Blinded by Success

I know I haven’t been posting a lot here for a while now. Fact is, my book reviews and my thoughts about writing and storytelling go on my Writer’s Blog. Social stuff which heavily involves or revolves around women and women’s rights goes on Feminism Wow. There’s little left for this blog, my first on. Although, perhaps I’ll start doing game reviews here again. Subnautica and Sims 4 come to mind, as does Stardew Valley (a game I have sunk more hours into than I should admit). But the topic I want to tackle right now doesn’t fit with either of my other blogs, so it goes here.

I got into an argument with a guy of FB today which showed me again that people sometimes get completely blinded by their own success - or what they perceive as their own success. Now, this is not about the topic we argued about so much - the question of why minimum wage is not a living wage in most places, although it should be -, but about the way his personal success blinded him to what other people can and can’t achieve.

You most often hear people like that guy chiming in on two topics: success at work and success at weight loss. Those people have either managed to work their way up the career ladder from humble beginnings to somewhere in management or they have lost a lot of weight in a short time. The problem with them is not the success as a such, success is recommendable, especially when self-achieved. But here’s already where things can go awry.

Let’s have a look at the definition of ‘success.’ A promotion at work surely is to be counted as a success, it’s something to strive for and something to be proud of when it happens. Same goes for losing weight and becoming more healthy and fit. But how much of the success is really self-achieved?

Surely, if they lose weight through dieting and working out, it’s their success. And, yes, in the weight-loss category, success usually is self-achieved (unless they got a liposuction, of course). However, there are quite some factors they can’t influence which can help or hinder their success. Such as certain diseases which will either make it easier or harder to lose weight. Such as the fact that some bodies lose weight easier than others on the whole. Such as having the money for a personal coach and someone to make diet food for you. Such as having gained the weight in a short time (which often makes it easier to lose it again as well). Don’t misunderstand me - even in the most unfortunate cases, it’s still possible to lose weight permanently, but it might be a lot harder than in others.

And as far as business is concerned, there’s a lot of things outside of the successful person’s control which play into the success. First of all, all qualification and hard work won’t do them any good if there’s no free position. Or if their boss has a favourite subordinate which they are not. In such cases, they might still be looking for a new job for a long time, since most companies first try to fill positions higher up the ladder with their own people and reach out to the job market only after having exhausted their own resources. Entry-level jobs are easy to find, those higher up require more luck. A lot more luck in some cases. Vitamin B helps, of course (or is that Vitamin R in English?). Knowing the right people can tremendously expand their chances for a better position, inside and outside the company where they’re working at the moment.

In those cases listed above, success might have been easier than the person thought it was, simply because factors outside of their control were in their favour.

The problem, however, is not that those people were successful. The problem is that their personal success (or what they perceive as their personal success) has blinded them to the problems of others.

That guy I mentioned above simply continuously stated that because he’d been successful, everyone else could be, too (a staple of people with that problem). If people didn’t have his work ethics or weren’t prepared to work as hard as he had, they, essentially, deserved not having a living wage. That is a general opinion of those blinded by success. They were successful and everyone who doesn’t want to do as well as they did deserves their fate. When I asked him what would happen if everyone were as hard-working as he was and had his work ethics, if everyone qualified for better jobs and got their promotion, he didn’t answer my question. Because my point was that society actually relies a lot on there being people to do minimum wage jobs. Our society wouldn’t continue for a long time without waiters, cleaners, and many other minimum-wage workers. His point only was ‘I was successful and they’re just lazy and that’s why they’re not.’ And while that might be a possible interpretation, it’s far from being the only or the most realistic one.

The same kind of discussion can also happen if you talk to someone who lost a lot of weight quickly (and, perhaps, even made a career out of it). They are blinded by the success they had and don’t understand that not everyone will have the same success with the same method. Some people can lose weight the same way, others have a body chemistry which makes this an impossible or near impossible way to lose weight. Some people can’t dedicate that much time to their weight loss (which might mean not having as much workout in their day or sometimes eating less-than-ideal meals). Some people have other things interfering (like family life).

And in some cases (less with the weight-loss and more with the career), people might not even want a success. They might know they will never qualify for something better (because, for instance, they have a learning disability). They might like the overall work (because, for instance, they like physical work much more than mental work). They might simply have a life outside of work which demands the resources (mostly time and money) which ‘successful in business’ has invested in their success. They might be caring for a sick or simply elderly relative, they might have a big family, they might be following a project outside of work (like remodelling a house or creating art) which takes their time and money. There’s many reasons why not everyone can work their way up in business. And, again, would it be good if they did? If everyone was over-qualified for the low-level jobs? The jobs on minimum wage?

Women are often ‘accused’ of not putting as much time and energy into advancing at work. Of being more comfortable with the job they’re doing, even though they could do better. A lot of the time this is down to women having another focus outside of work. A focus on society, family, other projects. At the same time, it’s seen as more normal if a woman doesn’t do her best to advance at work than if a man doesn’t. Men are supposed to be focused on success, on getting on, on advancing through the ranks. So to a man who has done his ‘duty’ of succeeding, men who don’t may seem even more lazy than women who don’t. The whole ‘if you weren’t so lazy, you wouldn’t have to do this job’ discussion is getting us nowhere.

Neither is the ‘if I succeeded, you can as well’ attitude of some people. It’s an attitude which assumes everyone is living the same life (and, hence, has the chance to distribute free time and money the same way), has the same life goals, and has the same chance of success. Neither of these three things is true.

Even two people who seem to have the same life (same marriage status, same income, same area they live in, same job), most of the time don’t really have that same life. One of them might have to pay off an old debt (car, house, student loan, etc.). One of them might have a relative in the same job who they’re on good terms with. One of them might have another passion than work which they need time and, perhaps, money for. One of them might get on better with their immediate superior. They do not really have the same life. The one in debt doesn’t have as much disposable income as the other one. The one with the relative in the same line of work doesn’t have to invest as much money in a new qualification, because he gets the training ‘for free’ (or, perhaps, a few lunches and beers). The one with the other passion isn’t as driven in business matters and will spent less time and money on a qualification and do less overtime. The one who gets on better with the superior will be more likely to be chosen for promotion if there’s several candidates.

And even if they’re similar in the question of spare time and money, they might have different goals in life. Not everyone is totally focused on their career. And even if they initially are, life has a way of changing things. One might suddenly find themselves in a situation in which they need to put their personal life above the career. Or they might realize they don’t want to spend the rests of their life in that job. There’s a lot of things which can change a life goal. Epiphanies are more common than people often realize. So they ‘slack off’ in the eyes of the one blinded by success and are no longer worthy of that person’s support.

Finally, not everyone is born with the same chance to succeed. If you’re born into middle-class, you have more chances to succeed than someone born into the lower class (it goes without saying that the rich and wealthy have it easy to succeed, not to mention some of them don’t even have to succeed something else than their parents). If you can afford college after school (and go to a good school in a good area), your chances are much higher than those of someone who does evening courses to get their college degree. If you manage to get into a certain line of work to begin with, you have much more of a chance to promotion. Some jobs simply don’t have a big career ladder.

If you’ve been successful in your line of work or consider yourself very successful in another aspect of your life, please try to keep in mind that life isn’t ‘one fits all’ and you shouldn’t stop caring about your fellow humans just because they seem to ‘slack off,’ unlike you.

Why 'Trickle Down' Will Never Work

For ages - since the 1970s in the US, to be more precise - some people have advocated for ‘Trickle Down Economy,’ which will make everyone have more money by making sure the rich can make more money. The latter will be achieved by giving them less regulations for their companies (such as minimum wages or suchlike) and forcing less taxes on them. That is supposed to make them spend more money which will then lead to more jobs and more money for the middle class and the working poor. But does it work? Well, obviously not.

Before we get back to the ‘obviously not,’ we have to talk about the economy as a such and how it works. Every economy on our planet (yes, even in communist countries) is based around consumption. Or around supply and demand. Both are essentially the same, because supply and demand (what is offered and what people want) leads to consumption. What drives economy is actually the flow of money. As long as money is flowing, as long as we all consume the goods and services offered to us, economy works. Because we make the demand and, as workers, we also make the supply. We keep the money moving, by buying goods and services and by earning the money made by those goods and services. It’s a huge circle, albeit not the Circle of Life™.

So far, everything is pretty clear, I think. You get money from your work or through other channels (perhaps through investments, through the government, through some inheritance) and you use this money to buy goods and services you plan to consume. Consumption is very important, okay? Because if companies just pushed goods back and forth, the production chains would disintegrate and everything would go broke.

With this in mind, we have to ask ourselves the next question: who is keeping most of the money running as a consumer? Is it the poor? The middle class? The rich?

Actually, it’s the poor. You see, there’s a lot of poor people and they usually have to use up all the money they make in a month just to pay for what they absolutely need (shelter, food, necessary utilities, what you might call their ‘overhead’). Sometimes, they make less in a month than they would need just to go on staying alive. What would happen if they got a little more each month? They’d probably spent it, too. Not because they have no idea how to keep their money together, but because they’re far from the point where they can afford not to spend it.

The next-biggest group of consumers are the middle class. They keep a little money on the side, save it up, but usually with a specific idea. They want to buy a new car, send the kids to college, or go on a nice vacation. They might also put aside a little for the ‘bad days,’ but those do come sooner or later. They pay for their overhead, they can afford a few luxuries, but they still hand most of the money they make back to economy. What if they got a little more? They’d probably spent most of it as well. They might put a little of it in the ‘bad days’ account, but most of it would go back into economy.

The smallest group of consumer and the only one with a strange problem are the rich. They only spend a relatively small percentage of what they make in a month, even though they nominally spend a huge amount, of course. But they are few and compared to what the rest spends during the month, all rolled together, it’s not all that much. And the problem they have? There actually is an upper limit to what you can spend in a month. You see, they’re not spending so little of their income because they’re all Scrooges. Some may be, yes, but quite some of them dive into all the luxury they can imagine. They spend a lot, but they make much, much more than what they spend. And so the money adds up in their accounts. They would spend more than they have already, but, oh, it’s the first again, the new money is in the account, the spending is reset. And this is the group which ‘Trickle Down’ advocates say needs more money. Think about it for a moment, I’ll wait until you’re done.

In the 1950s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had a very shocking plan. He wanted to put a 90% tax rate on the net income of all companies in the US. Nine out of every ten dollars net income should belong to the state. Was he greedy? Was he mad? No, he was neither. He was clever.

You see, the net income is what a company makes in a year after all of their spending has been subtracted. Every dollar they spend on something, be it resources, personnel, research, machinery, advertising etc., does not count for the net income. And that was what he wanted: he wanted the companies to spend more money, so they wouldn’t have to pay that high tax rate. How could they spend it? On bonuses at the end of the year. On higher wages for the employees. On new machinery (which means buying as a consumer from another company). In new branch offices somewhere else (creating new jobs). On research and development. Boy, can you leave money in R&D. It’s basically a bottomless pit in a lab coat. Like this, Mr. Roosevelt thought, they were investing in their communities. And if they didn’t want to - well, then the 90% tax rate would allow the communities to invest instead.

He didn’t get the 90% rate, but he did get 70%, which was also fine. And the tax rate stayed at 70% until the 1970s, until someone told Ronald Reagan that Trickle Down was a great thing and companies and their owners needed to be able to keep more money. Until then, economy in the US was booming, because a lot of money was on the move. Employees were paid well, the middle class had a solid foundation, the poor were slightly less poor than they are today. After Trickle Down became a thing, wages went down in relation to the costs of living. People made less money, people could spend less money. Production moved overseas, where it was even cheaper. Nobody asked who was supposed to actually buy the products if nobody in the US could still make money. Greed ran rampant through the economy, through the management offices everywhere. Manager wages rose higher and higher as the wages of the actual employees fell. The job market shifted, people started to work two or three jobs, just to keep afloat. Not for something extra or some luxury, just to pay for all the bills and the rent and the food, for their overhead. Temp agencies sprang up, at first only as a help for employers who needed someone quick and for a certain time (temporary, which is where the ‘Temp’ comes from), then to rent your workforce for unlimited time.

Today, the US, where everyone thinks the economy was basically invented, has a greedy businessman (well, a greedy man who has managed to tank businesses which should be un-tank-able, such as casinos) as its president who only looks out for himself and his friends. And people still believe that Trickle Down will start working right now … or next year … or sometime in the future.

Wake up! It’s never going to work … unless you’re rich!

Dear Americans

Dear Americans,

in 1949 you brought Germany the first real democracy in our country. After the failed attempt during the Weimar Republic, which led to the election of Adolf Hitler and through him to the Third Reich and World War II, you brought us one of the most stable and efficient democracies in the world. We are very grateful for that (apart from a few right-wingers and a few hopeless people who live in the past).

With your 2016 election, you have, however proven that you are in dire need of a true democracy yourself.

You have been holding on to an old institution called the ‘Electoral College’ for too long, for one thing. An American friend I spoke to recently thinks it serves to make sure stupid people (or uninformed people, as it is put officially) don’t take too much influence on the election of your president. Well, that either means you’re wrong or it means even intelligent people voted for Donald Trump. I choose to believe the first one, because I can’t imagine any person who is intelligent would vote for a con-man who has no plans and will destroy everything his predecessor, one of the best presidents you’ve had, has built up in eight years in office. The bottleneck of the Electoral College means that a lot of votes go unnoticed every time. It doesn’t matter whether a party wins a voting district by a few votes or by several hundreds. If it wins, the other votes cast don’t matter for the rest of the electoral process. It also validates the technique known as Gerrymandering - a way to make sure as many voting districts as possible will go to the party the person doing the Gerrymandering favours. Get rid of the Electoral College and just count out all the votes. Overall, you might get different results.

You make the electoral process look like a huge party. You make it extremely focused on entertainment. And you make it extremely important that the candidates (and their parties) raise a lot of money. It’s no wonder the candidates in the end were both extremely wealthy. But how much do people with millions in the bank know about the struggle of the common citizen? Not much, usually. Yes, candidates should speak about their plans for the presidency. They should take a stand on political and social topics so the voters know where they stand and what to expect from them. They should not make a show out of it. The showman is close to the con-man (not all showmen are con-men, but all con-men are showmen) and will rarely keep his promises after the votes have been cast. Cap the amount of money candidates can invest. Like this, money isn’t that important for becoming a candidate.

Make sure the polling places are controlled. Not to avoid voter fraud as a such, but to make sure people are not bullied (for example by armed people standing outside and threatening those they think will vote for the other candidate) or are turned away, even though they have the right to vote. Having a system which gives every citizen the automatic right to vote might help. Make sure everyone has the chance to get a photo ID (meaning making sure everyone can afford one) and make the photo ID mandatory for voting. To get a photo ID, you need to be a citizen - which means a person with a photo ID is eligible to vote.

Many years ago, you brought a country you had just defeated in war the wonderful gift of democracy. Please do not allow things to go badly enough this country needs to be part of a UN mandate during the next elections to make sure America stays a democracy.

Sad Truth about Greece

Honestly, I still wonder why my country - and several others - shy away from doing away with Greece’s debts and allowing them a restart of their system. It must be obvious to everyone and their blind grandmother that anything else will simply fail. Of course, all the banks who have backed up the debts don’t want that - and we know how important the thoughts of the banks and ‘the economy’ are for our politicians. The cuts (right down to getting money out of your own bank account, if you happen to be a Greek) don’t hit those who are really responsible for it, after all. Who is responsible? The rich who don’t pay taxes. Those live everywhere, but in Greece, they’ve really lived out their dreams.

Look, none of us wants to pay taxes. Nobody wants to hand over some of their hard-earned money (the money someone earned the hard way for them at some point, anyway) to the government, instead of buying the tenth Ferrari.

But the government doesn’t take that money just to fill its own pockets. They pay for social security, public schools and hospitals, public transports, roads, the police force, the army, and oodles of other things. The government keeps the infrastructure of the country working and makes sure people can live in peace.

So, you’re a billionaire and say you have your riches, your private school and hospital, your car, and you also could afford to pay some security company for the protection of your family and your possessions. True, but your car is driving on roads kept in working condition by the government. The teachers in your private school, the nurses (and some doctors) in the private hospital, and the security personnel most likely went to public schools themselves, some of them will most likely also have been to public universities. And no matter how many security guards you pay for, if the whole economy breaks down and riots start, your possessions and family aren’t safe at all.

The problem with rich people don’t paying their taxes is similar to the problem with telling the banks to stuff it and accept defeat. Both are very cosy with politicians. They pay for political campaigns. They offer jobs after the political career or ‘consultant positions’ throughout it. And for that, they can be sure to be on the winning side of new laws and other political decisions. Thus, there’s no real pressure put on Greek billionaires who don’t pay taxes and have moved abroad.

What I would do? I’d tell them to either pay their taxes or be throw out of the country for good. If they ever come back afterwards - even if it’s just the plane touching down in Athens to fill the tank -, they’ll be arrested on the spot and kept in jail until the outstanding taxes have been paid. It’s probably not legal, but it would be effective. How many of those people would want to lose the country they consider their home? Perhaps lose all the property they still own back home (confiscated to get at least some of their debts paid off)? They’d be without citizenship (although they could probably ‘buy’ their way into another). They’d be outed for the criminals they are.

Would it be right on a moral level? I’d say yes. If  they don’t pay for the state they’re part of, even though they can afford to (unlike the people at the other end of that scale who simply have no money to pay taxes from), they don’t deserve to be a part any longer. Community (and a state is nothing else) only works when everyone does something to keep it working. Once upon a time, everyone could put in a few hours of work or, perhaps, donate some of their harvest. But we’ve all grown specialized and so we need the government to organize all the community stuff and pay people to do it.

Most of the rich Greeks would probably pay their outstanding taxes and would continue to pay them later on. I think only a minority would really risk having all their connections with their home country severed.

What the EU is doing, on the other hand, is basically pushing Greece deeper and deeper into misery. Punishing the normal people for something they didn’t do and had no power to prevent. It’s not the rich ones who now ‘pay’ with unemployment and poverty, it’s the normal people and those who were poor to begin with.