Racial Discrimination?

There is no such thing as racial discrimination. When you have enough money and willingly spend it, people welcome you everywhere you go, no matter what color you are.  Those who have wealth and power just want to keep out the poor (with all their annoying problems and complaints), of every color, including their own.  Thus, at heart, racial discrimination is actually only economic discrimination
 

Sexual Discrimination?

There is no such thing as sexual discrimination. When people see that you have enough money and spend it, suddenly they forget all about gender-related issues and welcome you with open arms. Those who are rich and powerful are simply worried that if you don't have as much as they do, you may be out to take some of their wealth away, or cost them some of it. At its root, what we call sexual discrimination is basically only economic discrimination.
 

Ethnic Discrimination?

There is no such thing as ethnic discrimination. Again, it is economic discrimination. For instance, property owners are afraid that people who are different will frighten away present tenants or potential buyers, so they will lose money because of vacancies or property devaluation, perceived or real. But when they see that an 'ethnic' has enough money to buy the whole property, ethnics are suddenly as welcome as everyone else. At its root, what we call ethnic discrimination is basically only economic discrimination.
 

Age Discrimination?

There is no such thing as age discrimination. Those who believe that the very old and the very young can not earn and spend as much as those of median age peak mental and physical shape simply forget that the old and the young have the largest discretionary budgets of all.  In fact, the graying segments of the population have the most money of all, but it is just as widely known (whether true or not in fact) that as a general rule they do not spend it foolishly or on merely fashionable things, and usually have it tied up so even they can not get at it too easily, as a form of self protection against their own occasional foolish impulses, though they do on occasion lay it out for big-ticket items.  When such discriminators suddenly see how full the wallet is, and how open, or that the insurance company will pay, they quickly forget their worries.  What we call age discrimination is fundamentally also only economic discrimination.
 
 

Religious Discrimination

Exactly the same situations exist.  While there often are significant cultural differences, these can be seen as interesting and even exciting diversities (as long as they do not present any sense of threat or danger), and thus are not truly the basic reason for any discrimination.  Cash or good credit overcomes difference of belief, proving once again that it is only economic discrimination.
 
 

Facts

In each of the kinds of discrimination mentioned, the intelligent know the facts, and the ignorant act on emotion, rumor, and social patterns they have unthinkingly inherited, unthinkingly accept, and unthinkingly obey.  Thus all discrimination is basically economic discrimination.
 

Penalties Of Poverty

Those who cannot afford food die of hunger.  Those who lack money for medicine die of illness.  Those who can not afford housing die of exposure.  Those who can not afford clothes die of pneumonia, if shame does not kill their souls first.  Those who can not afford college earn less, and have less when emergencies come, and fare less ably than those who went to college.  Those who cannot afford medical and dental care get ill more often, leading to worse illness and earlier deaths   Those who cannot afford good clothes lack self-confidence so they get the lower paying jobs, and age sooner and stress harder.  Those who can not afford insurance get hit harder by illness and emergencies.
 

Emotional Response

Economic discrimination kills. Economic Discrimination leads to all other social ills and decay. Economic Discrimination is the root of all evil.

Economic Discrimination is a crime. Economic Discrimination must be wiped out. We must all work toward this goal, starting here and now.

(Says who? How? When? Who will do this? And why?)
 

Economic Discrimination Works Very Well, Thank You

Actually economic discrimination is a viable working system, with money as the common denominator, and has proven its abilities for many generations, even though it is not perfectly humane. And if we are somehow someday to wipe it out, what else will take its place as a simplistic arbiter of the quality of any given person or persons? Might? Deceit? Craft? Then, indeed, we may find ourselves in the even more insidious realms of true racial and sexual and other generic discrimination.
 

Source?  Common Denominator?

How is it that everything else is translated into this one thing: money?  Who brought this here?  Who brought this about?  Who destroyed this nation which was once so fine and trusting and moral that we could leave our doors unlocked?

Morals?  No morals today.  Today the only moral imperative is not "Don't do it" but rather "Just don't get caught".

How have we have become so one-dimensional and simplistic a nation that the measure of all humans is by a single item, their money?  Don't ask.  It just is.  If he or she has it, he or she is acceptable.  If no money, then get them out of here, and blame it on color or sex or what clothes he or she wears, or what belief they profess.  Do not, of course, blame it on their economic state.

If he can afford Bruno Magli shoes, he can get away with killing other humans.  If she wears the latest design by DK or Balenciaga or whatever other designer is in fashion at the moment, then she is desirable.  If they are doctors and lawyers, welcome them.  If they are sand hogs, building a tunnel under the bedrock of the city to bring water to all citizens, get them out of here -- they only make a thousand a week, and that's with overtime.
 

Executive Salaries

In the meantime, those in the executive suites take home millions.  Not only in outright salaries, but in stock options, bonuses, and other incentive pay.  In theory, this is necessary.  The idea is that one will perform at a higher level, and contribute more to the company, if he can earn more money as a reward.  No mention is made of morals and ethics, since this is implied, in theory, but ignored in fact.  The quarterly profit and loss statement is the key.  Anything the executive does to show more profit or less loss per quarter, the more he is seen as valuable to the company, and the stockholders.

On the surface, this makes sense.  The more he brings in to the company, the more he should be rewarded.  But, as recent events have shown, when those gains are not only immoral, but also illegal, we do not see him forced to give back anything.  It is all a one-way street.  We do not see him go to prison.  We do not even see him disowned by the company, but his actions defended.  Admirable, perhaps, in a brotherhood, but not in any situation where many thousands, if not millions, have their earnings and pensions stripped away, with no defense.  We do not see any official warning flag when the earnings of a company are unusual, indicating the possibility of something going on.  We do see companies in possible collusion with those who are supposed to oversee them.  Who is watching out for the people?  The public?  The workers who do the actual work?  Jiggling numbers and categories on a statement is not production.  Calling losses profits on a statement is not production, no matter what the final profit and loss figures show.  When an executive does this, he hurts not only the workers but his own company, and all other companies in his sector, in the eyes of the public.

To cure this problem, we might want to automatically examine the books and methods and top people of any company that shows unusual growth above the average for that industry.  Just where is that gain coming from?  Is it real?  Or is it exploiting some weakness of the system, the market, the standard methodology, the workers, or what?  Why must we wait years, or even months, to catch those people and shut them down, if they are doing something wrong?  The very fact that they can and do commit financial crimes means that they need oversight.  Just as the fact that banks get robbed means they need bulletproof barriers and video cameras.  The very fact that some executives can and do go bad means that all executives need oversight.

The concept that one can buy and sell and trade stock in a company has made this nation great, and more successful than any other nation in history.  Credit, another name for trust, is the basis of our success.  The moment that trust is gone, it means that we, as a nation, are now no better than any other nation.  Our advantage, trust, has been stripped from us by those few unscrupulous executives.  They have abused their privileges, and thus, in addition to real harm to many of their fellow citizens, have brought dishonor on all, from other executives and workers to every citizen.  They deserve to be treated as traitors, for having treated their nation in such manner.  They have shown us, once again, that power corrupts.  That money, especially in the form of bonuses and incentives, can compel men to make bad decisions and do wrong things.  Once set apart from the common man, and treated as special, they see themselves and their motives and methods as special, and right, no matter what they decide.  When a man sees himself as above the law, we can be sure that he will do wrong things and justify them as right.  And he can bring a company down, and has, many times.

Why, then, should executives be paid more than workers?  Does the upside more than balance the downside?  It makes it clear that one person may indeed be more valuable than others.  This, in turn, means that the basic tenets of democracy and equality are in error.  People are not equal.

The decisions of an executive may bring profit and success, or ruin, to his company.  His knowledge and perceptions and other abilities are indeed valuable. . . when he is right.  And when he is moral and ethical.  But alone, without the abilities of the others in his staff, and those on the factory floor, they mean nothing.  A very good argument can be made that all people in a company should be paid equal shares of the profit that company makes.  Without all of them, and all in purposeful and effective concert, that income and profit could not happen.  Why then do executives get more?  To impress others?  To impress themselves?  To be treated as special?
 

A Possible Solution?

I suggest that no executive should get a penny more than the average of all workers in the company, until a year or two or five after he has left the company and his actions have all been audited and double checked, and it is clearly shown and known that he did right, morally and ethically and legally, as well as made money for his company, and truly does deserve his bonuses and incentives.  Or maybe there could be something like the residuals that actors get.
 

Exceptions

Private companies are a different animal than those in which the public invests, of course, but if pensions and other worker factors are at risk, then they also must have government oversight.

Microsoft's Bill Gates, and only a dozen or so other highly successful companies, which have actually created their own markets, markets which did not exist before and could not have existed otherwise, are another special case, but again, may merit oversight.

In Gates' case, much of his profit and power came from the EULA contract that every user had to accept in order to use the product, which kept for the company the ownership rights to the product, and granted only conditional use to the user.  Clearly, had the buyer actually been able to purchase all and full rights to the product, and could distribute or resell it, like a car buyer can sell his car, and the buyer of most anything else can sell it to another, MS would never have made the profit and power it did.  So Gates' decision to create and use such a contract was a great decision, for the company.  Would government oversight have understood and allowed this?  Would regulators have thought that contract was as fair to the user as to the company?  Worked out some other contract?  Or thought that it was exploitation in a seller's market?  We will never know.  If I were to invent a device tomorrow that counteracted gravity and allowed anyone to fly like a bird, there is hardly a person alive who would not pay me a very good price, on my terms, and signed any contract I put before them, in order to have and use it.  Gates was making a very similar offer, something that enabled the user to mentally soar beyond previous limits.  Any government may well have allowed him to write his own contract, just as they would me.  Buyer demand creates a seller's market, and allows the buyer to be taken advantage of.  In fact, one basic rule of salesmanship is not to oversell, but to simply create desire for the product and allow the buyer to sell himself, and now just stay out of his way, just shut up and take his money.
 

Are They Worth It?

 Such special cases aside, and allowing that maybe the few Gates' in the world may actually deserve what they have (within the limits above, but excluding the results of anti-trust and other illegalities, if present and proven), are other executives really worth what we pay them?

Most corporate Directors say yes, claiming that they could not get the best brains without offering the most money and best options and bonuses.  Some call the money only a scorecard, just a way to tell who is ‘winning the game'.  Others argue that, like ball teams fighting for the best talent, such companies have screwed themselves by overbidding, and then putting their companies in hock to actually pay those offers, creating the need to cut corners and short somewhere else.  Others note that smart people want to work where their smarts can be seen, have effect, bring satisfaction, and so on.  Even if they didn't make a dollar more, a Type A is still a Type A, and needs to be a boss, and be seen as top dog.  There is great satisfaction and pleasure in ordering others about and telling them what not to do, and making up the rules.  (I know; I did it.)  And buying things others can not have.  How many executives change jobs every year for a higher title and more money, and how many others change for less money but more prestige or perks or other reason?

All of these, and others, are all probably true in their respective cases.  Maybe no single hard rule can be made to fit all cases.  But deferring money rewards, at least until well after final results are in, certainly would promote a longer term vision in corporate executives, decrease reliance on the quarterly statement, catch shortcutters, and so on.
 

The Costs of Wealth

What about prestige and privilege and the other benefits of wealth?

Never having been truly wealthy myself, I can attest to the fact that one can live quite well without such things.  (I certainly laugh more, and more often, and enjoy my life more, than any of the many wealthy and powerful people I have ever met, or seen; I have always been a very carefree person, in sharp contrast to most of them, who always seemed so sour and stressed.)  In fact, of the six billion humans on earth today, all but a very small percentage can say the same.  In total numbers, barely a million people are truly wealthy, and of them, only a few thousand can actually buy anything they could conceivably want.  One thousandth of one percent of 6 billion.

I personally think that having great wealth might be desirable, for those options, but may also be quite over-rated, because you also suffer the limits and frustrations of still being only human, still having to breathe, sleep, eat, crap, sweat and smell, and getting older and hot and cold and sick and so on, and then having to die, too, just like all those poor people.

And two other problems with wealth: the worry that you might lose it, and the worry that others might not like you for yourself, but only because of your wealth, and then only to get some of it.  That would really rip me.

Being one of the working poor, I know my friends like me the way I am, and for what I am, and because we have a good time together.  There are no ulterior motives or personal agendas.  They have nothing I want, and I have nothing they want.  They don't have to suck up to me, but can tell me at any time to kiss their butts, and I can tell them off, too.  We are buddies simply because we like each other, and like to hang out and do things and go places together.  All that wealth, with all those limitations, and for such a short time?  Wealth might be a very frustrating chimera.  Maybe not at all what it is cracked up to be.

But, past that, wealth creates in the owner's mind the belief that he is special, different than others, better than poor people.  Not true, of course, which means there is now a dichotomy, a conflict in the wealthy person's subconscious, from which he must suffer every time he experiences the same indignity as other people, showing he really is no better than all those poor people.  How galling.  So now he is forced to compensate, to prove to himself that he is better, and can have or do something they can not, to show himself he is better.

That, in the end, is why he discriminates against them, joins exclusive clubs, tries to keep them out, avoids direct immediate comparisons that threaten his self-image of betterness.

I am guessing that down that road could lie madness.
 

Examples

Other example of economic discrimination are the breaks that wealthy people get in purchasing the same things as poor people.  The person who can buy only one thousand dollar Certificate of Deposit can get only 6% interest, at best.  Hardly more than the annual inflation increase in cost of living.  The person who can buy a hundred of them can get 7%.  Anyone who can buy a thousand of them can get 8% interest, or better.  The wealthy person who can loan a million dollars in cash to a bank may be able to get back up to 10% interest.

The person who purchases a car or home on time payments or a 20-year mortgage may have to pay 20% to 50% more for it, in interest and charges and insurance on the loan.  But the wealthy person who has enough money to purchase it outright saves all those extras, or can buy that much more or better for the same total, adding to his wealth.

Compound interest on the savings of a normal working person can add up to a substantial amount over time.  How much more can compounding do for those who start with more?

The resale depreciation on a Ford or Chevy is huge the moment the buyer drives it off the lot.  On a classic Rolls or Bentley, or even a well kept 1969 Corvette, the resale value may actually rise!

These are all clearly unfair to the poor person.  They are all punishment for being poor.  A really good one happened recently in New York City, when those so poor they could only afford $500 or less a month for an apartment had an extra $15 ‘poor tax' added to their rents by the city rent commission.

Sometimes these advantages of the wealthy can be made up by the people forming savings cooperatives or volume purchasing organizations and other group power alternatives, but most of them, also, require a membership fee or other cost, so any gain is not really free, or all that it could be.  Welcome to the club.
 

Summary

In all of these examples, the purchaser of a C of D, car, or home or other big ticket item in any store, you can buy no matter what age, color, religion, ethnicity, or race you are, as long as you have the credit or cash.  The home can sometimes be an exception, and only in some areas, and if you can afford the appropriate lawyers and their fees, you can get what you want.  (The subsequent retaliation by others in that neighborhood is another matter.)  And if you think that those exclusive golf clubs and other private associations are really exclusive?  Used to be.  But today just about every single one of them has, or needs, at least their token black or Jew or woman or other ethnic, just to prove they are legal and not discriminatory.  And you can be quite certain that he or she does not make a mere fifty or sixty grand a year.  Or less.

NOTE:  Interesting thing about privacy:  the wealthy and powerful prize their privacy, perhaps because they do not want us to know how they achieved or obtained what they have, lest they lose it, or we gain it, or it loses value, or maybe because it was done illegally or immorally and thus should be disclosed.  But what has the average person got to be private about?  Who really cares whether you do or did this or that, or not?  Do you truly care about what another person considers private?  Do you have the spare time or energy to really care about their 'private' little lives?  Do you expect that others truly care about your private little life?  What can be gained by inculcating a sense of shame and guilt in others, especially when young?  What are the most effective ways to do this?  How can one conquer these in himself, and rise above them?

In the end, then, there really is no discrimination other than economic discrimination.
 
 

Larry Daly,  8/8/02
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