This reminds me of Ten Reason You Should Never Get a Job:

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/07/10-reasons-you-should-never-get-a-job/

Also, A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink really hits home that “jobs” are not the future. Very interesting read.

Laura

Also, not everybody has the money to throw around on the market and risk losing what they’ve got. You catch a job in something, and you stay with it, because you’ve got bills to pay and maybe a family. Not everybody’s life works out perfectly. Medical bills, family crises, car crashes, alcoholism and drugs, simple bad timing, different personalities, physical or mental handicaps, bad social circumstances. A thousand thousand ways life can go wrong. People are fallible. If you begrudge them that, you begrudge nature and humanity itself.

I’m not suggesting he “give handouts to the poor”.
I’m suggesting that he, and you, put down your portfolios and actually get a job. Lock away all of your assets, give them to charity, hide them in your mattress for a while, I don’t care. Just so you don’t touch them for a good long while. You know, even better - sell everything, get rid of it, give it all to a relative or another rich friend. Make it gone. Give yourself no way out except up.
If you have the balls to do that, you’ve got power already. Otherwise, you can have it all back when you’re done.

Now go wash dishes, go apply at a low-level data entry position, go work in a call-center, god forbid. Go be a basic employee at any of the places that fill your investment profile. Go be that guy at the drive-through that fucked up your order one morning and you screamed at him over 50 cents worth of McSomething. Pick something that doesn’t even require a college degree. Do it for six months, a year. Come on, try it. Put in some time. Try walking a few miles in the shoes that hundreds of millions of people walk in every day, and then tell them afterwards that you don’t respect them.

“You can earn more money without spending more time or money by creating or buying income producing assets.”

And this “creating or buying”.. You do this without time or money how, exactly? Are you some sort of minor deity? THAT is a trick I’d like to know.

“We have no reason to believe that he made his cash dishonestly. Why would that even cross your mind? Because you can’t think of an honest way to earn a lot of money? If so, you would do well to pick up some finance books.”

*Attitude* is why it crossed my mind. Honesty and respect come hand-in-hand: without one, you can’t have the other. I see a completely insensitive lack of respect for other people in that last paragraph, as well as with some of the commenters.

It’s like that child of the Reagan era, “Just Say No To Drugs!” When was the last time Nancy Reagan was a poor black kid with no education (and barely a chance at one) being offered crack by the older kids he respects (because there’s nobody else he can look up to)? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

It’s easy to “Just Say No” from the White House with a string of pearls around your neck (which were harvested by another brown kid halfway around the world for a couple pennies a day - I bet that’s not his dream job, but he’s got to eat, too). It’s easy to go “how can you little people even do that?” when you’ve been sitting on a high horse for your entire life. THAT shows me lack of respect, and tells me that money was not come by with an honest life’s work. Maybe it’s just painful naivite, in which case, my recommendation does not change a single bit. If you want to know, go find out! At least you know that you, out of everybody else, can walk out of it, right?

I personally do not think john was trying to take potshots at the working class but since your days our number in the working class arena its in the best intrest of a worker to find ways to let their money work for them and not work for their money.

If you think john is wrong then just take a look at american society(which is quickly becoming the global consensus )its all about capitalism and if you do not except that then you will be punished by being taxed the most and probably the most worked and the list goes on.

Yeah, but what I don’t understand is why there are people willing to trade their hours doing these jobs for these amounts.

“Rich boy, are YOU willing to sacrifice what you’ve got to make life better for other people?”

Why should he give handouts to the poor when they have just as much ability to get rich as he (and anyone else who wasn’t born rich) did when he was still an employee?

“What kind of special world do you live in that with no investment of time or money, MORE money magically rains down on you, anyways?”

You can earn more money without spending more time or money by creating or buying income producing assets. They take some time to create, but once you have them, they will continue to rain MORE money down on you.

“How honestly can you say you got YOUR cash?”

We have no reason to believe that he made his cash dishonestly. Why would that even cross your mind? Because you can’t think of an honest way to earn a lot of money? If so, you would do well to pick up some finance books.

I see folks in this thread bagging on those who “work” for a living. How far out of touch does one have to be, to suggest that people who work are worthless, unmotivated, and “not as good” as someone who’s got money? Who exactly is going to make the fancy cars, guard your gated communities, cook your food, drive your ambulances when you are sick, or stop your million-dollar house from burning to the ground when you pass out drunk with a lit cigarette? Who do you think raises that grass-fed free-range cattle you’re so proud of yourself for buying? It’s not a guy in a business suit and a smile, slinging cow sh*t out of the pasture and driving home in a BMW, let me tell you. It’s somebody who works hard for a living. Do you know starting wages for an EMT are often no more than $12? Police, $14? Security guards, $9? Wait staff in many places don’t even make the federal minimum wage and have to rely on your stingy tips to make ends meet. Don’t even ask how much money the immigrants who pick the grapes to make the $50 wine on your table make. No, let me tell you. It’s usually something like 20 cents a box.

Not everybody is a doctor, or a lawyer, or a dot-com millionaire. If everybody were, wealth would be meaningless, wouldn’t it? Suddenly, you’d look around on your high perch and there would see everyone else, right along with you. Having lots of money is not a RIGHT in this world. It is a PRIVILEGE. Whether you earned it or inherited it, the fact of the matter is, it still came off of the backs of other people. You need to respect them as the source of what you’ve got. Without them, you’re nothing. You’d be living in an empty wasteland with nothing to spend your precious money on. Nothing like a palace of gold in the middle of a sterile desert, huh?

What makes me sick is the lack of respect. Yeah, the working world could be a lot different, and could make a lot more people happier even doing the crappy jobs. But there are people out there who just want to try and live a normal life - they want a home, a car, a family. They work with what they’ve got, and if they rock the boat, they risk losing it all. How many people are really willing to sacrifice themselves for everyone else? Rich boy, are YOU willing to sacrifice what you’ve got to make life better for other people? Or are you just gonna sit there on the pedestal you’ve built for yourself, content to look down on “the little people” and idly wonder why they do the things they do?

Why don’t you go down there and find out?

What kind of special world do you live in that with no investment of time or money, MORE money magically rains down on you, anyways? That’s not the world that I live in.

Yeah, you touched on a nerve, alright. I have enough money that I don’t need to work - but I do. Working gets me even more money, and honestly, too. No scams, no financial tricks, no real-estate or market bubbles to flog until they pop, no tax tricks, corporate welfare, golden parachutes, executive compensation packages, or fooling uncle sam. How honestly can you say you got YOUR cash?

“Open your eyes” indeed. Hah.

Don’t forget the rest:

The engine is NOTHING without the driver. You are the engine, and you are nothing.

Entrepreneurs need employees so they can be entrepreneurs and employees need entrepreneurs so they can be employees. Everyone gets to decide for themselves which they would rather be.

Now, Mr. Chow has the prescience to enter another potential gold-mine–blogging. Blogging requires the same cognitive fecundity that made John successful. He makes content; not everyone can do this.

My two points are:
1. Not everyone can see the next goldmine
2. Those who see the next goldmine can’t always find a way to extract gold.

John, give yourself more credit–your unique perspicacity has brought about your opulence. Most people couldn’t match you, even if they were completely aware of the opportunity for easy money.

Whole lives are based on the notion of 9 - 5, RRSP’s, and retirement. It is “Safe” in their minds. You have proposed a way of thinking that totally goes against generations of tradition, and of course, their thinking. The only way to respond is to react. It doesn’t mean that there is no learning, it is just that in a reactive learning state, they are only learning how to produce a comeback, or a better way to threaten you. Not the ideal response.

It is with negative reactions like this that widens the gap between the working poor and the filthy rich. The revolution is a new way of thinking, not a better hourly wage or more tax breaks.

Some people just need to be woken up. I guess you got a few people that aren’t morning people.

People that work for a living have nothing to be ashamed of and the way that John’s original post was worded it did make it sound like he is putting down everybody that works for a living which sparked some of the comments.

Fact is, that society trains you to work, some people break out and are successful. Others break out and fail miserably. Others are perfectly content and happy with what they have and how much they make (even though they work for others).

Judging people by their pay checks is just a sorry ass way to live life. Some of the nicest people I encounter in my daily life are in the service industry and god bless them.

Assholes like you will one day encounter some “hicups” in your life and that will make you reconsider your thought proccess…..be nice to people on the way up, because you never know who you’ll meet on the back down to reality….

and before you attack me for being a “slave to the punchclock”….i’ve never worked for anyone a day in my life.