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[JoshuaFH]

My Aunt is always saying something along the lines of "Be appreciative of the lower people that do all the hard work" like waiters, cleaners, etc. It took me a while to understand why growing up, but it's much more visible now that I'm older.

[Yanlin]

There's a little saying. The harder the job, the less it pays.

[mainiac]

There's a little saying. The harder the job, the less it pays.

Eh... I disagree.  Most well paying jobs do require hard work.  Well paying jobs and crap paying jobs are just hard in different ways.  Of course, doing nothing but milking the system from a cushy position at the top barely requires you to work at all.  But most of what are well paying jobs IMHO aren't like that.

Just look at the investment bankers who ruined our economy, that's a competitive field.  Rising to the top in that environment means you have to be willing to bring 110% every day, not even batting an eye at the prospect of spending 12 hours in the office minimum.  Otherwise you'll never produce the volume needed to stay employed, let alone get promoted.  Even then, you have to spend every waking minute kissing ass and finding scapegoats for those that huge volume of stupid investments you've been making.

[codezero]

^^^^^^^ agree
At the end of the day you're probably better off lifting boxes than in an office stall. Everyone needs some exertion, and either you do it working or you have to find some recreational activity. And golf may sound a lot better than lifting shit but being forced to stay in an office for 8 hours isn't.

What I really wanted to say though was, I think it's just a sign of ambition to be wealthy yourself to resent the rich, when you don't actually need money to survive. (before you refute that on technicalities, I've done it in the city(homeless) and in the bush(restless))

I think the best way to rise up is to reduce your dependency on it. (Though that's quite hypocritical of me in my current situation, at least I've accused another of hypocrisy)

[Bromor Neckbeard]

There's a little saying. The harder the job, the less it pays.

I agree with this.  Sure, work in a competitive office environment can be stressful, but stressful work is not necessarily the same as hard work.  As competitive as investment banking or advertising can be, at the end of the day, those guys are still working in an air-conditioned environment where the worst thing that can happen to you is a paper cut or maybe an ulcer.  Even if they make a series of horrible mistake, the worst possible consequence they will have to suffer is finding another job.

Contrast that with construction or agricultural work.  If you're sandblasting the underside of a water tower, if you fuck up (say, by accidentally hitting your safety harness tether with the blast), you WILL either kill somebody else, kill yourself, or at the very least break half the bones in your body and spend the rest of your life paralyzed.  Yet the average pay for this job is ten dollars an hour.  A strawberry picker only has to worry about wasp stings and ant bites, but it's hard, hot, dirty, back-breaking labor that (in many cases) pays LESS than minimum wage.

[mainiac]

What's your definition of hard here?

I'm not saying sandblasting is easy.  But an engineer or lawyer or doctor could be taught to sandblast in a pretty short span of times.  It takes years to learn to do one of their jobs.

[Bromor Neckbeard]

Well, the definition I was using, and the definition Yanlin's saying was using, was "physically difficult, requiring a substantial amount of effort".  Learning the job in the first place didn't come into the discussion at all.

[mainiac]

Well that I can agree with.  Physical labor mostly pays crap.

[Hawkfrost]

What do we need more, labourers or lawyers.

[mainiac]

A world without lawyers would be a world of arbitrary law.  Lawyers help keep things civil.  They're essentially a part of government (which really has me wondering why you are encouraged to buy their favoritism.)

[popers]

we need more bankers. Those folks seems to know what they're doing !
 

[qwertyuiopas]

Wouldn't it be great if anyone making over X each year had to be tested for political corruption? With a risk of losing their jobs?

Or at the very least, corperations found to be producing harmful products and faking studies that say they are harmless and then selling them to the general public for profit that they don't really need because they are RICH but want more money anyway, those should be fined all of their money and their executives forced to work in their own sweatshops for a few weeks.

[Groveller]

(Incidentally, the Roomba did fine. No footage or pics, sorry - RoboMop hocked my camera to buy a Wii.)

[Yanlin]

Wouldn't it be great if anyone making over X each year had to be tested for political corruption? With a risk of losing their jobs?

Or at the very least, corperations found to be producing harmful products and faking studies that say they are harmless and then selling them to the general public for profit that they don't really need because they are RICH but want more money anyway, those should be fined all of their money and their executives forced to work in their own sweatshops for a few weeks.

I'd rather stick em in prison. Hypocritical justice is just as bad as no justice.

But it should have nothing to do with already having money. They poisoned tons of people. They deserve punishment. I'd support the death sentence here.

[Vactor]

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves the much higher compensation."

  --  Abraham Lincoln,  State of the Union message, 1861


While i'm not much of a socialist, I think that it is entirely workable with government providing all service industries, while private enterprise is left to manufacturing, agriculture and resource production with well organized and protected labor. 

As people have said wealth can only be grown, mined, or manufactured, anything else is spreading it around.  (not that this is a bad thing)

just an example of for profit service sector lunacy:  If you are diagnosed with a medical problem, you will no longer be able to buy medical insurance.  (not a matter of price, you will be outright denied enrollment)  This creates a problem, as now because of that medical problem you will be unable to be insured for if you fall and break your arm completely unrelated to that original medical problem.  Modern private insurance is more of an unwinnable lottery than anything.