Instigator / Pro
8
1493
rating
7
debates
42.86%
won
Topic
#3570
Most of the Top 1% Deserve it
Status
Finished
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
Winner & statistics
Better arguments
3
6
Better sources
2
4
Better legibility
2
2
Better conduct
1
2
After 2 votes and with 6 points ahead, the winner is...
RationalMadman
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Parameters
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- Last updated date
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- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 5
- Time for argument
- Three days
- Max argument characters
- 20,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
Contender / Con
14
1702
rating
574
debates
67.86%
won
Description
Good day, Mr. opposition. I hope this to be a fulfilling debate for the both of us.
It has come to my attention that there has been a growing stigma against being rich — or at that, any economic group that is not their own.
The poor make fun of the rich’s laziness and the rich of the poor’s laziness. In-between the middle class who seem to think of the poor lazies and the rich monsters. With this unfortunate divide, it should be in everyone’s best interest to not simply rant among like-minders of how bad the other group is,
but rather directly talk to and understand the other group.
And as a top 1%er, here I offer the chance to do so.
Beginning, I would like to clarify. Though I assume most (emphasize most) of the top deserve their money, I do not however believe all bottoms deserve to be bottoms because it can be thought like this analogy:
Santa’s Elves have been having difficulty making these new, more complex presents like consoles. Due to this, Santa only has 500 presents, but the good kids list has 501 children — each as deserving as the other. Who will be the one unfortunate child to not get this gift?
I hope this analogy clarifies that most tops deserve top, but not all bottoms deserve bottom.
Alright, now we begin.
Commencing, money — as we all know — is not simply given out to whoever asks for it. If someone has money, they’ve had to have done something to gain it. Let us go through the path of a top 1%er who has gotten there without starting any business or performing any businesslike money gains.
This means they will *likely* not be making any more money that 50$ an hour — I will try to be as liberal as I can for the benefit of the doubt. This top 1%er is doing the same amount of work as a bottom 50%er, yet the top has much more money than the bottom. What gives? Since they both have the same income, it can only be due to spending smarter. As the expression goes, work smarter not harder.
“But surely this is a rare scenario. After all top 1% is so much money,” one may ask. However, the top 1% is people who have 35k to their name. Not to mention top 5%’s minimum plummets to 5k. You may be closer to top 1% than you think.
From own experience, the more pay one’s job gives, the harder the job is. Therefore, I will turn the difficulty to high and assume a person makes 30 an hour. That is already a whopping 438k in 365 weeks. One would need to save 8% of their money in 7 years to be in the top. How about 20 an hour? 292k in 365 weeks, 12% in 7 years.
There is a simple plan for anyone to be top 1% by 25 or even sooner.
“If it’s that simple, why isn’t everyone doing it?”
Great question. Because people like spending.
Let us dig into this link some:
https://current.com/blog/the-psychology-of-money-saving-and-spending-habits/
This shows how majorly one’s attitude about saving plays into how much one saves.
Thinking that one doesn’t make enough money to save leads to one wasting more money. This unfortunate-ness is positively rewarded by our brain who loves shiny new things and instant reward.
Look at your past month’s spending, check every item and ask yourself if that really was a necessary buy.
Now we go to the tops who got there through business like means. It should be noted how brutalising and mentally torturous starting a business is. Spending 16 hours a day with routine nights of no sleep. It is an absolutely destroying process to get a business in float for the the first year. I know many owners who *all* share the same story.
Not to mention that in some cases the business owner themselves will be required to partake in the labor of the businesses itself.
—— I would like to controversially mention that first hand experience has shown that managerial work much harder than labor work. This goes with the trend with harder jobs getting more pay. ——
I will like to finish off by responding to a popular argument, “You need a rich family to become rich.”
To this I question but a few words:
Who started it?
Round 1
Pro
#1
Thank you and hello to those who welcome me to this site!
I am not very aware of how this website works, and therefore my first argument is the “long description”.
Con
#2
Okay, Pro's entire Round 1 (or description) is merely implying that the rich are basically working smarter and dealing with more mental stress than appears on the outside and that this is what their wealth is due to. Since rebutting that is innate/natural to my constructive case, I will simply let it stand there and in Round 2 will hone in on true rebuking if it isn't apparent here.
THE TERM DESERVE IS NOT THE SAME AS THE TERM EARN.
My case runs as follows:
The deserving of wealth to a demographic, in context of this debate, should certainly be defined as follows:
That when weighing things up, the majority of the demographic are maintaining wealth at a rate and net-balance that is regularly proportional to either the sacrifices made, rarity of expertise required or sheer brilliance and creativity required to have achieved the outcome against all odds due to the individual. Furthermore, it is essential that was analyse trends and majority-scenarios within the demographics and not get too obsessed with miracle minorities.
I will now like to begin with discussing the classic point of unfair beginnings in life and how severely this affects people. I would presume this debate is US-centric so I will not do Con a disservice by going global but I am certain if I went global, the resolution would be just as false, it just requires a lot of nitpicking with regards to particulars of welfare, corporation tax, green acts for corporate waste so on and so forth to then weigh true 'wealth' in terms of the local laws and such.
Let me explain what I mean and why keeping it US centric helps both sides here, if someone lacks a certain disposable income in US, they can fail to treat a life-debilitating condition whereas in more sane and civilised countries (yes, I went there, call it a low blow if you want) the poor can be saved typically, at least much more because of burden of taxation.
Public transport is also a joke in the US, beyond a school bus for certain areas, most poor people are severely crippled simply due to the fact that they need a job in their local town as they can only walk, or use a bike they stole at best etc. It's also important to know that we are comparing across areas where landlords vs tenants have the same general rights etc. This is why I wish to avoid going global.
Now, unfair beginnings, let's go...
Most of the 1% began extremely rich by birth.
Before you tell me 'what about self-made millionaires' they are in the top 9 to 5% usually, we are talking truly the top 1%, the people so rich your mother or older relative would be at health risk, to faint at a bare minimum, if you told her you earned that amount of money and had hidden it from her this whole time.
When you listen to the motivational speakers (which are all collectivley a minority of the rich and are outside the 1%) they tell you nonsense like 'just believe in yourself' and tell you to cut out negative people discouraging you and all this stuff. Even some rappers I enjoy listening to preach this kind of thing. A toxic family and friend circle will indeed drag you down but not all warnings are toxic, if I warn you not to be dating the daughter of a mafia boss, I am doing you a favour, true love or not you are in serious risk if she ever decides to smear you or get bitter over things (and it takes only one angry moment from you and her recording what you say to get you in deep, deep trouble). Similarly, just because certain maniacs got rich from ideas that were stupid and much higher risk than reward in true estimation, doesn't mean they deserve it even if they maintain it well.
The biggest myth, however, is that they truly did risk that much. As I said, if this debate were about the top 10% of incomes, you'd find self-made people do exist and fill the 5-9% are but when we go top 4, 3, 2 and 1% suddenly it's curious to observe just how huge of a leg-up these people had things in life.
By 'things' I am not only talking about income of their parents, I am talking about going to a school with others extremely unfairly advantaged people to rub shoulders and make friends or aquaintances at least. To even end up at Harvard requires a lot more than raw intelligence even for a scholarship earner, however I'd agree that the scholarship earner 'deserves' their win as probably their home life and nutrition and stuff were sufficient (unfairly) to enable them an advantage ove rthe other people who'd apply for one had their life and mental health not been worse. That said, I would prefer us to notice trends and not exceptions.
To even get a scholarship, one who is middle class to middle-lower has to be working let's say 20% harder than the same students getting creme de la creme with a great tutor, lack of household chores (maid's doing it) lack of drama at home that directly affects them, lack of sharing a bedroom with an annoying sibling so on and so forth. Being a ghetto or trailer park resident with neglectful parents or perhaps abusive ones is not a setting where even a genius can end up in Harvard.
It isn't just about Harvard though, Harvard doesn't at all guarantee you ending up in the 1% and that direction of statistics is hard to prove as many extremely rich people pay the media (yes genuinely) to not talk about them but more importantly have zero financial motive to ever once get into an interview that doesn't directly improve their image.
The other way around though, is much easier to prove.
In reality, 43% of Harvard’s white students are either recruited athletes, legacy students, on the dean’s interest list (meaning their parents have donated to the school) or children of faculty and staff (students admitted based on these criteria are referred to as ‘ALDCs’, which stands for ‘athletes’, ‘legacies’, ‘dean’s interest list’ and ‘children’ of Harvard employees). The kicker? Roughly three-quarters of these applicants would have been rejected if it weren’t for having rich or Harvard-connected parents or being an athlete.
Here’s the thing– Harvard is insanely competitive. The admittance rate for the class of 2025 was 3.43%, the lowest rate in the school’s history, in a year that saw an unprecedented surge in applications. But as more and more comes to light about Harvard’s admissions process, it’s clear that the school’s competitiveness is not just based on academic strength or great test scores, but also whether or not your parents or grandparents have donated significantly to the school.
If your parents count themselves among the top 1%, you’re 77 times more likely to attend an Ivy League college than your peers from families in the bottom 20% of the U.S.’ income distribution. So much for meritocracy and equal access.
That’s according to the new research by Stanford economist Raj Chetty and co-authors. They show that 14.5% of students in America’s elite universities (eight Ivy League colleges, University of Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and Duke) are from families in the top 1% of income distribution, compared with only 3.8% from the bottom quintile. That’s a dramatic overrepresentation of the richest Americans.
Why the focus on Ivy League universities? Of course, the pool of top institutions of higher education extends far beyond that group. But in mobility terms, say the authors, you’re more likely to move from the bottom quintile into the top 1% if you attend elite colleges, including those that comprise the Ivy League. In other words, elite colleges can confer mobility in powerful ways.
The study’s authors point out that most colleges successfully manage to level the playing field, narrowing the post-graduation income gap between students from different family backgrounds by the time they reach their early-to-mid 30s. But shares of students from low-income families at institutions with some of the highest mobility rates, including SUNY-Stony Brook and Glendale Community College, declined sharply in the last decade, indicating that amid rising costs, colleges that offer the best pathways to success are getting out of reach for poorer families.
The authors’ investigation into the role of higher education in fostering (or hindering) intergenerational mobility in the U.S. builds on previous work in a similar vein. Last year, in a study titled “The Fading American Dream”, Chetty and other scholars showed that the proportion of Americans who earn more their parents, adjusting for inflation, fell from 90% for children born in the 1940s to 50% for those born in the 1980s. Their work underscores serious threats to the so-called American Dream, the cornerstone of which is faring better than the previous generation.
The point isn't about Harvard at all, it's about illustrating an idea; your options in life are infinitely (yes practically infinitely) higher when you're extremely rich because you could literally even fail high school and go back and redo things as the cost of adult education courses are so cheap for you (cheap meaning relative to what you feel is cheap and can afford to spend without wincing).
This leads me into a point about the 1% that is extremely important to understand; they came from backgrounds that enabled them to risk so much without it actually being that risky for them.
When you have rich 'mommy and daddy' ready to catch you if you fall and keep you wealthy as all hell with plan B that still let you go on plan A and pay the best in whatever industry you go into, to advise you on things and help you to hire people to micromanage all the difficult parts of the business so that you can basically just run the brand and focus on marketing and strategy (which you do with teams of the finest marketers and strategists in America) you are going to sail into success in a way that people who are just as ambitious and have the raw intellect and work ethic to do what you do will never be able to get with as little effort let alone even at their apex.
This debate isn't about the rich, it's about the richest of the rich. 1% isn't just top 20% of a nation, it's 1% and that is so severe.
While income inequality is a fundamental component of the U.S. capitalist economy, a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 61% of Americans think that it has gone too far. Today, the top 1% of earners in the United States account for about 20% of the country’s total income annually. Meanwhile, the lowest-earning quarter of Americans account for just 3.7% of income every year.
Nationwide, it takes an annual income of $538,926 to be among the top 1%. Among the approximately 1.4 million taxpayers who meet this threshold, the average annual income is about $1.7 million – about 20 times the average income of $82,535 among all taxpayers. Wealth, however, is far more concentrated in certain parts of the country than in others, and as a result, the amount it takes to be among the top 1% in each state varies considerably.
Using adjusted gross income percentile data for the 2017 tax year from the IRS, 24/7 Wall St. determined how much you need to make to be in the 1% in every state. All data is derived from federal 1040 individual tax returns and is inflation adjusted for 2019. The annual income floor needed to be in the 1% ranges from less than $350,000 in some states to well more than double that in others.
I want us to now transition away from unfair start and go more into unfair middle and endgame. What this means is to discuss the fairness of what the 1% begin to experience and can do with wealth in the middle of their 'rise' from wealthy to super-rich.
As you see in the quoted text above, their income itself is 20 times that of the average income of a taxpayer in America but this is deceptive (in a bad way for Pro). Income being 20 times is already questionable, it makes you wonder is what they are doing that much more difficult, requiring such rare expertise and/or so creative that the net reward should be 20 times greater than an average worker?
The problem isn't just income, it's wealth.
Wealth is the net-worth of what you own, not just as bank-stored money but assets etc.
The top 1% owned a record 32.3% of the nation’s wealth as of the end of 2021, data show. The share of wealth held by the bottom 90% of Americans, likewise, has declined slightly since before the pandemic, from 30.5% to 30.2%.
Let me just slowly let this sink in, the top 1% have 2% more than 90% of the people have, as wealth.
Again, let's see the framework offered in this debate:
the sacrifices made
rarity of expertise required
sheer brilliance and creativity required
Even if Pro says 'so what they had an unfair start' and points out that spending more seems to be a greater sacrifice, this is not only deceptive since it ignores relative sacrifice but is no way in hell deserving a gap in wealth where the 1% are rewarded even more than 90% are.
There is literally no way that Pro is going to prove to you their they meet those 3 criteria hard enough to have that.
Remember, those 90% are the workers, working to make the 1% richer in terms of business and then there comes the other issue... unfair endgame.
You see, once you are in the 1% you don't tend to 'fall out' other than to 5% at worst. The reason is simple, you hire people. Hire the best stockbrokers to do your shares investment, hire the best managers to micromanage all parts of your businesses, hire the best trainers at things if you fancy acquiring a new skill that you can put on your portfolio, and snowball the rest of your life.
Round 2
Pro
#3
(Yes, we are mainly referring to the US top 1% as mentioned in the short description)
I greatly appreciate an opponent who genuinely puts time into their argument. I hope for more of these.
The deserving of wealth to a demographic, in context of this debate, should certainly be defined as follows:That when weighing things up, the majority of the demographic are maintaining wealth at a rate and net-balance that is regularly proportional to either the sacrifices made, rarity of expertise required or sheer brilliance and creativity required to have achieved the outcome against all odds due to the individual.Furthermore, it is essential that was analyse trends and majority-scenarios within the demographics and not get too obsessed with miracle minorities.
This debate certainly should not rely on this assumption for it assumes that more effort runs a linear scale of deserving-ness. This is certainly not the case, for this debate both relies on a boolean value of deserve — that being if someone is 99% deserving via my opponent’s measurement, the opposition could easily transfer that to the inherent boolean of the argument and claim them not deserving by technicality — and also assumes effort is always equal to another effort.
I’m other words, adding 100% more effort does not necessarily mean one is 2x more worthy than one who puts 0% more effort — assuming they both have a base 100% effort.
———————————————————————————
With that, point 1.
Opportunity creators
Remember, those 90% are the workers, working to make the 1% richer in terms of business and then there comes the other issue... unfair endgame.
- con
We cannot forget why those people are working in the first place. The business owner went through many trials to create that specific job position open for them.
Most jobs created are by those in the top 1%. Walmart, McDonald’s, even a small local business are in the top yet they account for almost all jobs.
They provided the opportunity and therefore, logically, should be given some credit in return.
Household name McDonald’s accounted for around 200 thousand employees in 2021.
Say the company owner of McDonald’s gets 10 dollars a year per worker. Only 83 cents per month I stress. The owner will have generated 2 million dollars per year.
The top 1% creates most all the jobs and logically gets a share of the job. They owner created the job and therefore should be given some time part from it in return — or at the very least they certainly earned the money.
———————————————————————————
Healthy savers
The world's richest 10% are responsible for half of all carbon emissions, a new report found.
Since Co2 emission is tied directly to consumption, we can keep this info in mind as we continue.
Elon Musk makes roughly 100 billion per year. This is 1,500,000x that of the average wage.
Sure he may make 1.5 million times a normal person, but in no way does Elon spend 1.5 million times more than an average person. In reality, the top 1% use about 6x more emissions than the average US citizen.
This shows that the top save more money rather than just wasting away heaps of money as they are depicted to do so.
It is but a matter of ratios as:
A person makes 1mil dollars. Saves 80%; spends rest.
Another makes 10 dollars. Saves 15%; spends rest.
The first person will appear to have wasted much more money, but (statistically) if the wealth is redistributed among most people, there will be more spending on unnecessary items — which would create extra Co2 as a side effect. This would make them more deserving of their money.
A quick side note that leads into the next point well: In little way do I condone the top .05% (billionaires and multimillionaires). Those people I admit do not believe deserve their ludicrous amounts of money — that being I do not think they are the devils they are portrayed to be.
————————————————————————————
Exaggerated value
Most people over-exaggerate how much money the top 1% have. In order to achieve this title, one must make ~6x the median income. This means that between 1% and 50%, income would increase roughly 0.12% per percentile. This should be expected since the top 1% are… the top 1%, and it is no surprise that some people make more than others. 6x is much more feasible than what is thought — 100x or whatever other value is brought.
According to a New York Enterprise Report survey, business owners work much harder than their employees. It also found that about 33% of such business owners stated working over 50 hours per week. This is not the only study reporting such data. Other studies, like one conducted by Gallup, also found that some small business owners worked over 60 hours per week.It is not only about the hours spent working on expanding the business, but small business owners also work under more pressure.
60 hours a week. Not only is that 50% more than a normal job, this is both a much more consistent and pressuring job, and as you put it:
the sacrifices maderarity of expertise requiredsheer brilliance and creativity required
- Business owners certainly sacrifice hefty loads of time into their business, knowing there is a risk of them earning negative money in return.
- Starting and running a business certainly needs a vast layout of skills to run — such as creativity, opportunist-ity, and mental fortitude.
- Business necessitates smart decisions — with bad ones immediately punished — and especially creativity to adapt to the thousands of changing variables and grab a hold when opportunities present themselves.
Around 41.4 percent of the wealthiest one percent have inherited some money.
Almost 2/3rds of the top have no inherited money.
Perhaps they did get better funding than a child from a poor family, and they therefore had a better starting hand — perhaps for a select few, a much much better starting hand — but does this make them less deserving of the healthy start? I bring back my Santa analogy.
Santa only has 500 presents, but the good kids list has 501 children — each as deserving as the other. Who will be the one unfortunate child to not get this gift?
Every child deserves a good education, good parents, healthy food, the chance to explore possibilities, and many other things. Every child deserves these things. Because a person is given a good child-hood, does not mean they are not deserving of success and prosperity? I would hope not.
Perhaps it is more that the poor do not deserve to be poor than it is the rich deserve to be rich.
———————————————————————————
Now I will rebut parts of my opponent’s argument.
To even get a scholarship, one who is middle class to middle-lower has to be working let's say 20% harder than the same students getting creme de la creme with a great tutor, lack of household chores (maid's doing it) lack of drama at home.
- RationalMadman (con)
This is a highly fanciful viewpoint of rich households. Rich people clean their houses just as you or I would. I am a top, and from my own experience, this is certainly not how I or anybody I know get chores done. Further, drama is anywhere. It is only a matter of parenting. I grew up relatively upper middle class, and my sisters and I would hate each other like they definitely ‘Homosapien/class 3- region Earth’ we are. If anything, it would just make us unprepared to be so “spoiled”.
Being a ghetto or trailer park resident with neglectful parents or perhaps abusive ones is not a setting where even a genius can end up in Harvard.
This is also bad parenting, and Harvard doesn’t necessarily mean someone will become rich. I also remind about the Santa analogy. Every child deserves good education, rich or poor, and I feel sorry for those who were given a bad hand.
Let me just slowly let this sink in, the top 1% have 2% more than 90% of the people have, as wealth.
The top 1% have 41 trillion dollars. The top .05% (basically the billionaires and the hundred millionaires) control a good 25T+ of this. As I have mentioned in the comments, this is the group I refer when I say, “Most of the top 1% deserve it.”
This drops that statistic to 37.5% of what was mentioned (likely less).
Further, this is considering the value of money these people have — not how much they make.
Extreme analogy but:
An immortal person works the most intense job for 100 dollars a year. They never spend a cent. Eventually they will have millions of dollars yet they earned every cent to their name.
Finally, this simply claims that the top 1% are saving lots of money. Referring to my first point at the top.
This link corroborates this.
You see, once you are in the 1% you don't tend to 'fall out' other than to 5% at worst. The reason is simple, you hire people. Hire the best stockbrokers to do your shares investment, hire the best managers to micromanage all parts of your businesses,
This claim is… sort of true.
Though it is true that the top 1% of people have a large cushion, it is a heavy overgeneralization of all top 1%ers. Say a person has a business have a fatal issue — say a pandemic which causes a business to get a quarter of its usual income. The business is forced to shut down. Suddenly their main form of income is destroyed, and securing back-up funds and the other is no easy task. Say goodbye to being in the top 1% for good.
Additionally, every top had to have gone through the top 2-9% before. Take Elon. His two businesses were on the brink of bankruptcy, and he had to do some immensely risky tasks to save them both. In order to get to the top, one has to go through the deadly region of the middle.
———————————————————————————
I once again remind how difficult it is to run a business.
It can be very hard, and very consuming.If you are considering starting your own business, be prepared for many long thankless hours, setbacks trials and tribulations, and it could be possible that you might take years to turn a profit. That's the reality of it.
One business owner states.
you have to motivate yourself to go and work hard even obstacles there ( no customers , rude suppliers and scammers)
Another says.
This brings up another difficulty of running a business. One will have to deal with almost all the backlash and morale cracking obstacles that come with it. Even once the business has grown to large sizes, a great deal of the pain will manage to funnel its way straight to you.
It is not easy! Usually you leave the safety and conformity of a weekly check. All you have to do is show up to work do your 8 hours and hopefully get overtime. All your worries are taken care of. Someone makes sure your taxes are paid, your insurance comes out of your check deducted by the business accountant. You just do your job. When you make that leap to owning your own business. You are taking a huge chance. This is your monetary investment. There are no sick days. You are the last one to get paid. you have to hire an accountant to do the above things. You have to personally shop for your own insurance. You take every business encounter personally. If you didn't get the job even though it might be over $10 on your bid you think it's you. You're going to lose sleep. And you never work 8 hours if your business is successful. Usually a minimum of 12. You've got to do the work and the paperwork until you get larger.... But the worst thing of all is finding responsible good people to work for you. That is the biggest obstacle that you will face…
Another.
Every business owner — from Elon to your local corner store — runs through these problems.
Excruciating tasks with a chance of little reward.
I also cannot put enough emphasis on how difficult it is to find a worker who actually works.
And for this, that deserves — or at least I think it should — some rewarding.
———————————————————————————
As I close my argument I remind two things:
1. Those in the top 5% of the top 1% do not need as much money as they have. That is why I put *most* in the title.
2. As much I believe the top 1% deserve their money, I also believe the lower class don’t deserve to have been dealt a bad hand.
Con
#4
Every business owner — from Elon to your local corner store — runs through these problems.Excruciating tasks with a chance of little reward.I also cannot put enough emphasis on how difficult it is to find a worker who actually works.And for this, that deserves — or at least I think it should — some rewarding.
This is nothing but rhetoric.
For instance, I said that what the 1% experience is lack of huge downswings that can cripple them. Meaning it isn't the reward that's massive for them continually, it's the punishment for bad decision making that's consistently lenient for them. To this, Pro is retorting that they don't have consistent reward and that apparently workers are not working. Sheesh, how are the companies profiting if their workers aren't working? What even is the premise of Pro's case then?!
'Some rewarding' means that the 1% ends up earning 2% more than 90% of the population do? How is that 'some rewarding'? That is called undeserved overrewarding.
In little way do I condone the top .05% (billionaires and multimillionaires). Those people I admit do not believe deserve their ludicrous amounts of money — that being I do not think they are the devils they are portrayed to be.
The entire 1% are multimillionaires... Entirely, meaning some are billionaires on top but they are a minority yes.
The 1% that are multimillionaires are extremely rich, the multimillionaire refers to their overall bank total, it doesn't begin to explore their net wealth.
The Economic Policy Institute reports that the net worth of the top 1% of American households has risen substantially. In 1962, the wealthiest 1% had net worths equal to approximately 125 times that of the average American household. Their net worths were shown to be approximately 225 times the net worth of the average household in 2009. The gap between the richest and the poorest more than doubled between 1982 and 2016.
^ unless you are suggesting that the gap in 'work effort' has grown of the 1% vs the norm, it is very clear that all that's really grown is the snowball effect of dynasty families and how rich parents are assisting their rich offspring to flourish, as well as there being more people now than back then meaning workers can produce wealth for the business owners more so but let's see what Pro said:
Say the company owner of McDonald’s gets 10 dollars a year per worker. Only 83 cents per month I stress. The owner will have generated 2 million dollars per year.
Okay, so what? How much is this person then spending on the business? Also why do they deserve 10 dollars a year per worker? How can you deserve rewards for someone else's work?!
This topic is about deserving, not earning. How do I deserve to be rewarded for work that you're doing on behalf of the success of a business I thrive from the profiting of? Or is this 10 dollars theoretical?
I don't think the owner gets only 10 dollars per worker actually, I think they get more. These workers work for several hours every shift and contribute to massive profit margins overall. If a small mcdonalds has only 9 workers overall (including those doing the cleaning jobs) I doubt they only are making $90 profit annually. This is actually an underestimation and doesn't begin to explain how anyone deserves the proportion that the 1% are getting.
The 1% are not profiting only from their own businesses, there's no way at all to be a 1%er solely from one business anymore, they all have their fingers in at least 2 more businesses and honestly how does any of this handle what I argued?
I argued that the work put in, the rarity of expertise and sheer creativity from the individuals in the 1% does not match the wealth they have.
That is something Pro is avoiding, I see no discussion of proportionality from Pro about how they are deserving the degree of wealth they have vs the norm, let alone poorest, only a discussion of how they're earning it (as in how they mechanically garner the money regardless of deserving).
Round 3
Pro
#5
darn, haven’t been given time to post. 1 hour left at the time of writing this… better be quick — pardon my mistakes.
Once again, I will bring in the Santa analogy.
Santa only has 500 presents, but the good kids list has 501 children — each as deserving as the other. Who will be the one unfortunate child to not get this gift?
I emphasize this as it is core to my argument.
Opponent, if you are to prove me wrong on any of my points, this will be the one to do so.
And for my intellectual readers, I beg of you to please, please consider this point above all others.
Though I say the top 1% children deserve their graciously offered capabilities, I would never claim the poor children laughed at by life deserve to be kicked into the mud and forgotten about like an unwanted puppy, not in America — not anywhere, for this is the country of opportunity.
Even past childhood, nobody deserves to be shackled down to a McDonald’s or Amazon prison.
And from an anecdotal perspective, believe me we notice your hard work — no matter how unapparent it is. Which we greatly appreciate all the work y’all put. In no way do I want this debate to turn into me antagonizing the ‘laziness’ of the non-top 1%. After all, it isn’t considered work for nothing.
But alas, I would be deceitful towards my opponent to say, “everyone deserves to be prosperous as the top 1%.”
And, therefore, let the debate continue.
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In a sudden flip of attitude, managerial work is simply harder than labor work per hour. From personal experience, it is simply masses more painful to deal with everyone’s else’s job than just having to enact what you are told. I am sure everyone here has interacted with someone who are — to say the least — an unpleasant person to interact with. Imagine that… but as your job plus some other things to do.
Managerial work is certainly much more behind the scenes, so it is not very noticeable, but it is there.
But don’t just take my word for it:
What makes it even more difficult is that people are unique and complex. What works with one person does not necessarily won't always work with the next. They don't teach you managerial skills in school. Going to university does not teach you how to manage people. Even management courses like MBA's don't teach practical people management.
Not large enough? Let’s try the next size up.
Imagine an irrigation pipe with a small leak. It may not be a big deal because the system is only on for 30 minutes a day. But what happens if it’s on all the time? Or if the water pressure doubles? When you increase the volume in the system, the effect of the flaws can be catastrophic. Money and power increase the volume of energy running through your system. They amplify your strengths and your weaknesses, whether you like it or not.The higher you are on an organizational chart, the more influence you usually have. If you’re the CEO, you may be able to lift an employee’s mood with a smile or terrify them with a frown. They may watch your every move, consciously or not. This is the nature of power. You have more than they do, and everyone knows it, though it’s probably rarely talked about.When a lottery winner claims their lump sum, the truth about them leaks out. Perhaps they can’t say no to friends and family, they lack self-discipline or they have immature ambitions, etc.When a person takes a leadership position, the same kinds of things emerge. Let’s explore some of the most common.• Micromanagement tends to happen when a manager has an overriding need to feel in control stemming from insecurity and fear. They justify their behavior in the name of producing great results, but in the long run, it often creates the opposite.• Bullying comes from the same place, but the issues are deeper. Most managers don’t realize they’re doing it, but some justify it with Machiavelli’s “it is better to be feared than loved” theory. Inside every bully is a sense of powerlessness such that they have to prove their strength to themselves and others, and often a fear of betrayal that prefers intimidation over connection.• On the other side, there’s the often rewarded over-responsibility. Over-responsible managers may coddle their people: They solve problems for them, reverse delegate and avoid uncomfortable accountability conversations. These managers usually gain self-worth by being busy and needed, and they may unconsciously disempower their people because they’re afraid of feeling useless themselves.• Self-importance is another common management issue. While you may know the business better, it’s your job to develop your people so that you’re not the only resident expert. Self-importance is another expression of insecurity that can cause a lack of listening, devaluing followers and weak mentoring.Are you starting to see the pattern? The more power you have as a manager, the more your personal issues can come to light.
Still not convinced?
Why, for most who enter it, does management present so many surprising hurdles and frustrate so many preconceptions and expectations?…First, management is different from anything you’ve done before. Becoming an effective manager is difficult because of the great gulf that separates the work of management from the work of individual performers.
Many managers think at first that managing others will be an extension of managing themselves. They assume they will be doing what they did previously, except they will exercise more control over their work and the work of others. Instead, they find they must make a great leap into a new and strange universe unlike anything they’ve encountered before.…Those who become managers must learn to see themselves and their work differently. They must develop new values, deeper self-awareness, increased emotional maturity, and the ability to exercise wise judgment.…It takes so much time and effort that it’s helpful to think of it as a journey. The changes are so deep and personal that they require time to take root, usually years.And they cannot be taught. You and every other manager must make them yourself, based on your own experience as a boss. You make progress on your journey as you learn and change, step-by-step.…Instead of confronting a performance problem, they fill out the compulsory annual appraisal form and simply negotiate the wording with the person involved.They do enough to meet budget because that’s all that’s required of them. Indeed, they stop thinking of what’s possible and focus on what’s expected.They hire people who are good enough and will blend in. They progress to the point that management no longer feels new and strange. When they no longer fear imminent failure, they grow comfortable. They “manage,” in the worst sense of the word. That’s why years of experience are not necessarily an indication of managerial effectiveness.
And if you’re still not convinced, I have a feeling you are just holding a grudge at this point.
In other words, in a managerial job, you are never safe.
And one last cherry on top, managerial work is much more behind the scenes, so basically everything they do, you don’t see.
This continues onto the role of boss/CEO. Just take my anecdotal reasoning on this one, I don’t want to have y’all going through another 2 pages of copy paste.
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The Economic Policy Institute reports that the net worth of the top 1% of American households has risen substantially. In 1962, the wealthiest 1% had net worths equal to approximately 125 times that of the average American household. Their net worths were shown to be approximately 225 times the net worth of the average household in 2009. The gap between the richest and the poorest more than doubled between 1982 and 2016
Starting with my weakest defense:
As of 2019, the average net worth for all American families was $746,820…
While the entry for top 1% is 8 million.
We do not even need to do the math to know 125-225x is way off. where in the world did they get those numbers from?
— side note: why are we dropping all the way to 2009 to get our data? —
The top make about 6x more yearly than the average income.
This number is not too far fetched from their net worth of roughly 10.8x the average. This also feeds into my ‘savers’ point from my second post.
Okay, so what? How much is this person then spending on the business? Also why do they deserve 10 dollars a year per worker? How can you deserve rewards for someone else's work?
I am running out of time here, so I’ll be straight to the point with little explanation from now on:
I’d we consider a worker ‘of the business’, the boss is advertising for them to be sold to the world.
Further, managers do much to keep the jobs running.
The manager’s managers, no matter how much we water that down, it will go back to the boss.
The entire 1% are multimillionaires... Entirely, meaning some are billionaires on top but they are a minority yes.The 1% that are multimillionaires are extremely rich, the multimillionaire refers to their overall bank total, it doesn't begin to explore their net wealth.
I will take the blame for this. In one of my paragraphs, I accidentally referred to the hundred millionaires (.05%-.01% of people) as multi-millionaires.
Still, these are the people I do not condone their money.
This is nothing but rhetoric.For instance, I said that what the 1% experience is lack of huge downswings that can cripple them. Meaning it isn't the reward that's massive for them continually, it's the punishment for bad decision making that's consistently lenient for them. To this, Pro is retorting that they don't have consistent reward and that apparently workers are not working. Sheesh, how are the companies profiting if their workers aren't working? What even is the premise of Pro's case then?!
This seems much more rhetorical than what it replied to.
A company lost 600 billion dollars in a lawsuit simply because one of their employees went crazy and killed a person. The company had absolutely no control over this. Never say never.
Tesla lost a good 8% in May after two relatively unknown stock brokers thought Tesla would fail due to very far fetched reasons which turned out untrue.
Never say never.
Also, it seems hyperbole is not allowed. The workers I refer to as ‘don’t work’ are workers who do work, but not enough to be beneficial. Also, I stress how hard a task it is to find good workers. Take my anecdotal experience and all those personal experiences I posted in my second argument.
The 1% are not profiting only from their own businesses, there's no way at all to be a 1%er solely from one business anymore, they all have their fingers in at least 2 more businesses and honestly how does any of this handle what I argued?
I am genuinely confused here. I cannot think of many billionaires with more than 1 profitable company… unless we consider stocks which is a very far fetching point to reach for.
Elon also helped start PayPal, and he of course has Tesla, but I can’t think of more profitable companies he directly controls.
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Only 10 minutes?? Well, I’ll just leave y’all with this rabbit hole.
I would just say..
Try buying a pen for Rs. 10 and sell it to someone for Rs.15
(Just to relate)
And you will realize no one is ready to buy that stuff, because everyone knows that pen is worth Rs. 10/-.
Now you will have to add something to that pen to make it worth Rs.15/-, maybe better packaging, or some introductory offer or discount. But anything like that will eat up your profits. Anything you think off will cost a deduction in those Rs.5/- that you were about to make.
So you need to be innovative.
Henceforth, you can try the other way of making connections in the market, by supplying them that pen for cheaper rates and better schemes. But you are new in the market so people don't trust you, the wholesale buyers are not ready to give up on thier old contact so easily. Unless or untill you are ready to give them a big chunk of your Rs.5/- profit.
So you need to master the art of communication, to build relationships.
If you somehow start selling, and making some profits. You will immediately feel that you need more manpower to meet the demands. And that obviously will cost you a lot because now you need to pay salary regardless of what profit or loss you make. Moreover, its not easy to find good employees everytime.
You will have to be great at judging people's skills.
And then comes the tough part,
Retaining customers
Even if you manage to make sales and profits, you will always have to be in the hunt of ideas of how to make your customers stay with you longer and loyal.
Because the way you started your business, in the same way someone else would be beginning today. Who will be thinking of something more smart to snatch your market share.
Competition is really tough,
So you have to be the best in your niche.Here i am not elaborating many obvious points such as maintaining quality, meeting the new customer needs, evolving your product daily to be better, maintaing your income to expense ratio and a tons more.We haven't even talked about the Rs.10/- from which you got your first pen(business capital).With all these you gotta manage your personal life, relationships, give time to family and friends.And yes one more thing,You will have to make people trust in you and your beliefs, so that they work with you to achieve something not just for paychecks.But the hardest part,Is to make yourself believe everyday, have faith in yourself.You will have to self-console yourself, you will have to self-motivate, you are the only one to bear all the burden if anything goes wrong, your decisions affects future of many associated with you.And you are not allowed to loose hope, because others hope on your hopes. You will have to sleep every day with the thought that today was not my day maybe, and will have to start again next day.And this could stretch for days, months, years or decades maybe.Depending upon how much you want to achieve.I can't comment on how difficult it is to do Business, there are numerous factors that are required to answer that.But yes, it's really not that easy how people presume it to be.
Con
#6
Managerial jobs get you into top 14% let's say.
What sets the 1% apart is they never ever are only garnering income from what they manage (if they even manage anymore, they tend to buy business and cycle managers to micromanage parts for them).
They hire world class stockbrokers to do their shares for them, they get deep into any industry by being able to pay for meetings with the best within the industry and even convince them to work for them.
Most of the 1% maintain and snowball based on automated passive income.
The way they get there in the first place is very often being born to rich parents who themselves enabled the future 1%er to spend on risky business ventures. What is life savings fir an average American is just a decently priced bargain for a rich person to buy shares in a business, even if one of two or three goes wrong, they tend to ride along the other 1 or 2.
My point is nit that this pattern is unanimous in the one percent but that is is a majority trend.
My case is not that managing a business takes no skill but that managers do so being outside the 1%, on behalf of the 1% who are majority shareholders in said business.
These people grew up without household chores, able to buy the best of any hobby and venture they pleased. Their parents secured them places in the best shools, later universities and companies. These people are never truly self-made. Elon Musk had very wealthy parents.
I am not bitter because they are that rich, this is a debate about if they deserve it based on their qualities and individual contributions, there is no way that 1% of people are doing 2% more good amdnhard work than 90% of the population put together. Something is totally disproportionate, no matter how one looks at it, if the focus is on deserving.
Round 4
Con
#8
Let's hone in on the 'most' aspect.
Elon Musk is 1 person, there's a reason why Pro had to contradict himself by saying that the 'top of the top' are evil and that Pro is against them yet picking out Elon Musk (potentially #1 but basically within the top 3 richest people on Earth in terms of publicly known rich). He picked out Elon Musk to prove that rich people make mistakes, it's not guaranteed to profit them, the fact Elon Musk is literally top 3 people alive in wealth despite all those errors, only further cements my own case. He began wealthy, his parents were.
Musk is far from self-made. He was born in South Africa to an extremely wealthy white family that profited off the exploitation of workers in sub-Saharan Africa and apartheid-era South Africa. Much of his family’s wealth came from an emerald mine in Zambia owned by Errol Musk, Elon’s father. The African mining industry is known to be incredibly exploitative, with child labor, horrible working conditions, disease, abuse of workers, and fatalities all commonplace. The workers in these mines are mostly black native residents of African countries, while the owners are usually the descendants of rich, white colonists. Musk is not a “self-made billionaire,” he comes from an extremely privileged family that squeezed millions of dollars out of some of the poorest nations in the world.
With a rich family to borrow money from, and massive amounts of wealth gained from the exploitation of African mineral resources, Musk could finally purchase Tesla. Yes, you read that correctly. While it is commonly believed that Musk founded Tesla, this is untrue, and another reminder of the power of PR. Musk invested millions of dollars in Tesla in the early 2000s and paid his way up the corporate ladder, becoming the company’s CEO in 2008. He eventually fought one of the company’s true founders, Martin Eberhard, for the title in a 2009 court case. If at first, you don’t succeed, complain and sue until you do!
This is not an isolated example, either. He also claims to be the founder of PayPal, when in fact he owned another company that purchased Paypal. Again, Musk fought for the title of founder, which he won with the help of his family’s wealth. Founding a company, especially companies like PayPal and Tesla, carries lots of prestige considering the hard work that it involves. But why work hard when you’re born rich?
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:
Repeated forfeitures.
Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Better arguments
3 point(s)
Better sources
2 point(s)
Better legibility
1 point(s)
Better conduct
1 point(s)
Reason:
RationalMadman won in the first round. His statistics and sources citing the overwhelming advantage received by the top 1% in terms of college, university, and so on were simply too much to overcome. All Pro could do at that point was damage control. Pro never really refuted Rationalmadman's round 1 statistics, and if they couldn't do that, I think it is safe to say rich people simply get an unfair jump up from the rest, which creates unjustified differences in average outcomes simply based on heritage.
If you think any definitions I have used is wrong, you can directly say why it is wrong, not to get all implicit like this. If you refuse to clarify, I will keep assuming I am right until I have been proven wrong in a future time.
LMAO! The only person pretending is you.
I do. And I'm tired of pretending it's not.
I'm sure you have people who find what you post fascinating, such as oromagi, but personally I find the stuff you post very cringey and annoying.
Like do you think you are clever to go to every single fucking debate about deserve or allow and go 'ooooh but what if they technically deserve or allow under my extreme redefinition'?
You know what, all definitions are exploitable, and a lack of definitions is the most exploitable. Unlike the working class, the definitions won't feel like they are being exploited.
If people deserve to eat meat, then capitalists "deserve" their money due to their money being made by legal methods(even though exploiting the working class isn't what you would call moral). As for non-capitalist rich people such as Kylie Jenner: They don't even actively exploit people, they just get unnecessarily large amounts of money for doing stuff. Maybe they do, because they are legally making money(although also amorally) Should they have this amount of money? No.
I don't care about my rating personally, fuck the ego. I debate everything, (such as my prison argument I obviously don't agree with). I don't care about taking losses. Most of the best in any sport or competition almost always have losses as to be undefeated either means you're not human or didn't vs good competition. Look at Muhammad ail. No one considers wilt chamberlain the best basketball player ever despite his numbers being better than Michael Jordan, because he vs'd bums. Simply a modern day athlete in a time where basketball was just beginning.
that's why it's important for Pro to have made it something like the 20k chars he did and why the 10k limit on DDO was crippling.
Don't need to support me but thanks, I am always ready to lose, it's what separates me from the other '1%' on this website itself ;) I've already dropped out of those rankings thanks to how readily I accept vs what you saw me at 2nd place when you joined the website, that's just how I roll. Picking solely easy and safe battles is pointless when this isn't my money on the line.
If we were getting paid for our rating, I'd of course be mimicking the other cowards or alternatively baiting them into high vs high clashes (and readily accepting like I did vs Misterchris)
The reason I don't accept vsing Oromagi is that he always picks topics that are slanted in Pro's favour, scientifically or based on evidence and cripples Con's ability to talk against him by spamming so many facts and bullet-point extensions that the accepter of the debate drowns.
I find debates like these shaky, who constitutes who deserves what? hard work? For me personally, no matter how someone attains their wealth, it doesnt justify the fact that through being a billionaire you make a family go hungry. There can only be so much money in the economy after all, so the less its spread out the more the ones at the top perpetuate suffering and poverty. But i digress, i hope you win.
I didn't come expecting an easy battle and this topic doesn't allow either side to sit back and play defensive so I will not do so.
The topic is such nonsense not because of the unfair start they have alone, rather it's due to the way that wealth is able to snowball itself by simply hiring expert stockbrokers, accountants, sublet managers of businesses so on and so forth.
What I mean is that when you are rich enough, you stay rich unless you're a moron, which is also what Pro is trying to agree with and will end up Pro's downfall when we analyse how difficult it is to become rich in the first place vs how easy it is to stay rich while already rich.
An average person has to do their own household chores, a rich person does absolutely 0 of them, imagine the energy and time alone for that.
yesterdaystomorrow is better than you're probably expecting! i debated them on vaccines one time, I lost.
welcome to the site!