to do if you have no arms!!

:doh Whatever.
 
A bit of an aside, but music and art school are constantly underestimated as useful areas of study. The advertising and entertainment industries are pretty damn big, not to mention artists are involved in just about every aspect of our daily lives from the chairs we sit in to the look and design of the computers we use.
 
What's also interesting to note is that some of the highest paid jobs in our society are those that produce the least benefit. Those who make the most are those whose occupations focus solely on making more money, not on producing a good product or providing a valuable service. Corporate accountants and attorneys just help some rich people become richer. A CEO's job isn't to improve the company's product, it's to raise the price of stock.

Meanwhile, we're demonizing teachers for asking for a decent living. Endowments for the arts are always on the chopping block. Veterans' benefits are constantly slashed.

It's strange how we gift such massive rewards on those who do nothing to help this country and the vast majority of people in it, but constantly undervalue those who do.
 
Paschendale said:
What's also interesting to note is that some of the highest paid jobs in our society are those that produce the least benefit. Those who make the most are those whose occupations focus solely on making more money, not on producing a good product or providing a valuable service. Corporate accountants and attorneys just help some rich people become richer. A CEO's job isn't to improve the company's product, it's to raise the price of stock.

Meanwhile, we're demonizing teachers for asking for a decent living. Endowments for the arts are always on the chopping block. Veterans' benefits are constantly slashed.

That's because teachers are paid with self-actualization processes. A lot of teachers do what they do because they enjoy it. They get the praise, the pats on the back. What do I get? I'm not an accountant because I enjoy it. I don't expect a thumbs-up and an "atta boy". I don't "grow" as a person because I do books and taxation for people and businesses. Therefore, my work needs to be compensated through pure financial means.

We already have too many "teachers" in the world. Give them all 6 figure salaries and bronze statues we all admire, and we'd just have even more people with a degree they can never hope to utilize.
 
CompSciGuy said:
A bit of an aside, but music and art school are constantly underestimated as useful areas of study. The advertising and entertainment industries are pretty damn big, not to mention artists are involved in just about every aspect of our daily lives from the chairs we sit in to the look and design of the computers we use.

I'm sorry, but are you comparing art and music to engineering and architecture? Let's not fool ourselves here.

I'm sure the huge brain at the Nike corporation who invented "Just do it" is living high on the hog, and didn't need 4 years of piano playing to do it.
 
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