The Poor and the Rich

Lets illustrate and contrast the poor and the rich and see if there is anything glaringly obvious. My point will be made after the comparison. Imagine that the poor has $100 to spend and the rich has $1000 to spend.

-The poor pays $5 for a meal (mostly cheap ingredients that would make nutritionists cringe and will cause long term health problems which someone will have to pay.)
-The rich pays $50 for a meal (prepared by someone else who used healthy ingredients insuring a good healthy lifestyle)

-The poor pays $20 for a DVD for leisure time (doesn't have much time to do anything else, too exhausted to pay for dance lessons or mountain climbing activities.... he barely has the time to watch the DVD)
-The rich pays $200 for the salary of a cleaning person and a cook (which allows the rich extra time for physical activities which will maintain a healthy lifestyle and an alert mind at work)

-The poor pays $25 in different taxes (whether income tax or sales tax or whatever)
-The rich pays $50 for an accountant to find the latest rules on taxes and ends up paying $50 in taxes (tax breaks are offered to the rich to encourage them to employ more people, loopholes are found to make great savings for the rich.... they even keep receipts for when they buy a coffee because they can use that as a tax deductible for business expenses)

-The poor pays $50 for rent (with many problems around the residence, which requires constant care but the poor is usually at work so he can not afford the time to fix it, or chase after the landlord, or even pay a professional to fix it)
-The rich pays $500 for the mortgage (if any problem arises, has the energy and time to deal with it, or chases after the city workers to deal with certain aspects, or even hire a contractor to come fix specific problems)

-The rich has an extra $150 that he will spend in further investments to make him richer.

-The next pay period, the rich gets a bonus of $100 because he was well rested and healthy which increased his motivation to produce more and got the $100 bonus for the extra production.
-The next pay period, the poor loses out of $10 because he was not well rested or healthy and had to take a day off without pay or had to pay money for medication or some combination of both. His motivation is low and the production suffers.

Note that there are 100 poor persons for every 1 rich person, so whenever there is the need to increase taxes to cover unfortunate increases in the health care of the population.... guess where they implement the tax on, the tax burden falls upon the majority. If the rich get the tax increase, they make studies to show that: A) the rich will have to fire employees within their companies just to make the increased tax payments. B) the rich will not hire new employees to stimulate the economy. And C) the rich will point out that it is the poor who seem to suffer more from these health issues in an increasing capacity, so why should the rich pay for the poor's bad health choices?

The rich have the attitude that if you are poor, it is because you do not work hard enough and you do not save your money to become rich. Grab any rich person, strip him of his wealth and contacts place him on welfare for 6 months (allowing for the poor diet to kick in as well as the poor living environment) and then ask him to go looking for a job. (he must not be allowed to use his former educational background as an asset which was acquired through a rich lifestyle.... if he manages to get an educational background while poor, then he can use that for his job searching). Will he succeed in re-acquiring his wealth? I was not even considering clothing in my illustration, so let us assume that he starts this experiment with donated clothes and he can not use his former clothing. The rich seem to believe that they could get out of this predicament by being motivated and working hard. Yeah? Well good luck on that fantasy.

We have had someone who while young, disguised themselves to look old and see how different the reality was between young and old. We have had a racially white person who had disguised himself into a racially black person to see the differences in treatment. The rich who are so easy in their negative judgments of the poor should perhaps have this kind of experiment as part of their lifestyle and see how they would do better. One exception, they must never know if they will be allowed to return to their former rich lifestyles. If you know that you are only going to be poor for a period of 2 years and then become rich again, you will have that extra hope that the poor do not have. Of course, everyone hopes that they might become rich; I am talking about knowing that this experiment in being poor comes at an end and you go back to your previous lifestyle. Nothing angers me more than when I see a truly rich person who works for a few months alongside of the poor on some common project with the belief that he has lived like the poor for those few months and that he has "worked" like they did.

Why does it anger me? Well it would be as if they believed that they gave more to charity by paying $20 out of $1000 in direct comparison to the poor who only paid $10 out of $100. The poor paid 10%, the rich paid 2%, with the added benefit that he probably has his accountant explaining how to benefit from tax breaks for donations. Society would unfortunately claim that the rich gave more in charity, just like they would believe that the rich who worked those few months with the poor makes them understand the poor's plight. Often the motives behind this "charity" is not so charitable and they act as if society should reward them for altruism.

If the poor could be brought closer to the "rich" lifestyle, society's long term costs would be lowered. Like the metaphor of the ship taking in water in one of my previous blogs, allow the ship to take in the extra water as we fix the hole and then we can use the bucket to drain the ship of the water.... as opposed to what we are doing now: using the bucket to drain the ship of water and losing the long term battle because the bucket is too small for what is coming in through the hole. Why do we tolerate the rich's fairy tales? Why do we tolerate their threats of closing companies? If you are rich, then you have the extra responsibility to serve the society you live in.

If you have a pet, you have the responsibility of feeding that pet. You go out of your way to buy the food. You go out of your way to open the can and depositing the food in a clean dish.... and on and on. You do this because you have extra capabilities and your pet does not. Your pet relies upon you, so you serve his interests. You are responsible. If you were lucky enough to have great wealth, then you must take up your responsibility and be a leader and SERVE your society. Otherwise, the society you live in has full rights to deduct from you what you owe society. Do not assume that your wealth is acquired through hard work, it is a fortune (luck) that allowed you to be rich. Have the responsibility to use it properly. As for the poor.... how long do you want to be treated as mere pets who have to feed themselves on their own and still carry the slippers for the master?