If and When
I heard a piece on NPR a while back. Looking at the date I see it was a month ago. My shoulder still hurts from the bicycle and concrete mash-up I had. I don't like typing much these days, well, because it hurts. I may have to bail on some of these other older items I wanted to write about, but not this one. Bill Gates, that MicroSoft guy, and a Saudi Prince, Alwaleed Bin Talal, have an investment company and their latest initiative is to take the Four Seasons hotel chain private
NPR : Investors Bid to Take Four Seasons Chain Private. Now my Brother-in-Law, Doug, works for the Four Seasons. He is chef and food division head for the restaurant and house of their property in Georgetown (Washington DC). He's got no problem with billionaires owning the place. Even if the office uses Lotus notes now. It'll be menus in Office.XML tomorrow. For my brother-in-aw having to divide his time between the artistic endeavor of cooking, which he likes, and the more mundane and more consuming management aspects of the job exasperates him at times. And those times are plentiful, because they have him working a lot of hours. A couple of thoughts here. As a salaryman you can, in the right work environment, leverage your corporation's willingness to pay you the extra marginal cost of your time through extensive sets of extra hours per week. You can find yourself compensated and quite well for this, with bonuses, profit sharing and the like. Management jobs are less of a prize when the negative inducement is employed. Most companies realize; though, that you can stretch the concept of fairness but its unwise to break it.
Turning to wage men, like myself, and the first observation here is that Doug makes several multiples what I make, I belong to a division of worker called non-exempt. Which means I cannot be exempted from the requirement of getting time and a half for overtime. This is considerate and entirely moot. There is a rule: 40 hrs per week then remove yourself out the door. No one gets paid overtime. If I want to work more than 40 hours a week to get ahead in this American life I must become employed again - elsewhere. A second job! All the hassle of the first, and less pay. Rationally I wouldn't devote any additional hours of my day to work at the compensation levels I can expect. Perhaps I could sign up for one of the quasi and occasional catogories of modern work if I were inclined. To education I would devote two or more hours a day for short periods. Especially if I could imagine increased opportunity arising from it. This is what Tran is doing, but even this is a stressor, and there are things that can't be cured quickly by rubbing a copper penny into a bit of Vicks vapor-rub dabbed on your collar bone. So where does real wealth begin: who's poor, who's middle class, and who's rich. My brother-in-law doesn't think he is even upper-middle class. What is the breakdown? I looked at the U S census catagories to see:
Statistical Abstract: Income, Expenditures, & Wealth (the tables I refer in the following are excel spreadsheets linked off this page). In 2003 they tracked incomes for 76 million families (Table 680. Share of Aggregate Income Received by Each Fifth and Top 5 Percent of Families: 1980 to 2003) the upper earning limit of the lowest quintile was $24,117, the 2nd was $42,057, 3rd $65000, the 4th 98,200. The table then jumps to the top 5 percent for which they give an figure of $170,082 which for that category is either the median of more likely lower limit. It's a small category and the story is the same either way 95% of the American population is earning less than that. The table has a second section giving aggregate percentages, The 5th (highest) quintile shows up in this portion and as holding 47 percent of the nations earnings. The comfortable life depends not just on what you earn but where you live when you earn it. This same page has a second table (Table 664. Personal Income by Selected Large Metropolitan Area: 2000 to 2003 ) showing the per capita income in select U S metropolitan areas and their difference from the average. DC for instance Is $44,000 representing representing 140% of the national average Whereas Boston is 137% with a per capita income of $43,000. San Francisco on the other hand is 149% of the average. Somewhere else I imagine there is a matching table that shows how little indent such a earnings slice makes in basic living costs in such cities. There is a study
WorldInstitute for Development Economics Research out now
BBC NEWS | Business | Richest 2% own 'half the wealth' that claims that "the richest 2 per cent of adults own more than half of global household wealth", and that most of these people live in the US, canada or europe
globeandmail.com: The rich really do own the world. The globe and mail article has another line "The United States is the richest country, with a mean wealth in the year 2000 of $144,000 (U.S.) per person." consider that in relation to the Census earning quintiles above. As part of the other 98 I can only say the rich you will always have with you. It's best just to ignore them, its what they would do for you.
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