Meet the Rich

The smug superiority of the author really annoys me. Add to that the effort made to make the "rich guys" sound as evil as possible. For instance:<p>"But did they work 10 times as hard as a teacher on £30,000 a year or, in the case of some lawyers and bankers, 100 times as hard?"<p>It's not about how hard you work, it's about how much free time you have left AFTER work. Considering 8 hours of sleep, a commute, overhead for food and exercise and general life maintenance, a guy who works 80 hours a week really has very little spare time left. Easily 10 times less than a teacher.<p>Then the author makes those infuriating "Of course, the poor didn't deserve it." comments. Of course people don't -deserve- benefits. Benefits are charity - you get them because the state pities you. Handing out benefits is the ethical thing to do - but that doesn't mean you're -entitled- to them.<p>The article is shit.

Well, obviously the article is hostile to the idea of being or becoming wealthy. Reading it, I'm reminded of the aphorism, that if one sees money as evil, they will find themselves without money.<p>One good thing about this article is that they did original research by actually locating and interviewing these high income earners. After filtering out the slant I found some interesting information.

<i>As if he hailed from the planet Zog, one of the bankers said: "I have absolutely no idea how my taxes are spent and therefore I do not trust the system at all."<p>Another banker asserted that there is "little accountability and measurability in the way that tax is actually used".</i><p>They might be on to something. With all the stories of outrageous misspending and corruption around I think the world would benefit from big doses of transparency.

The message: White-collar business owners and key founding personnel should not receive vast compensation.<p>Hacker News: White-collar business owners and key founding personnel.<p>Hacker News Response: Outrage!<p>(To be fair, though, the Guardian is frothingly liberal, and as a merely left-of-center liberal I can honestly say it usually makes me wince.)

From the financial services industry, this seems reasonable. I've had many discussions where concern for those who earn less than 100k/yr becomes accusations of being a socialist.

<i>As for the poverty threshold, our lawyers and bankers fixed it at £22,000. But that sum was just under median earnings, which meant they regarded ordinary wages as poverty pay. Mistakes such as these should disqualify the wealthy from pontificating about taxation or redistribution</i><p>Presumably, a person who thought &#60;£22K/year defined poverty would be amenable to the idea that such levels of income should not be taxed heavily, or should receive additional moneys through redistribution. The authors willfully reverse that interpretation. At any rate, your caricatured "Scrooge" character would likely have put the poverty level at 2 quid a day, with anyone making more being disgustingly overpaid.<p>As always, the fundamental mistake is the evident belief that the economy is zero sum. The rich can only get that way by taking from someone else. Of course, with redistribution, that actually becomes the case...

"""What we had hoped for was more awareness, some recognition that their position needed explaining and even justification."""<p>Why does their position need justification?<p>"""They could not see that the pleasure they derived from possessions, prospects and doing well by their children is universal and that others deserve a share of that, too."""<p>Would the authors care explain on what grounds others "deserve" a share?<p>"""A last defence against paying more tax was their absolute conviction that government is inefficient and could not to be trusted with a penny more."""<p>Not-rich people seem to think that rather a lot, too.<p>"""One banker said he thought a family of four receives "say, £3,000 a month in their hands, and they're somewhere miles up north. They're not going to earn that sort of money, so where's the incentive for them to go out to work?" In fact, a family of four would in 2008 receive a net total of £1,328 a month."""<p>That's still the after-tax take home of someone on the average salary mentioned earlier. Free. Ad-hom Scroogey name calling wont help.

"The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever. But that doesn't seem to bother Britain's wealthiest earners."<p>How surprising... ;)

I want to down vote this article.