The 1% are evil. The
1% is the reason why the problems of this country exist. The 1% are greedy and only care about making
money. The 1% have made their money on
the suffering of the 99%. The 1% have
more wealth than most of the free world.
The 1% are buying every election.
We have heard it so much over the past years that the
wealthiest 1% of this world is responsible for most of the problems of the
world. If only they were treated the
same as the 99%, then the world would be so much better and more even. But is that reasonable?
What do we really know about the stories of the so called ‘evil’
1%? Why shouldn’t the people that have
money be allowed to have a say in how this country is run as much as the person
making minimum wage. Is it easier for us
to call them the 1% instead of knowing who they really are? The most important question is whether the very people demeaning the 1%, the so called ‘99%’, actually helped
create the 1%?
First of all, in the world, the 1% group is about 70 million
people, yes that is million. To qualify
for the 1% club the average net worth starts at around $600,000, the US that is
closer to $400,000. That means that
every major league ballplayer is part of the evil club, even the ones that are
just starting out.
When you look at the 1,810 billionaires in the world, they
are worth 6.5 trillion dollars combined.
However, when you look at who these billionaires are, are they really
the type that are building their fortune suppressing others?
So let’s take a look at a few of these billionaires to show
that no matter what they are still human.
Let’s start out with the most evil of the 1%, the richest
man in the world, Bill Gates. This is a
man whose intelligence allowed him at the early age of 13 to create computer
programs. Even though he attended
Harvard, he chose to work on getting a company started in the 1970’s on the
verge of the computer revolution. He
never graduated from Harvard.
Bill Gates is a married man with 3 children. He has created a foundation with assets of 44
billion dollars that helps programs related to education and fighting poverty
among its many charities. He has helped
create a ‘pledge’ among billionaires to give half their wealth to charity, a
pledge that he created with Warren Buffet and Mark Zuckerberg.
Mr. Gates wealth came from being smart enough to partner
with IBM and not give up the rights to his software but to continue
partnerships with other computer companies.
Bill Gate’s wealth came from companies need to use computers are part of
their business, computers that contained their program.
Mr. Gates wealth came from our internal need to have a
computer with his operating system on it, a computer to play games, put
pictures and do our checkbook on. A need
that eventually led to wanting tablets, smartphones and everything else that
came from Microsoft.
So is Bill Gate part of the ‘evil’ that we are suddenly
protesting? His company probably doesn’t
pay their fair share in taxes and I am sure he doesn’t as well. He has been accused of bad business practices
in the past.
At the same time, he has changed our world for the better as
part of the technological revolution, helping companies work better and more efficient. Computers employ millions of people, people
that make good money and this is because of people like Bill Gates.
Our next ‘evil’ billionaire is from Spain and created the
empire of Zara clothing, Amancio Ortega Gaona.
He started out in a shirt shop, making clothes by hand. Eventually, he opened a store with his wife
and the rest as they say is history.
Zara now has over 6,000 stores and over 92,000
employees. Mr. Gaona was never a person
who flaunted his wealth, no picture had ever been circulated of him before
1999. He also has created a foundation
that helps Spain’s needy.
Clothing empires are built on the need of consumers to have
the latest clothing and willing to pay for those clothes. Satisfying our need to be dressed in a brand
helps give people jobs in these stores.
The company probably doesn’t pay its share of taxes and Mr. Gaona probably
doesn’t either and the stores have been accused of running sweat shops in South
America.
In the end, is it evil to give people
what they want.
Jeff Bezos is a person who loved science and actually
graduated from Princeton with electrical engineering and computer science. He was so into mechanical things that he
built an alarm when he was a kid to keep his siblings out of his room.
Mr. Bezos was already making money from being a Hedge Fund
Manager but when the internet was starting to take off in 1994, he realized
that there would be a need to sell things online. This business is over 20 years old which
means it started when the internet was barely a blimp on the radar. He was also an original investor in Google. Even though he has not taken the ‘pledge’,
Mr. Bezos does help donate time and money to charities and also is very
involved in the aerospace industry.
Amazon has made its money on the fact that consumers want to
be able to buy things in the comfort of their own home. Even though it has reduced business from
other retail companies, it has created an environment that other companies had
to change to in order to compete. It
has branched out into other areas such as streaming video, another area that
consumers have flocked to.
Is it evil to make our lives easier to live from the comfort
of our home?
Mark Zuckerberg is probably called evil for different
reasons, the most because he supposedly ‘stole’ the idea of Facebook from
others. However, he paid for that and
yet it didn’t stop Facebook from changing social media forever.
Mr. Zuckerberg was already a child prodigy, building
computer programs even before he went to college. By the time he reached Harvard he was already
a computer legend and then he built Facebook.
Mr. Zuckerberg has also taken the pledge to give half his
wealth to charity and is part of the Bill Gates Foundation. He has also given 99% of shares to his own
foundation built with his wife. His
salary for Facebook is $1.
Mr. Zuckerberg’s wealth was built on our need for instant
communication about our lives and the lives of the people we know. It was built because businesses knew that in
order to continue to sell you product they had to be on social media. Facebook changed the technology world by
satisfying our instant gratification.
Is it evil to change the world?
Howard Schultz was a man who grew up in a poor Jewish
neighborhood. He was an athlete that
won a scholarship to college being the first person in his family to go to
college.
He worked as a salesman until he became GM for a coffee
company. In a trip to Italy while working
for Starbucks, he found the way they serve coffee as being something to do in
the US. He raised money to start his own
coffee company and eventually bought out the Starbucks name. Starbucks was being created on every corner
and not franchised so that they would always follow the Starbucks philosophy.
Starbucks has been one of the leaders in business giving
part time employees health care, giving away food to the needy and good
customer service. When McDonalds gave
competition they closed down their stores and said let’s change our structure
to make sure they give customers what they need. They were one of the first companies to do
payments from cell phones.
Mr. Schultz is married and has 2 children. He has a foundation that helps in areas of
veteran’s assistance.
Mr. Schultz’s wealth was built on our need to have good
coffee even though it was at an expensive price. His wealth was built on his intelligence for making
sure the business is run correctly.
Is it evil to put the customer first?
The final 1% would be hard for a lot of people to call ‘evil’. In fact, this person should be the poster
child for how to overcome adversity in the country to become one of the
wealthiest and most respected people in the world. That person is Oprah Winfrey.
Ms. Winfrey was born in poverty in Mississippi. She was born to an unwed teenage mother. She wore dresses made from potato sacks. She was spanked if she did not do her chores
and her mother was on welfare. She had
siblings die of drug use and AIDS. She
was molested by family members. She gave
birth at 14 but the baby had died. She
was a rebel but eventually graduated and earned a scholarship to a university. She did crack cocaine and had an affair with
a married man.
She began working in a news station in high school and
continued in television until her break that eventually led to the Oprah
Winfrey show. She built the show from
tabloid format to the format of more issue related. She has since created films, books and even
her own television network.
Ms. Winfrey has held a non-marriage relationship for 30
years and said she did not want to have children because of the life she grew
up in.
Ms. Winfrey has been very vocal in politics but has also
given over $400 million dollars for educational purposes. She also created the Angel Network for
charitable work. She has helped with
Presidential candidate Obama getting people to see the person he was.
Ms. Winfrey’s wealth has grown from our fascination with
tabloid television and soap opera type of shows. However, most of it was built on the
intelligence and compassion of the woman herself in every aspect of what she
does. It was built out of our respect for
the person not the race or gender.
Other 1%:
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg whose wealth was built on
us watching their movies
Candy Bar empires built on our vice of chocolate.
Beer empires built on our vice of drinking.
Perfume empires built on our need for self-beauty
Supermarket empires built on our need to eat
Casino empires built on our vice of gambling
Stock Market investors built on investing in companies that were built on basis of the above. If the companies were not popular they would not want to be invested.
Stock Market investors built on investing in companies that were built on basis of the above. If the companies were not popular they would not want to be invested.
The Walton Family built their empire on the basis of
consumers need for cheap items despite the fact that they pay cheap labor and
have many items built from overseas terrible business practices.
When someone says the 1% we automatically see red because
our lives are not what we want them to be and we need someone to blame. However, when you look at some of the people,
one can see that these people should actually be promoted as what can be done
with determination and hard work. They give back to the communities and charities where we can’t because of the positions that we are in. They didn't all start with a silver spoon in their mouth but so what if they did, aren't we all working to give our children better lives. Yes
they may get some special treatment but when did it become a crime to create an
empire or make money.
At the same time, how can we sit and not take responsibility
for our part in the creation of the 1%.
Our vices, need for outer beauty and the technological revolution have
allowed these people to build the empires.
They provided something that we desired, otherwise they could not be in
the position that they are in. We created the monster and now we are angry that the monster is now beyond our control. One of the only ways to stop this is to stop our vices and insecurities, are we willing to do this to stop the 1% from getting even more wealthy?
So maybe instead of sitting behind our computers at home or protesting on the capitol because a movie star wants to hold a $300,000 a plate fundraiser, maybe we should start to find out where that anger comes from hope or jealousy. In the end, maybe we need to stop our anger at an illusion of a puppet master and start focusing on the 1% and 99% working together to help fix the issues of this country.
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