Posted by blake
(here)
.....and what did this very wealthy person do for actual average people working hard, getting no where, and having to choose between food for the kids this week, winter coats and boots, or make the decision to pay the heating bill, or get a medical device they need for their cancer. Most Americans can not even make ends meet and are constantly trying to shuffle their money around to get what they need. The princess wants to be average and yet she doesn't seem to understand what average is from how you described her.
Reduce her income to $40,000 a year with no assets, and understand that out of that $40,00 which after taxes and forced insurance coverage is a lot less, then have her pay rent, or a mortgage that eats up half her income before taxes. So after paying taxes, insurance, school loans, rent/mortgage, and a car payment, if she is lucky to afford one, and after she struggles to buy food, clothes and medicine as well as school supplies for the kids, I don’t think your princess would have money to go out and buy a cup of coffee; shopping is out of the question because she would have no money to go shopping with. I am wondering how much this princess thinks she needs to live on to be happy and free? Let’s see $5000 a night….. in one week that is $35,000, How long does it take YOU to make $35,000? Many people in America don’t even make $35,000 in a year.
I am sure your princess is a nice person, but she lives and sees a different world than the majority of people. If all she knows if that it costs her $35,000 for rent for one week, how can she possibly relate to many single parents who only make $35,000 a year? Where is her reality check on living in the real world? Do we have a case of the poor little rich girl here?
And if the Princess gets ill she can have medical treatment, or purchase what she feels she needs to help her heal. Ophra often says money may not buy you happiness but she states life is so much better rich the poor. Hmmmm why does she say that?
The single parent making $35,000 a year, if she or he gets sick, unless they live on the street or rent free somewhere, they will not have that income to purchase medical devices or medical treatment and so they die or suffer immensely. People with cancer get chemo more often because it is the only treatment that they can afford because their insurance pays for it. They have no choice to do any other treatment. You Princess friend could have the best doctors and fly around the world to the best clinic and buy whatever medicine or medical devices they need to give them a chance to live, normal people don’t have a lot of options, because having money left over, after paying for the basics of life, doesn’t happen to most people.
I am an American. I cannot say how things are in other countries but I suspect most people are living hand to month in western countries, and most people can’t afford to go out and have coffee at a restaurant. Many years ago "Ophra" told her audience if they wanted to get out of debt they had to stop buying coffee everyday and to not buy any clothes or anything for a year. That, at one time was Ophra;s advice. The people I was visiting and watching the show with had a very charming house in the suburbs, blurted out that they, as a couple, had not eaten out or purchased anything for more then a year. That was already their financial life style. Yet still they had no money at the end of the month to save or invest with. Therefore on the outside they may have looked upper middle class and yet they were financially strapped as most Americans.
I don’t believe in global or national charities, that the rich seem to like to show how compassionate they are by giving money, they never really earned in my opinion. I would never give to a national or global charity. I believe in helping people, as anonymously as possible in my own community. Every time some one asks me for a donation for their favorite charity, I look around my community and give the money to people who need help. and it has been more than one occasion, that I just took the cash that I was asked to donate to the American Cancer society and anonymously mailed it to someone in town who indeed was struggling with cancer. Especially if I heard they needed or wanted a medical device that they believed would make their life more comfortable. Why anonymously…. because I don’t want people feeling they are beholding to me and I don’t like to embarrass people about money especially when they don’t have the money to buy something.
Rich people, that I know, seem to have a lot of advice for people with little money. The problem is they have little realistic notion of what the world is like for people who work hard and still can’t make all the bills paid in full by the end of the month. People will say they work hard and that is why they are rich. Well the majority of people work hard and are not rich. Its all about the system. Why do rich people have so much money? Our congress person was far from rich at the time of her election, but since becoming a member of Congress, it is amazing how quickly she suddenly advanced financially into the world of millionaires and I suspect if she says on her path she will enter the circle of billionaires and yet the average person she represents and use to be like, can’t make ends meet while they work hard..
Money is power. People love to have power. The majority of people are usually controlled by money in some way. Few have escaped the bondage of having money control them. Usually as soon as they get a job, just over broke as they say, they are enslaved.
So your princess wants the freedom to walk into a mall and go shopping without her body guards. Hmm….. many people would love to go shopping at the mall or anywhere else but can’t because most Americans today DO NOT have the money to do so.
I would like to know why your princess friend couldn’t live in a cheaper hotel, like an average person would stay at, if they had the money for a hotel room, most people don’t, and then use the $35,000 a week to give away to real people who work hard and have basic living needs that are not being met.
Rich people hang mostly around other rich people like famous people mostly hang around other famous people and that is human nature, but as long as they do that, they remain in a bubble at what life is really like for the majority of people. Your Princess has the means to buy what she needs to live free but she chooses not to She chooses to spend over $140,000 a MONTH to rent living space from a hotel, She created that world herself. She has many options to live differently and to make friends in the real world.
I have a lot of respect for people who ethically and morally make their fortune. I have no respect for people who made a fortune unethically or on the backs of others, by paying wages so low people that we have , in America, what we call the working poor. If you are rich and you employ the working poor, what does that say about your ethics and morals? Sure get a job at Wal-Mart. I have not idea what they pay but while corporate is making millions, the workers can’t pay their monthly bills.
I read a book when I was young about a banker;s memoirs, it was an old book maybe written in the 30s. He of course was wealthy. His attitude was that he under paid the tellers because “ if they were so stupid” to accept a job that pays so low on what they can’t afford to live on, then that is what they deserved. There were the people they paid well, the ones who took a lot of vacations and then the work horses like the tellers were the working poor. I never forgot that book. And I don’t blame people for accepting low paying jobs as they are desperate for any money and have the hope of making more eventually. I have no respect for any employer who contributes to the working poor ro benefit them.
It reminds me of our retired presidents. One who has a summer retreat in Maine and lives down south. He has a bullet proof car that gets like 7 miles a gallon. And he has it driven up to Maine and down to Texas every season. But you think he is so rich he can afford the luxury or the necessity of doing that each year. Well it turns out the American people pay for the gas to drive his car from Texas to Maine and than from Maine to Texas each year. Why are the American people paying for his gas when he bloody well can afford to pay for his own? I imagine the English people have the same issue supporting their royalty even though from what I read the Queen of England is the largest landowner in the world, but she must take from the workers to pay for her life extravagances.
I admire people who become rich ethically, and pay their workers a real living wage with hefty bonuses for work well done. But most rich people didn’t become rich by just working smart and hard ethically. I remember reading Warren Buffet paid his secretary 16 dollars an hour. But that was a few years ago. But even a few years ago, people can’t live well on $16 an hour. I am sure he could have paid her more without hurting is counting house too much.
You may have had a friendly relationship with the princess, but from what you described I have no respect for anyone spending over $140,000 a month on a hotel and than complains about not being free enough to go out for a cup of coffee. The Princess is not seeing reality, nor does she have good judgment in being a good steward of her fortune, which I presume she inherited.
The majority of people are poor even when they work hard because society is set up to keep them poor. Being poor makes people easier to control.
As long as you have a job you can’t walk away from you are a slave. The world like a slave. Some salves actually make a lot of money and yet if they can’t walk way form their job then they are just a highly paid slave.
When people cheat you out of time and money, they are hurting your life.
Most rich people, you will find if you look into it deeply will cheat you out of time and money. Its just how the hierarchical structure of power works. I always have. It just has gotten so much worse. To not factor in how the gap between the rich and the poor is growing and how the middle income class is being stamped out would be helping the rich and the powers that be continue to push the envelope of what they can do to us simply because they took all the marbles simply because the majority of Americans accept low wages and do not insist on being paid properly. They do so out of desperation.
Most people I know thinks the average person in America must make at least $70,000 a year. It is shocking to them when I win bet after bet when they look up what the average salary in America really is.
How much do you make a week? How much to you pay for rent, mortgage, school loans, utilities, taxes, insurance, food and medicine? Can you afford a vacation every year? How about one every five years? If you got sick and couldn’t work, what would you do?
If you got cancer and declined chemo how would you pay for any alternative treatment? Oh yes there are some charities that may help you get chemo if you don’t have insurance and give them all your private details of your life for the past five years. To get help you trade it for intimate details of your life. Once you ask for help, you are treated as a ward. You have no privacy.
The rich can make a difference in their communities by keeping most of their money in their community to help the local community and the local people who keep the community working. All rich people should be paying their workers decent wages, instead of mocking people who will work for any wage at all.
Making $10 an hour, in a full time work week, is $ 400 a week. Or about $20,000 a year/ Can you pay your mortage and all the bills from society on less then $400 a week. Less than $400 because after taxes you will be lucky to get $350 a week
Making $15 an hour will give you $ 600 a week before taxes or about $30,000 a year. Can your family live on that?
Making $20 an hour gives you $800 a week or about $40,000 a year.
Now look at what the majority of jobs pay. And whose fault is that? Not the hard workers fault? Why are the majority of people paid so poorly while the rich can so casually spend $5000 a night for lodging?
Your poor little rich Princess in her hotel has many choices and opyions that the majority of those carrying her luggage and making her meals don’t.
Re: Rich people have feelings too
. Let's hope that, like Shadowstalker's earlier sister-in-law, they never win the lottery.
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