Reply to Net Worth Disparity among whites and blacks/hispanics

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Actually, most of the 1%ers I know earned their money. Only a couple inherited or are set to inherit.[/quote]
All depends on how you define earned.  For most earned means being paid for you time.  You work 8 hours you get paid for 8 hours.  The only way you can become a 1%er is to be getting a whole bunch of money when your doing nothing.

Let's take a book for example.  You decide to write a book and you spend 8 hours a day for 3 months writing the book.  That's roughly 720 hours of work.  The publisher takes the book, markets it, and it sells 1 million copies.  You get a royalty check for 5 million dollars.  So you basically "earned" $5,000,000 / 720 = $6,944.44 an hour to write the book.  Now if you hired someone to work for you would you pay then $6,944.44 an hour?

Or another more drastic example, the lottery.  You take 15 minutes of your time and go by a lottery ticket with numbers you laboriously pick.  That night they draw the number and you win $250,000,000.  Did you "earn" that money?

Getting money is one thing, earning it is another.  There not the same thing.[/quote]

What a skewed view of "earning" you have.  [/quote]

According to Webster
earn =  to receive as return for effort and especially for work done or services rendered
[/quote]. So the effort the author puts is indeed earnings... :oops:   Just because he or she didn't Ypsilanti away at a minimum wage job doesn't mean the proceeds of the sale aren't earnings.  The same applies to the software developer, the doctor, the attorney, e scientist,  etc. just because they aren't low paying jobs doesn't mean that the product of their labor does not qualify as earnings. [/quote]
The royalty payments the author receives is not payment for his effort, they are payments for the sale of the book.  If the author was only being paid for his writing skills, i.e. his effort, what do you think he would of been paid?  $50 an hour?  $75? Perhaps $100?

A software developer, doctor, attorney, scientist, etc. will never break into the top 1% from their salaries (effort) alone.  Take Mark Zuckerberg for example, he's a top 1%er and earns a $1 annual salary.  Yes, only $1.  Does he deserve his billions, sure he does.  Did he somehow work harder or longer than some other software developer earning $120k a year?  How can he be worth billions on a $1 salary and working no harder or longer than a typical software developer?  There must be non-salary income coming from somewhere else right?

The lottery winner who wins $250 million for 15 minutes work.  Hardly no one would say they earned it.

Let's be honest, to get into the top 1% takes more than earned income.  It mostly takes a willingness for risk and lots of luck.

[/quote]

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