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The smug superiority of the author really annoys me. Add to that the effort made to make the "rich guys" sound as evil as possible. For instance: "But did they

by gizmo 18y ago

The smug superiority of the author really annoys me. Add to that the effort made to make the "rich guys" sound as evil as possible. For instance: "But did they work 10 times as hard as a teacher on £30,000 a year or, in the case of some lawyers and bankers, 100 times as hard?" It's not about how hard you work, it's about how much free time you have left AFTER work. Considering 8 hours of sleep, a commute, overhead for food and exercise and general life maintenance, a guy who works 80 hours a week really has very little spare time left. Easily 10 times less than a teacher. Then the author makes those infuriating "Of course, the poor didn't deserve it." comments. Of course people don't -deserve- benefits. Benefits are charity - you get them because the state pities you. Handing out benefits is the ethical thing to do - but that doesn't mean you're -entitled- to them. The article is shit.

time_management 18y ago
My issue with the article is that it's anecdotal and biased. He interviewed a bunch of degenerate, conservative rich assholes and used their opinions to paint "the rich" in a negative light, as if they were a monolithic group. Is the fact that most bankers and corporate leaders are uncultured douchebags news to anyone?
Prrometheus 18y ago
The article is incredibly trite and vapid, a three-page exercise in rubbing the author's unquestioned (and in his mind, unquestionable) Marxist assumptions in the reader's face. I'm hoping that this will be the worst article on Hacker News today. It will be hard to beat.
- einarvollset 18y ago
  I don't think so. It provides an insight into how rich people in the UK think. There things like the NHS aren't considered "unquestionable Marxist assumption". Maybe once the US gets rid of its current president, it too will enter the civilized world, where people aren't left to die because they can't pay. "The greatness of America is in how it treats its weakest members: the elderly, the infirm, the handicapped, the underprivileged, the unborn"
icky 18y ago
> "But did they work 10 times as hard as a teacher on £30,000 a year or, in the case of some lawyers and bankers, 100 times as hard?" > It's not about how hard you work, it's about how much free time you have left AFTER work. Your suggestion-- that income should be justified based on how much of someone's life is eaten by their job-- smacks of the same kind of moralistic posturing for which you criticize the author of the original piece. Rather than try to morally justify or attack these inequalities (which I regard as silly as trying to morally justify or attack a rainstorm), I'd like to explore ways that the aforementioned teacher might slice himself a bigger piece of the pie. Imagine that teachers were all free agents. Self-employed contractors free to negotiate their own rates for their services, and free to choose their students from the applicants they consider most promising. The better teachers would probably make more money than they do under the current system, but still probably nowhere near as much as the successful banker or lawyer. The exception might be the exceptional teacher who already has a track record of producing Nobel laureates, world leaders, curers of disease, self-made billionaire inventors, etc. By the time this teacher could command the truly huge rates, he would be pretty old, and might well consider this new windfall to be merely the capstone of an already satisfying and distinguished life. But the banker and the lawyer sink or swim based on goals that are directly measurable in the short term, so the same cycle that I've postulated for the old teacher (perhaps several lifetimes old!) can happen on a scale of months or years. So, to achieve parity with the world-class banker or lawyer, the world-class teacher needs not just free-agency, but fine-grained, objective, fast turnaround metrics of performance that directly correlate with economic return.
- gizmo 18y ago
  > Your suggestion-- that income should be justified based on how much of someone's life is eaten by their job-- smacks of the same kind of moralistic posturing for which you criticize the author of the original piece. I didn't mean that one's salaries --should-- be inversely correlated to spare time. But if you have want some metric of "fairness", then looking at free time is better than looking at hours worked - because that way you measure sacrifice, and a relation between sacrifice and compensation is seen by many as fair. The notion that the numbers of hours worked and salary should be correlated makes no sense to me at all.
einarvollset 18y ago
"The article is shit." ..is it? I find it hard to believe that you think the quotes admirable. That leaves "liar, liar pants on fire" as an argument. Furthermore, the assertion that "[rich people have] easily 10 times less [free time] than a teacher" as some sort of justification for making 10 times more than a teacher is patently absurd; people in all walks of life end up with little or no free time, bankers cause they work long hours, the less well paid because they need to commute from where they can afford to live. By your assumption these people should be paid in the millions, no: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... I can only assume that you consider that you'll be among the rich and ignorant soon, and that when you do, you'd rather keep the cash yourself than share it. Of course, if you live in the US, the chances of you actually becoming rich if you weren't born into money is the lowest in the western world (check social mobility figures)

by gizmo 18y ago

time_management 18y ago

My issue with the article is that it's anecdotal and biased. He interviewed a bunch of degenerate, conservative rich assholes and used their opinions to paint "the rich" in a negative light, as if they were a monolithic group. Is the fact that most bankers and corporate leaders are uncultured douchebags news to anyone?

Prrometheus 18y ago

The article is incredibly trite and vapid, a three-page exercise in rubbing the author's unquestioned (and in his mind, unquestionable) Marxist assumptions in the reader's face. I'm hoping that this will be the worst article on Hacker News today. It will be hard to beat.

einarvollset 18y ago
I don't think so. It provides an insight into how rich people in the UK think. There things like the NHS aren't considered "unquestionable Marxist assumption". Maybe once the US gets rid of its current president, it too will enter the civilized world, where people aren't left to die because they can't pay. "The greatness of America is in how it treats its weakest members: the elderly, the infirm, the handicapped, the underprivileged, the unborn"

icky 18y ago

> "But did they work 10 times as hard as a teacher on £30,000 a year or, in the case of some lawyers and bankers, 100 times as hard?" > It's not about how hard you work, it's about how much free time you have left AFTER work. Your suggestion-- that income should be justified based on how much of someone's life is eaten by their job-- smacks of the same kind of moralistic posturing for which you criticize the author of the original piece. Rather than try to morally justify or attack these inequalities (which I regard as silly as trying to morally justify or attack a rainstorm), I'd like to explore ways that the aforementioned teacher might slice himself a bigger piece of the pie. Imagine that teachers were all free agents. Self-employed contractors free to negotiate their own rates for their services, and free to choose their students from the applicants they consider most promising. The better teachers would probably make more money than they do under the current system, but still probably nowhere near as much as the successful banker or lawyer. The exception might be the exceptional teacher who already has a track record of producing Nobel laureates, world leaders, curers of disease, self-made billionaire inventors, etc. By the time this teacher could command the truly huge rates, he would be pretty old, and might well consider this new windfall to be merely the capstone of an already satisfying and distinguished life. But the banker and the lawyer sink or swim based on goals that are directly measurable in the short term, so the same cycle that I've postulated for the old teacher (perhaps several lifetimes old!) can happen on a scale of months or years. So, to achieve parity with the world-class banker or lawyer, the world-class teacher needs not just free-agency, but fine-grained, objective, fast turnaround metrics of performance that directly correlate with economic return.

gizmo 18y ago
> Your suggestion-- that income should be justified based on how much of someone's life is eaten by their job-- smacks of the same kind of moralistic posturing for which you criticize the author of the original piece. I didn't mean that one's salaries --should-- be inversely correlated to spare time. But if you have want some metric of "fairness", then looking at free time is better than looking at hours worked - because that way you measure sacrifice, and a relation between sacrifice and compensation is seen by many as fair. The notion that the numbers of hours worked and salary should be correlated makes no sense to me at all.

einarvollset 18y ago

"The article is shit." ..is it? I find it hard to believe that you think the quotes admirable. That leaves "liar, liar pants on fire" as an argument. Furthermore, the assertion that "[rich people have] easily 10 times less [free time] than a teacher" as some sort of justification for making 10 times more than a teacher is patently absurd; people in all walks of life end up with little or no free time, bankers cause they work long hours, the less well paid because they need to commute from where they can afford to live. By your assumption these people should be paid in the millions, no: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_paumgarten http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/04/16/070416fa_fact_... I can only assume that you consider that you'll be among the rich and ignorant soon, and that when you do, you'd rather keep the cash yourself than share it. Of course, if you live in the US, the chances of you actually becoming rich if you weren't born into money is the lowest in the western world (check social mobility figures)