Greed is the main issue behind Occupy, but we don’t talk about the root of greed. Greed and the thirst for material wealth has always existed, but it’s more out of control than ever and getting worse as evidenced by the widening wealth gap and struggling economy. There are many other factors, but this is clearly one with a course that needs to be altered before the situation and the gap eternally worsen.
Greed is deep-rooted, and we need to discuss this with people who have been trained their whole life to pursue extreme wealth with the false expectation that the more money you have the happier you will be. Sure, capitalism leads to innovation and hard work, and success needs to be rewarded for those who work harder and smarter than others. However, our rewards have become outrageous and are hurting the economy as the wealthy own more and more. I’m talking about the top 1%, but even moreso about the top .1% or even .001%.
Why do people need excessive luxuries and do anything to get more than the next guy? It’s not about fulfilling needs. I doubt that the 400 billionaires in the U.S. are happier than people with a mere $100M solely because of the additional luxuries they can afford. If you have millions of dollars and you’re still not happy, then more money isn’t the answer. Owning some super nice stuff is fine, but needing an exorbitant number of luxuries may or may not be a sign that you are trying hard to impress others, or you simply do not care about how your spending impacts our economy as a whole.
When more money is used for impressing others, it’s not used on products and services that actually help our economy. I thought it was interesting one day to see a column about the tanking economy and widening wealth gap right above an article about how profits at Tiffany’s (an extremely high-end jeweler) were skyrocketing. That summed it up. Most of the big money continues to benefit others in the top 1%, the trickle down is extremely minimal, and it’s increasing inequality in the U.S.
Behind the greed may be self-confidence and insecurity issues that make people think they need more to achieve happiness. Money becomes their love and obsession, perhaps because they haven’t received enough true love anywhere else. But having extreme wealth only makes it more challenging to know who truly loves you versus people who love you for your money. And once you have experienced life with lots of money it’s hard to change to a life with less, even if less is still a ton and more than 99.99% of us.
Life becomes a game, like monopoly, where the objective is about getting more money and property than the next guy. When people are immersed in the game of greed they constantly choose their welfare over the welfare of others to get a step up. If your company is making billions of dollars, that tells me that you could be paying your employees more and contributing way more to society. Instead, we have glamorized being ultra-wealthy and equated monetary wealth with success. Greed and living in excess should not be admired. Hoarding millions or billions of dollars or only spending it on luxuries hurts our economy and our country. Generosity, community and caring about each other are what make the U.S. the greatest country in the world. Thanks to those of you, wealthy or poor, who are spreading those values.
So what can we do?
1. Become more informed consumers. Many of us have choices, but unfortunately we usually don’t care about who is benefiting from our purchases. It’s up to us to do some research before determining who benefits from our dollars. We need to ask ourselves questions like
- “What % of profits are being donated and what initiatives are being supported?”
- “How much more is the highest paid employee making than the lowest paid?
- “How much is are the highest paid folks making?”
- “How does the company encourage community participation and volunteering?”
- “Which political parties do they support with their dollars”, and
- “How is the company impacting the environment?”
It’d be great if we could make it easier for consumers to do that research because right now it’s hard to find objective information in one place to help inform our decisions. Here are a few websites that have some great info, but I’d love to see them consolidated into one user-friendly site:
Company contributions to political parties.
Green impact of various companies
CEO pay database for all companies
% of profits, executive diversity, and toxicity produced by 500 top companies.
We also need to be smarter and not let savvy marketing control what we purchase. We have more and more research that is used to manipulate us into thinking we’ll be happy if we buy the next greatest, new thing. The savvy marketing works, and when the big-money companies have more money to use for marketing they are able to manipulate us and crush the small business competition.
2. Increase taxes the ultra wealthy, maybe just the top .1%. The self-made man or woman deserves what they earn, but we also have some rules and it’d be great if we could make some more rules that help way more people than they’d harm. Call it class warfare or call it smart for a lot of people and a nuisance for very few. I’d be okay lessening some incredibly extreme gaps and moving folks from ultra ultra ultra wealthy to just ultra ultra wealthy.
A lot of the money from wealthy people stays in the banks, which also doesn’t help the economy as much as when people spend money in their local economy. If you take $1,000 from someone with $1M in the bank and gave it to someone who makes $30K a year, that person would spend the money immediately, which probably helps more with employment than having that money sitting in investments and resulting in huge bonuses for the financial folks.
Sure, the wealthy will threaten to move their money to another country if there’s talk about taxing them more to use their money to create jobs or benefit society. If that’s the case so be it. But just maybe they’d be encouraged to give away more.
I don’t understand why so many people are fighting hard to defend the rights for people to make and hold onto absurd sums of money. There must be more to it than simply wanting to defend that financial freedom for people to become ridiculously rich.
I’m not suggesting handouts because too many people are demanding of their benefits and completely dependent on the government. I’m suggesting investing in increasing budgets of proven government social programs as well as nonprofits and organizations that could create jobs to help with education, health care, environmental programs, housing, public parks, national and international disaster aid, etc. Or we could figure out a way to encourage them to invest their excess wealth into startup businesses, which will also stimulate the economy.
3. We need more high-profile people to become models and philanthropic heroes. We need some brave people with extreme wealth to selflessly say I’m going to live with just $5M and help some nonprofits I support to set up or grow their endowments. How good that would feel emotionally for the brave people who make that change and see how appreciated their generosity would be by all of society. If they gave away most of their money they wouldn’t have the constant worry about being taken advantage or what to do with all that money. The wealthy can help solve national and world issues the way Gates has started to do. I imagine that Gates will die happy not because he was the wealthiest man, but because he did his part to eradicate malaria and increase health worldwide. The ultimate sign of success should be how you have positively impacted on society, not just how you have created a business that has successfully lured in customers and crushed the competition.
Thanks for reading, let me know if you have any thoughts, and I apologize if I offended you in any way.
