Lil devils x said:
First of all, no the wealthy do not work harder than most people. Most people work harder than the wealthy. Second, Most wealthy gain their money by taking part of what other people should have earned rather than doing the work themselves. They earn money from other's work so that they do not have to do the work themselves. By underpaying people for their work, they essentially create a siphon draining the wealth from those households, communities and cities where these people live and work and accumulate it into fewer and fewer hands. The CEO taking financial risks is not any riskier than the average person taking out a mortgage or putting a lien on their car or home to be able to survive. Although it involves less money due to them having less money, it is a higher risk because if it doesn't work out they can lose everything and become Homeless, starving and destitute if things do not work out for them. The CEO usually has enough money put back that they would be considered wealthy regardless if their risks flop, they will still not lose their ability to provide food, shelter or transportation for themselves. The risks that the poor take every day are MORE than those that are taken by the wealthy due to what is at stake if they lose.
People also tend to forget that even though Bill Gates tries to do some nice things now, when he was getting started he screwed people over, fired them and stole their work, took credit for their work and was taken to court repeatedly for his malignant actions. Years ago, when discussing Bill Gates with an old programmer father of a friend, I too though that the "cleaned up version" of the " Bill Gates Story" was reality, then he proceeded to show me numerous documents that told the truth about what happened. Bill Gates harmed the people responsible for his success to become successful himself. The vast majority of the time, for someone to breach the financial barriers to become successful, they are screwing people over and taking from them to be able to get to that point. It is extremely difficult for people to gain the capital needed to break the barrier to be successful without taking it from someone else.
First of all, nobody said "wealthy people" work harder than... That would be an absurd statement because being "wealthy" doesn't say anything about your occupation. Which was entirely my point, you can't just lump "wealthy" people together as one monolithic and parasitic group. This said, top corporate executives do work more than your average worker, a lot more.
Secondly wealthy people being a very diverse group also means their source of income is diverse. A succesful entrepreneur who sold his company for a billion didn't become a billionaire from syphoning wealth from his employees. He became one by finding someone or a company willing to give him that money in exchange for his company. A rich actor doesn't get to decide who is paid what in the movie industry and can hardly be blamed for a company willing to pay him millions at the expense of the technical staff. Soccer players also earn way too much money, but not by purposely syphoning anything from anyone.
As for risk, it depends to which type of wealthy person you compare it. A CEO shouldn't be given extra remuneration based on the risk he takes for himself, that's an absurd notion some very pro-rich people use. Golden parachutes have pretty much rendered those jobs financially riskless. The risk however lies with the company. A simple employee making a mistake is unlikely to cause the company a lot of harm, a wrong strategic decision can have catastrophic results. Hence the idea a company has to attract "the best of the best" and be willing to pay the money for it. But as I doubt the skills & competences of CEO's have drastically increased the past hundred years I'm going to assume they're currently extremely overvalued and paid too much for what they offer. On the other hand an investor does risk more than an average employee. Not only does an investor risk not earning anything in the future but he also puts all the invested wealth at risk. Employees merely risk future income. You may say that the lost wealth will harm the investor less, perhaps, but the absolute risk is still much higher. This is also why many low/middle income households are not investing a lot on the stock market, they're not willing to take that extra risk.
As for Bill Gates, I don't doubt he has done some unethical things during his careers to get where he is now. But it doesn't change that microsoft is a company that provides software widely used and useful and has created value for millions of people and probably billions indirectly.
