The Corean Chronicles
Wealth, in Fiction and Reality
With each passing day of the on-going and seemingly endless presidential election campaign, I get more and more distressed by the way in which the candidates and the media deal with the issue of "wealth." In thinking about this, I also realized that all too many writers have similar problems, but that the writers are more adept at avoiding the issue and concealing either their ignorance or their biases... if not both.
Those on the left tend to claim that any family that earns more than somewhere in the $200,000-$250,000 range is wealthy. Now, I'd be the first to admit that such families are not poor... but to claim that they're wealthy?
Somehow, I don't think most doctors, lawyers, engineers, dentists and other professionals in that income range, many of whom make that income only by dint of hard work by two parents, think of themselves as "wealthy," particularly when compared to those who truly are, like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, or like the millionaire athletic figures such as Tiger Woods, Shaquille O'Neal, or Peyton Manning.
Then, too, when you use a flat number for defining who is wealthy, that number doesn't reflect the cost-of-living. A family income of $100,000 in
Again... I am not claiming families who make such incomes are poor; I am claiming that anyone who thinks they're rich is either deluded or a demagogue. Why are such claims being made? Because the politicians know that there aren't enough "truly rich" to pay for the debts already incurred and the programs they think their constituents want, and by defining the upper end of the middle class as wealthy, they can claim that they're not taxing the middle-class, but the "undeserving" wealthy, rather than hard-working professionals, with mortgages and children in college and the like
Just as the politicians and the media don't seem to know what wealth is, or want to discuss it factually, so do more than a few SF writers have problems understanding and in dealing with wealth. Over the years, we've seen "millionaire" heroes with their own spacecraft, their own extensive private laboratories, and the like. Currently, a single high-tech atmospheric fighter seating just two pilots for a few hours of flight time costs over $200 million, and the industrial complex required to build it represents a number of entities representing more than $100 billion in assets. All that for a craft that flies at speeds a fraction of those required for interplanetary travel and without all the other additional systems necessary. Currently, according to Forbes, there are roughly 500 billionaires in the entire world, and most of them are worth less than $15 billion, with the wealthiest worth considerably less than $100 billion.
I've read very few books that even suggest the records and expertise necessary to handle vast wealth, or the limitations that such wealth imposes. Steven King, for heaven's sake, hardly in the wealth class of Bill Gates, had to give up attending events such as World Fantasy Convention, and these days most companies spend millions of dollars in various ways to protect their CEOs.
So why do we have this strange dichotomy in our culture and our fiction where people who are merely affluent are considered rich, and where no one seems to understand how few really are truly rich and how isolated those comparative few are?
Meh.
To answer you question, I think maybe we as a society just never grew out of the mindset that six figures is rich, because it used to be a mark of someone wealthy. I don't know, though. I think in fiction it makes things a little easier. It would be really difficult to write a believable story of a poor man getting a space ship and going on a journey of some sort, so there might be a need for a rich character to do it.
That's not to say there shouldn't be more stories about the difficult trip to space, but I guess that's one way to look at it.
I’m so heartily fed up of hearing about Poor Mr Rich man. We all have to make a living. Some make more than others and this is fine; but to bitch about it when you are making big, big bucks can’t be right in a world where people die of thirst for lack of clean water.
Doctors have a tendency to be called rich, but a lot of them work harder than most of us would like to imagine just to get to have their own practices, and then even harder until they get fortunate enough to hire other doctors to take the load off.
They have ever right to bitch and moan about it, because they are being targeted simply because of how much money they make. Yes, there are rich folks who are doing just fine and aren't affected one way or another by increases in housing costs, etc. But there are loads of others we consider rich who are now struggling, but those of us in the bottom rungs don't give a crap because we refuse to see that things are changing with inflation.
I have respect for people who work to earn what they get, and I think they should get to keep more of it when they have clearly done more than sign off on a couple pieces of paper. I've known people who make six figures, who work 70-100 hours a week just to make it. And I don't agree with punishing them on their taxes to make other people feel better about the poor/rich problem.
I have no problem with people making money; however we all make money within the system we live in. People get taxed on what they earn not on how long their hours are.
Perhaps poeple who spend the amount of hours they work for their 6 figure salary might be happier with less money, less hours and living in an area that is not so expensive.
I think one of the things I have got out of L.E.Modesitt's novels is that you get out exactly what you put into life. ie you pay for everything you do. Good, bad indiferent.
The point I was trying to make before, not very well, was that why should I feel any sympathy for the man who has billions of pounds.
And, no, they wouldn't be happier with less money, because failing to work so hard means losing a lot of the things they've earned. They wouldn't get to keep their homes, they wouldn't get to go on vacations, etc. If my mother's partner had decided to work less for 50,000...they would have been too poor to do anything. And a lot of people who become doctors don't really have a choice. They can't stop working all of a sudden because a lot of them have $100,000 dollars in loans...if we didn't tax them so much, maybe they could pay those loans off and could live a little better.
To your clarification: I don't think that was the object of Modesitt's post in reference to how we tax "the rich". People making billions generally aren't complaining as much as people making six figures, and people mostly don't care if a billionaire is complaining, because said billionaire isn't going to go bankrupt next week.
A roof over your head, clean water, food for your children, etc.. these should be rights.
The thing that will ultimately pay for these basic rights is us paying the taxes and the governments puting them to the proper use.
Read Adiamante it says it perfectly.
Final thought, a lot of people work their asses off for mimimum wage.
Then there are those who make under 250G, who struggle to be able to give their families the benefits that would otherwise be afforded to them for the hard work they have done to get there...except, those of us in the bottom rungs tend to forget that, and assume that if you make six figures, it's okay to tax the hell out of you. But it's not.
The way the country views the rich and the way we treat all rich people, even those that aren't really rich, is a big problem. We don't have the right to take away someone else's opportunities if all they have done is make more money than the rest of us, and by over taxing, and increasing taxes without taking into account where people live, we're essentially using the law to remove opportunity.
I agree, people work their asses off for minimum wage. And I don't for a second believe we should raise their taxes unless by some freak accident minimum wage becomes the new filthy rich...which won't happen. I just have a huge problem with the tax system here. We have to be careful what we do with it, because there is a fine line between reasonable and overbearing. Emotion is a dangerous weapon when it comes to politics.
Over here the government recently removed the loweset band of tax exemption, thus making those on the lowest income pay more tax.
See, I don't agree with increasing taxes on the lower echelons at all. Generally that's just stupid, but as I said, in the U.S. we really are flirting with a dangerous line by lumping certain incomes together under the assumption they are all alike, when the fact is, they're not all alike. I think the problem in the U.S. is that we have so many programs that require taxes to fund that we may not have too much of a choice, unless we cut some of those programs (which we should, because I have no doubt there are hundreds, if not thousands of pointless, useless programs out there).
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