Economic prejudice

Yahoo Finance had an article the other day basically saying the rich are greedier than ever. And that is news to just about nobody. If, for any reason, you don’t understand this, it is time for you to take the stone off your cave and come into the sunlight.

Yet, what does this mean? Another article/point was the economy is stumbling because the rich don’t spend or invest their money. The article did state that wage growth has been stagnant. The real truth according to some reports I have read over the years is wage growth compared to inflation has been flat to lagging behind for decades. And the article goes on to state it won’t be until wages grow that consumers will begin to spend. Now consumer spending will help the economy, but realistically the people with money need to invest in the country, their workers, and new development. Of course the uber rich argument is we need to control costs to afford to invest. Well that just hasn’t happened and is one of the points as to proof the rich are greedier and greedier as time goes by.

So where does all this leave us folks in the middle? Can we actually do something about all their greed? Funny thing is, yes. One way is to build up the political will to change who we have in Congress. And no, this doesn’t mean becoming a socialist nation. I have expressed ideas before about only giving tax breaks to companies that actually invest, create jobs, and invest in their people. This is not socialism; this is doing what our government should do to help the country. The government’s role is to protect the people and create an environment for all of us to thrive. And the above is just one idea.

Another way is to change the way we think about the rich or people that have more money than us. We think people with money are better than us. And yes we do. Don’t deny it. It is engrained into our society now. Maybe for many of you it is subconscious, but it is true. And we need to stop thinking this way.

We think, act, live, breath, believe etc. people with money are better than us. This is manifested in so many ways. Most of it can be seen in our consumer society. We keep trying to be as good as the next person by having the same goods they have or trying to buy something better so we can consider our self-better as a person. And you may say to yourself, not me, but I challenge you to really think deep about it. Who do you consider better? And why? And don’t lie, especially to yourself.

There are three basic ways people get rich. And this is simplistic and multiple factors can overlap, but overall the three ways are: a person works hard, makes good decisions saves and invests, probably in their own company and through perseverance becomes successful; they have a silver spoon in their mouth, and sometimes they do enough to continue to grow their wealth; and sometimes events transpire to allow them to get lucky, be in the right place at the right time, find that one product or idea, have a certain talent they exploit, and receive or even earn a windfall. None of these factors make any one person better than another though.

We can admire the hard worker, we can empathize with the trust baby, we can bless the luck of the windfall, but they are not better than us, nor are they less of a person because they got lucky or have money. We have to learn to distinguish the difference between what has happened to a person, what a person has done and whether or not they have any money. Again we can admire people. There is nothing wrong with recognizing people have done something special. It does not make them fundamentally better than us. We are all people. Yet we treat those that have money as being above us. We are creating our own caste system and there is no need. Our constitution says we shouldn’t, but over and over we keep adding accolades to people just because they have more money than us. It is becoming engrained into us as a culture.

This needs to change for us to solve many of our economic and social problems.

And as Americans we love to point the blame. So is it because of the infamous line in the movie from the 80’s “greed is good”? No, because we had already started to believe that money is might. The movie was just a reflection of society, not a precursor. Is it because of the 70’s and the me generation? No. Can we blame Disney? Heck they were one of the first to institute; if you pay more you get to go to the head of the line. Are we teaching our children that money buys privileges? And that we do, but it isn’t all. The problem is there is no blame. This is something that humanity has dealt with since the dawn of time. It will not be until we learn to recognize we do this so we can change our attitudes that we can overcome our self-created disadvantage. Now recently, in our country we are taking this to an extreme and our uber rich are taking advantage of us. And this is our fault, not because Congress doesn’t enact laws to punish the rich, but because we continue to let ourselves be sold this attitude by the people who benefit from it.

Anyone wonder why education is so important?

The rich do not want us to become self-aware. This is dangerous. An educated society is going to demand better. Society will demand, not necessarily economic equality, but equal recognition of the value of all people. Our constitution gave us the framework to achieve this goal however, we fail in not striving to reach our Founding Fathers’ visions. Once we can separate the person from the environment we will achieve much more than we ever have before as a society. There is nothing wrong with being rich. And you can strive to be economically successful along with being successful as a person. The goal is for all of us to strive to be the best person we can, not to be better than another person, but to be better. Yet until we can stop falsely elevating people above us in stature for superficial reasons we will continue to hurt ourselves and our society.

The choice is yours and mine. We can let greed consume us and our country or we can realize no one is better than us for any reason other than we let them be better than us. We prejudice ourselves.

And has this been said before? Well, probably also since the dawn of time. Now I ask you again, who is better than you? Think about it before you answer. Now, go look in the mirror, can you answer? This is our world, let’s make it all ours.