Why do some people need so much money?

Anthony Garcia19 said:Forget about the economy! 🙂

Look, you can't deny that business owners have total autonomy when it comes to how they handle profits and payroll. They can choose to pay people based on their actual individual contribution to the bottom line, or they can just stick to standard market rates—it’s their call. And it isn't just about salaries; it's about reinvestment too. Sure, that profit comes from everyone's hard work, but legally, it belongs to the owner. I don't see what the big deal is here, at least for this discussion.

Karen Rodriguez3 said:You've got a point there. The government sets the baseline, and after that, it's mostly down to the market.
Not everyone is doing jobs where you can just pay some basic minimum wage set by the state and call it a day. If I need a solid specialist for my business, I have to pay them what they're actually worth. Basically, whatever rate they're willing to work for. Otherwise, they'll just head over to a competitor.
Obviously, there's a ceiling to how much I can spend based on what my business can actually handle. If I can't find the right person for the budget I have, I end up lowering my standards, which honestly just puts the whole company and everyone relying on it at risk.
Sometimes, you just don't have a choice.
And then there's the whole thing where people tend to take the path of least resistance. They go through the motions to get degrees in jobs that aren't really in demand, and then act surprised when they have a Master's degree but zero job offers.
And yeah, ideally, some of that money should actually stay in the pot. But if that were the case, who do you think should be calling the shots on how it's spent and distributed?

Karen Rodriguez3 said:Sure, maybe a group of like, 20 employees could take out some loans or pool their savings to start a business. Then they could just split everything equally at the end.
But if one person puts up everything—their house, their life savings, their whole future—just to get the doors open and manage the crew, I guess it's weird to think the profit should belong to everyone else, right?

Rachel Cruz11 said:It’s actually quite simple. These people only find happiness if they have more and more... than everyone else. They seem fundamentally broken... they've lost their way... they don't know any other way to live... and they don't want to... money and wealth have become their entire identity.

You don't even need to look at millionaires or billionaires... just observe everyday life where people are constantly competing... over who has the better car, the better clothes, or the newest iPhone... just material things. For the average person, having a little extra is plenty... enough to share happiness with family... to help someone else... to give what they have instead of stepping on others to get ahead...

Technology and the endless stream of new gadgets have just created more things for people to compete over just to feel better about themselves. And in the process, they forget that true happiness should be found outside of material possessions...

placidwolf27 said:You might find that amusing, but let's not forget you're also a participant in a conflict that has been dragging on for millennia...

but that's probably drifting too far off topic now...

Peter Baker57 said:Actually, you're the one drifting off-topic, not me.

And it isn't just funny—it's mindless. Why waste endless breath debating "how much money someone actually needs"? I couldn't care less how much cash someone is sitting on or what they plan to do with it. It's all the same to me.

They say "a happy man is hard to convince," but looking at this thread, it seems the opposite is also true.

😁

Anthony Garcia19 said:Realistically, if you don't care about wealth, you aren't going to support a system built entirely around it. Unless, of course, you care about people more.

Unless they also don't care about people.

Rachel Cruz11 said:It’s actually quite simple. These people only find happiness if they have more and more... than everyone else. They seem fundamentally broken... they've lost their way... they don't know any other way to live... and they don't want to... money and wealth have become their entire identity.

You don't even need to look at millionaires or billionaires... just observe everyday life where people are constantly competing... over who has the better car, the better clothes, or the newest iPhone... just material things. For the average person, having a little extra is plenty... enough to share happiness with family... to help someone else... to give what they have instead of stepping on others to get ahead...

Technology and the endless stream of new gadgets have just created more things for people to compete over just to feel better about themselves. And in the process, they forget that true happiness should be found outside of material possessions...

Peter Baker57 said:Let me clarify 😁

...I couldn't care less how much money someone else (anyone besides me and my inner 😁) has, what they’ll get next, or if they even need more. In fact, I think everyone should spend less time worrying about other people's bank accounts and a little more on their own. The only exception where I tolerate this kind of "poking around" 😁 is when there's an obvious lack of ethics involved in how that wealth was acquired....

Of course, my stance is heavily influenced by an environment where, after hurling all sorts of insults at entrepreneurs and the rest of them , everyone suddenly starts sucking up to them. Naturally, I'm the black sheep here 😁
.
Get it now??

Unless they also don't care about people.

Speaking of that low-flying thing... 😁 Just some food for thought from a song I heard recently: "...because the wealthy are going to look out for themselves anyway..." 🙂

As for this forum version of neoclassic synthesis—which feels like this weird mashup of capitalism and socialism—I honestly think the tough guys would have some thoughts on it. 😁 Turning in his grave—I'm just not even going to go there.
Just wanted to jump in and clarify something. I don't want anyone thinking I’m dismissing these topics as immature—it’s really just that some of you are missing a few key pieces of information.🙂

Take care, everyone. Wishing you all nothing but good health and plenty of money!😁🙂

Anthony Garcia19 said:I'll jump on that question first, since it's key to why I mentioned the unfair distribution and the gap between individual profit and actual ability.

When you create something—including this "surplus" we're talking about—everyone involved in the production process plays a part. It only makes sense that EVERYONE gets a say in how things are distributed and used, based on how much they contributed to the creation process (we don't really need to get bogged down in the logistics of how that voting would work here).

The only fair pushback to that idea is the owner's specific contribution through their initial capital investment (at least in today's economy). So, that invested capital should get extra value, but only until it's fully recouped. Basically, an owner might have more weight in decision-making because of what they put in upfront, but not because of the wealth they've accumulated later.

A system like that works because it's formally fair: everyone gets exactly what they put in. Sure, it isn't perfectly equitable regarding different skill levels, but it's definitely better than our current setup where capital calls all the shots.

Even though this isn't the Economics forum, I had to go on a bit of a rant to explain why I'm not a fan of our current capitalist distribution model. It's because wealth builds on capital rather than labor. That leads to power and money piling up in the hands of a tiny minority—people whose wealth could last for generations without them ever having to lift a finger again.

That also touches on your point about wages. Instead of just hitting a minimum wage or whatever the market rate happens to be, workers should be paid an amount equivalent to their actual contribution to the total value created.

Andrew Sullivan8 said:I’m posting this here in the spirituality section, too, since I’m not really sure where it fits best... 😉

"Every single day, you open the papers and see more scandals involving millions of dollars in fraud. It seems people will go to any lengths to get rich—stealing, killing, cheating, just committing any kind of crime imaginable...

What's interesting is that almost all these dishonest schemes are pulled off by people who don't actually need the money to survive. We aren't talking about someone on the brink of starvation or someone who can't afford basic clothes and is struggling to stay alive. It's usually the middle class or the wealthy elite—people who have plenty, but simply never have enough. So much for that idea that greed is driven by necessity...

Sometimes these folks have so much wealth that three generations of their descendants couldn't spend it all, yet they still pull dirty stunts just to stack up even more.

There's something deeply tragic about money, isn't there? How it manages to ruin so many lives..."

Scott Hall39 said:That's just Marxist labor theory of value. Pure nonsense.

Jason Wells4 said:And you think you're some kind of genius, do you?🙄