WE ARE THE 1 PERCENT

Someone asked me this question anonymously. Here’s my shot at answering it:

If I had to make a guess, the OWS started as a movement against corporate greed. And corporate greed does exist. A corporation exists because greed exists. Someone who wanted to make money invested his money into a corporation in order to make more money. That corporation’s goal is take the money, hire workers, make products, and to maximize its earnings while sharing the profits with its investors. That’s how the stock market, capitalism, and corporations work. It’s really that simple.

The problem is that corporations are now very powerful, and can make unlimited contributions anonymously to political candidates. This makes some politicians bend the laws in favor of the corporations. The OWS blames the bank and car company bailouts for this reason. They often say, “Where’s our bailout?” That basically summarizes the OWS as a whole. They want free money to pay for their debts, housing, and food. But here’s the problem. We can give the poor free money, but that will only last for so long before we have to keep giving them more. A better solution would be save the banks from collapsing. The banks then have money to loan to people who want to start businesses. The business creators then hire these poor people and pay them. In return the poor people create something beneficial to society. If we bailed out the poor people, then all they would do is spend the money on food, and then 6 hours later, flush the money down the toilet. Nothing is created except for poop.

“So, where are the jobs that were supposed to be created with the bailout money?” The bailout money saved the economy from collapsing. There would be even more people unemployed if there were no bailouts. The OWS fails to realize this sometimes. They feel that banks are “evil”,  and that the government just gave money to an “evil” bank. That’s all they see. They usually don’t understand the economics and reasoning behind the bailouts. If anything, I think the bailout was too small. That’s why there aren’t as many jobs created. The bailout was only just enough to delay the recession and stop our country from going into a great depression. But it wasn’t enough to really kick-start the economy. Nonetheless, the economy is recovering on its own. It’s just not happening fast enough, so the unemployed people in the OWS are complaining that there are no jobs available.

Another thing that the OWS hate are the CEO’s who make millions of dollars. There are people high up in the corporations that make millions as CEO’s, because the investors who own the corporation do not want another corporation to steal their CEO away. So they pay their CEO’s high amounts to keep them in the company. A lot of the OWS people do not understand this concept. All they see is that a CEO making millions while the company is lowering wages, firing people, and shipping jobs to China. They find this unfair. But I find it fair. CEO’s are great at what they do, and their decisions help make the companies millions of dollars. That’s why they’re the decision makers. Why hire a CEO for millions of dollars if they don’t help you make money? Picture it this way. Think of a CEO as an NBA basketball player. Basketball players make millions of dollars, because they can draw crowds of people and help their boss earn even more money than they pay the players. Yet, all the player is doing is playing a game of basketball. It’s seems unfair to pay someone to shoot a ball into a hoop. But that’s not how economics work. You pay someone for how much they can help you. A good CEO helps a corporation significantly higher than let’s say… a mailman does. That’s why a CEO gets paid millions, while the mailman makes little. Physically, the mailman is probably doing more work. But physical labor is not how salary is determined. If only the OWS can understand this concept, then they wouldn’t hate CEO’s so much.

And then there are those, such as Bernie Madoff, who scam people out of money by lying to them. Those people tend to end up in jail. I hate them, too. I am with the OWS in condemning them, and so does the justice system.

And then there are those company owners who lower their employees’ benefits and wages or fire their employees so that the owners can increase their own salaries. They blame the decreases on the recession (which may be a legitimate reason), but they also do not reduce their own salary. The OWS is against people like these. I do not like these people either. But it’s really in their power to do so, so I don’t see why I can object to it. These are their companies, so they can do whatever they want with it. A employee can choose to work somewhere else. It’s not like they’re forced to stand this abuse. When I was working my 9-5 job just last year, I only got a $500 bonus with no salary increase. Since inflation exists (at about 2-3%), that means that my salary’s worth actually decreased. They blamed it on the recession. I basically quit and worked somewhere else. Well, technically, I was already a multi-millionaire working on my own things. So I just chose to focus on working for myself.

And finally, there’s that chart that shows a “wealth gap” between the 99% and the top 1%. The chart shows that while the 99%’s average salary remain the same, the average salary of a 1%’er has increased. I theorized that this is happening because there are more and more dumb people than there are smart people in this world. A study has shown that dumb people tend to have more babies, because they don’t work as often, so they have more opportunities to make babies. You don’t exactly see nerds humping in high school, do you? It’s usually the dumb jocks and dumb sluts who suffer from teenage pregnancy. The same thing is happening in the adult world. Smart people are too busy working in their jobs to have time to raise a baby. Thus, with more dumb people in this world, there are more consumers. And the smart rich people make even more money by selling their products to those consumers.

For example, let’s say that there are only 10 people in this world, and you are the smartest and richest person. You are the 1% and you sold a $1 product to all those people. You now are $9 richer than all those people on average. Now let’s say that the 9 other people each had multiple babies and now there are 100 people in this world. You are still the smartest one, because you did not have a smart baby to compete with you. So now you can sell that $1 product to those 99 people, and now you are $99 richer than the average person. Even if you had a baby and had to split that money, you’d still be $49 richer than the average person. That’s more than $9 from before. So… you see how the richer are getting richer, and poor stay poor? Rich/smart people now have more people to sell to. Imagine what Apple would be like if there were only 1 million people in this world. Apple would only be able to sell those those 1 million people and only be able to make millions. But since there are billions of people in this world, they can sell to those billions of people and make billions of dollars. That’s why there are so many billionaires in this world. And that is why the rich are getting richer.

Keep in mind that this is just a theory of mine. There’s no proof of this, nor have I heard of this theory before from anyone else. I am sure that there are other reasons for why there is a wealth gap.

And the rest of the OWS are really just whiners complaining about how crappy their life is. This movement has been taken over by dead-beats. They blame others for their bad decisions (such as picking a bad degree, not looking for a job, and choosing a job that’s bad). They also want free money (who doesn’t?). But they want it from the 1%’ers. “To make it fair,” they say. Whenever I tell them that the 1% pays about 40% of the tax revenue, they don’t care. They still want more. They think that the 1% pay less taxes than they do. That is not entirely true. But still, the OWS points to people like Warren Buffett, who pays little taxes. But the reason why he pays little taxes is because his earnings are reinvested into his own company, so he doesn’t really “make” money. My salary ($1 million+) is actually significantly higher than his ($400,000). But his assets ($ billions) are much much higher than my assets ($ millions). However, he cannot spend those billions with paying a ton of taxes. He’d have to sell his stocks to have more money to spend. And when he sells his stocks, the government will see this as taxable income and then tax him. That’s when he’ll pay a lot of taxes. But the problem is that he decided to donate 99% of his income to charity when he does. Thus, the government will basically never be able to tax his billions of earnings.

And then there’s GE. GE paid no taxes last year, because they got tax credit for building “green” tech, such as wind turbines. People were pissed off that they paid more taxes than GE did. They don’t realize that the people who made money from GE (investors or employees) still had to pay taxes on their own income. Thus, the 1% within GE did not avoid paying taxes. They just made the corporation avoid paying corporate taxes. Thus it is dumb to equate GE to the 1%. GE is made up of a ton of employees are in the 99%. So if you want to go by sheer volume, GE is actually a corporation belonging to the 99%.

So as you can see, the OWS is a very complicated movement involving many things. I may be wrong on many of the things I’ve said, and I am open to corrections and debate. Sadly, most of the “debate” from the other side has always just been: “Why are you so rude? Why are you such a douche? Why are you such a dick?”

Whenever I give someone advice on how to make better decisions, the 99% attack me for not supporting the person for his/her bad decisions. They say that I’m rude for telling a poor person to stop making babies that she cannot afford. They want me to pamper her instead, and say “nice” things like, “It’s okay. Hang in there. Keep making babies.” That really doesn’t help the person at all.

I guess in their minds, anything that I say that goes against their “movement” makes me a tool, a dick, a douche, and an evil person. They are stuck on the belief that they are right, and they have closed their minds to the other side. Instead of debating the issues like civilized adults, they resort to name-calling.

That’s why I wrote that piece called “Unteachable”. It’s my theory on why my logical advice doesn’t resonate with them. They are unteachable. But people like you, who keep an open-mind and learn from what I write, are teachable. And keeping an open-mind and learning is one of the skills that made me successful. So, thanks for reading, and don’t stop learning and questioning things.

You’ll learn that sometimes these “adults” are not very bright nor have good ideas. Just imagine the dumbest kid at your school. Would you take his advice on anything? Now just picture him with an older body. Would you still take his advice on anything?

I was one of the smartest kids in my school with an IQ in the top .1% (over 143). I am now in the top .1% of earners (earning over $1 million a year). I will not brag and tell you my exact IQ or salary (I’m only trying to illustrate something, so don’t write complains that I’m arrogant or cocky). But I will say that there is a reason why I make so much money. It’s not greed or luck. No, it’s because I made smart decisions and I worked hard for it.

Now the 99% want to punish my hard work and tax me higher. They say that the 1% deserve more taxes, because most of them are greedy and corrupt. But they aren’t all greedy and corrupt. There are many of them who are just smart and hard working like me. But the OWS doesn’t care. They just see people with more money than them, and their jealousy causes them to want to take the money away and give it to themselves. They discriminate against me because of the actions of my peers. I said that this is similar to how racism works. But then they get pissed and say that I don’t know “what real oppression” is. Then they call me a “privileged white boy” (like a hypocrite). Little do they know that I was born poor, I am not white, and I’ve suffered racism in my lifetime.

So I am being discriminated against yet again. Except this time, it isn’t for the color of my skin, but the size of my bank account.