a train of thought on money
A couple months back, I was reading Barbara Ehrenrich’s Nickeled and Dimed, and Bait and Switch. In Nickeled and Dimed, she talks about why poor people cannot live off their salary, and why something should be done so they could, and in Bait and Switch, she talks about her experience with white collar unemployment. She shows how out of work professionals cannot find further work, and advocates the need for social change. She tells about the greed of executives, and proposes social reform to help the unemployed and underpaid
But what if I take her experiences and draw the completely opposite conclusion? Instead of social reform, these people should try to become executives either by rising through the ranks of a large company, or starting his own business or organization. By creating a new organization, the founder automatically becomes the president, and can leverage the opinions the members.
A customer commissions an artist to draw him a picture. He describes to the artist what it should look like, and the artist spends ten minutes on his work, and asks for a thousand dollars. The outraged customer asks, “what do you mean? A thousand dollars for a ten minute work?” and the artist replies, “yea, but it took me ten years to get it right.”
The rich and the poor look at money and time differently. A janitor I talked to tells me how he can make 15 dollars an hour working overtime. A cop brags about how he worked 32 hours of overtime in one week, making almost 25 dollars an hour. But the rich take a different perspective. Many doctors and lawyers, after dividing their income by hours worked, could make 300 dollars or more per hour, but choose to work only 8 hours per day. Sleeping one fewer hour, or spending less time with kids, or working weekends could earn them thousands of extra dollars per week, but most choose not to pursue this route.
The rich, and those who think like them, realize that not every working hour is paid. Donald Trump reads newspapers every morning as a seed for ideas, without earning a cent(citation needed). Doctors and lawyers invest tens of thousands of hours studying and building their practice while having to pay money in the process. This work is done with the expectation of future increased in earnings, not because each hour is directly tied to a money amount.
I commend people who try to improve their skills in order to improve their salary, because over time, it’s a bigger payoff. But different people have unique situations. Some need money immediately, and cant afford the study period.
It’s a lot like nations choosing to focus on capital goods or consumer goods. Making capital goods (except for bombs!) helps the nation be more efficient produce more gdp as an individual’s education can improve his personal income. On the other hand, production of consumer goods improves the nation’s standard of living, but at a cost of less growth. The same way, a person working more hours increases his own income, but doesn’t help in improve his hourly wage.
It’s important to compromise the production of capital and consumer goods, the same way many people work some hours and study during part of the day. But for an individual, some jobs, like internships, provide education and pay. Many interesting jobs provide good education, but pay less, while the boring jobs pay more but don’t improve a person’s skill. It’s the difference between working as a clerk versus a truck driver: the trucker makes better money, but the clerk can learn more skills that will help him later in life.
But what’s the equivalent of this in a macro scale? Producing what increases future production, yet also helps people now?
But what if I take her experiences and draw the completely opposite conclusion? Instead of social reform, these people should try to become executives either by rising through the ranks of a large company, or starting his own business or organization. By creating a new organization, the founder automatically becomes the president, and can leverage the opinions the members.
A customer commissions an artist to draw him a picture. He describes to the artist what it should look like, and the artist spends ten minutes on his work, and asks for a thousand dollars. The outraged customer asks, “what do you mean? A thousand dollars for a ten minute work?” and the artist replies, “yea, but it took me ten years to get it right.”
The rich and the poor look at money and time differently. A janitor I talked to tells me how he can make 15 dollars an hour working overtime. A cop brags about how he worked 32 hours of overtime in one week, making almost 25 dollars an hour. But the rich take a different perspective. Many doctors and lawyers, after dividing their income by hours worked, could make 300 dollars or more per hour, but choose to work only 8 hours per day. Sleeping one fewer hour, or spending less time with kids, or working weekends could earn them thousands of extra dollars per week, but most choose not to pursue this route.
The rich, and those who think like them, realize that not every working hour is paid. Donald Trump reads newspapers every morning as a seed for ideas, without earning a cent(citation needed). Doctors and lawyers invest tens of thousands of hours studying and building their practice while having to pay money in the process. This work is done with the expectation of future increased in earnings, not because each hour is directly tied to a money amount.
I commend people who try to improve their skills in order to improve their salary, because over time, it’s a bigger payoff. But different people have unique situations. Some need money immediately, and cant afford the study period.
It’s a lot like nations choosing to focus on capital goods or consumer goods. Making capital goods (except for bombs!) helps the nation be more efficient produce more gdp as an individual’s education can improve his personal income. On the other hand, production of consumer goods improves the nation’s standard of living, but at a cost of less growth. The same way, a person working more hours increases his own income, but doesn’t help in improve his hourly wage.
It’s important to compromise the production of capital and consumer goods, the same way many people work some hours and study during part of the day. But for an individual, some jobs, like internships, provide education and pay. Many interesting jobs provide good education, but pay less, while the boring jobs pay more but don’t improve a person’s skill. It’s the difference between working as a clerk versus a truck driver: the trucker makes better money, but the clerk can learn more skills that will help him later in life.
But what’s the equivalent of this in a macro scale? Producing what increases future production, yet also helps people now?
posted by jollyjl at 10:18 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home