Thursday, May 10, 2012
In the Interesting/Did You Know? Category 5
That, according to study from the Harvard Business Review ("The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek", December 2006), 62% of the people in the top 6% of wage-earners worked more than 50 hours a week and 35% of them worked more than 60 hours a week?....Wow, huh? So much for the affluent of this country coasting and only making their cash off the toil of others.
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31 comments:
50 hours is a big deal? Been doing it for years. When I wa young 60 - 80 was no big deal. Perhaps that is why those who don' t understand always said I had no life.
Almost forgot great post
I think we need a litte better breakdown. First if all, 6% is a pretty large slice when talking about the top wage earners. It goes from around 150,000 dollars and up in terms of household income. How many hours are the top 1% putting in? Now many hours are the top 0.1% putting in? How many hours are the top0.01% putting in? Romney earned millions of dollars last year. How many hours per week did he put in earning that money?
Throwing out a number for the top 6% is essentially meaningless. Inquiring minds want details, not talking points.
I agree with Jerry.
Stupid questions Jerry...the real question should be,how many hours did the 1% work to get there?
I somehow doubt that Bill Gates,Steve Jobs,Steve Wynn,Donald Trump or their peers worked 40 hours weeks to make it.
You envious guys are a trip,you want what others have...but you dont want to work to get it.
They are only stupid questions because you don't want the answers.
And, Will's post is not about wealth. It is about income, two very different things.
This wasn't a "talking-point", Jerry. It was scientific article that was published in the Harvard Business Review. And to answer your question, I don't know why they looked at the top 6% (as opposed to 5,4,3,2,or 1)
And, Jerry, being that most of the top 1% are managers, administrators, executives, physicians, lawyers, etc, I doubt that many of them are working bankers hours, either. I sure as hell know that my former father in law (a VP of finance for a mid-sized corporation) didn't work less than 60 hours usually.
Jerry....a grade school teacher working seven months a year should'nt make as much as a mid-level manager working 60 hours a week trying to get to the next level.....wake up dufuss.
Jerry,let old Rusty ask you.Would you like to be one of the 1%? Would you be willing to work 60 to 80 hours a week to be one of the 1%? Would you be willing to be on call 24 hours a day to be one of the 1%? Would you you be willing to give up you Saturdays and Sundays to be one of the 1%? If you answered no to any of those questions Jerry.....STFU and go back to your Cheetos.
Actually they should be paid more than some mid-level manager. A teacher's job is much more important. Few things are more important than teaching our kids.
What makes you think that I am not already part of the 1%?
Ahhhh,teachers....it seems we spend the second most ammount per student world wide, yet we rank...I think its 18th in math and science.Hmmmm,is something wrong with that picture...or are we not spending enough?
Jerry,if you're in the 1% I say well done chappy...you've used the symstem as its ment to be.If you're not in the 1%,but want all the advantages of the 1% without actually working for it...I say,F^*K YOU...get up your ass and earn it.
That doesn't change the truth of what I say. Also, I think you mean off not up. But then, considering the source, maybe you do mean up.
Ahhh,poor Jerry...the truth always does sting...does'nt it.
When you have no retort...point to a spelling error...how quaint of you.
The question remains....do you want to work a 40 hours a week yet get the same pay as someone working 80 hours a week?If you do I say....get up off your sorry ass and earn the money or STFU you lazy bastard.For christ sake Jerry....carry your own weight or get the hell out of the way and let us do what needs to be done....we'll throw you some crumbs for just breathing the same air.
My goodness, Rusty. I've seem to hit a nerve. What's the matter? Putting in lots of hours and not getting anywhere?
Actually Jerry the hours I work should'nt concern you at all,nor should how much money I make while working those hours.My wife and I are indeed part of the 1% you're envious of and despise.But the fact is Jerry we worked for anything we have...not one damn thing was handed to us.Thats the beauty of America Jerry,if you have ambition and are willing to put in the effort its there for the taking.
On the flip side Jerry,if an individual chooses the path of least resistance and just wants to bitch,moan and complain because someone has more then them...you get....well,you get yourself and those like you.What is it they call those little fish that swim alongside a shark and feed off his crumbs?
Perhaps some of these folks are working too long. Perhaps they need a little rest ..
Interesting, Rusty, that you bring up pilot fish. Thet have a mutualist relationship with the shark in which the pilot fish gains protection from predators, while the shark gains freedom from parasites. This is similar to the relationship that use to exist between workers and company management where each supported the other for the mutual benefit of both. Unfortunately, that relationship has disintegrated into something more resembling slave and master.
Jerry, I agree with you that we need to raise revenues as part of an overall deficit reduction package. But I also don't think that the slave-master analogy is a particularly instructive one. I mean, come on. Doctors go to school for 8 years and then they do another 3-4 year internship AND they have to pay off a massive loan. Compare this to Joe Blow, who thinks that he's entitled to mega wages despite the fact that he's dropped out of school, smokes 2 packs a day, and impregnates women regularly.
Will,
I'm not sure why you are commenting on deficit reduction.
I was talking about the relationship between workers and their company management with my slave -master analogy, not doctors and Joe Blow.
And just who is this Joe Blow?
I wanted you to know that I was in favor of raising SOME taxes and that I wasn't anathema to it.......So, the master-slave analogy isn't so much the 1% versus the 99% as it is the workers versus the managers? Whatever it is, I still don't like it. I mean, I don't consider me and my co-workers slaves to the administrator or even to "corporate".
Well, master - slave is a bit of an exaggeration, although no more than your doctor - Joe Blow analogy. My point is that the relationship between workers and management is much more contentious now than it use to be in the past. I think you will see this if you reread my comment.
My point, Jerry, is that the great proportion of the affluent in this country a) work hard, b) work extremely long hours, c) have expended a great deal of time, money, and effort into becoming educated and b) are an exceedingly divergent subset (a very small minority of them actually being Wall Street types). This whole far left talking point that they are somehow only where they are through an exploitation of the poor and working class is as wrong as it is insulting.
Well said Will,well said.Unfortunately the Jerry and WD types will never admitt their animosity towards success...it seems they were waiting on the corner for the american dream,but it never stopped...just tooted the horn and rode right by them.Now their envy consumes them while they look to the government for more and more freebies.I'm always amazed they never feel any shame standing there with their outstretched hands.
And it's not like these categories are fixed, either. If a retired woman sells her home for $450,000, she'll be in the 1% for that year, but only for that year.
Will,
No one is claiming that the affluent are affluent ONLY (your word) due to exploitation of the poor and working class. Exploitation comes when gains are made at the expense of the poor and working class.
A retired woman selling her home for $450,000 gets most, if not all, of her capital gains tax free.
Rusty,
Why do you keep trying to make this personal. Where have either I or wd personally asked for "more and more freebies" for ourselves?
Jerry, I brought up the woman strictly to underscore the malleability of these groups. She's in the 1% one year and then she's out of it the next. And who in the 1% are doing the exploiting; supervisors, managers, architects, physicians, lawyers, entrepreneurs? I'm sorry, but I'm just not a big fan of this us versus them approach to partisan politics.
I understand what you are saying, I think, but isn't that what partisan politics is? Politics has always been us vs. them. The problem now is that there is no compromise. Compromise is seen as weakness or capitulation, as opposed to a means to an end where agreement is reached, nobody gets everything they want, but things are accomplished, decisions are made, and the country moves on.
Sometimes no decision is the worst decision.
I don't think that it was always this bad. I mean, yeah, you had Hamilton and Jefferson and Johnson and Goldwater but you also had Dirksen and Johnson working together on civil rights and Reagan and O'Neil working together on Social Security. Hell, even Clinton and Gingrich and Carter and Baker had fair working relationships. And while I do blame the Republicans more for the current impasse, I also think that Mr. Obama could have addressed this whole taxation issue a lot less divisively. And, really, that's all that Mr. Lovitz and I are saying here.
I agree, I don't think it has been this bad before. One of the major players that we have now that the others that you list did not have to contend with is the Tea Party. They were elected with a no compromise stance.
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