there are work force people who can get by on $30K a year... and then there are executives who can barely make it with six figure salaries... which is what the Affleck character was a prime example of...
isn't it interesting how the people who get paid less have to be smarter than the people who get paid more to survive? food for thought...
- It has been said, that to write, is to live forever.... the man who wrote that... is dead! -
I respect your opinion but I have known smart and stupid people at every level of hourly or salaried pay. So many irrelevant things go into pay decisions now...that's another part of well, personally, my insecurity.
And what about the baseball player asking for 21 mil?
Where does it stop?
I think it will start making sense again when people develop respect again for each other up and down the leadership ladder, for the right reasons.
Now what where those?
I forget where we put them...
It isn't necessarily that the people who get paid less are smarter when it comes to survivablity, but more to do with the economic disparity between the two groups.
Say you have two people, one who makes 160k a year, and one who makes 30k a year.
The person who makes 30k a year probably has decent credit, maybe even bad credit. They may rent a small income apartment, house, or maybe even purchased a home of their own with a mortgage around 70-100k. They probably can't afford a large host of luxury goods, and probably take staycations. Additionally, if a person under those circumstances loses their job, more than likely they are going to be laid off and able to qualify for unemployment benefits, which can continue to help support them until they can get back on their feet.
Compared to the person who is making 160k, they get taxed more, but still come out way ahead over the person who is making 30k. The key thing is, they are able to afford a higher cost of luxury goods, and can obtain higher lines of credit. A person who makes 160k a year could very well obtain a house going for a million or more. They can also afford more expensive cars, take more expensive vacations, etc. Additionally, although I'm sure they can apply for unemployment, I don't know how that works with people making that much.
Any way, the point of all of this is that the person who makes 30k a year is forced more or less to stay within their means. They can't afford the economic freedom that some one who is making 160k a year can. Yes, the people who make 70k+ a year should stay within their means, but many don't simply because they don't have to. They aren't forced into the pithole that some one who is making less would often be in. So they take those opportunities - because they can "afford" them.
Ben Afflecks character clearly wasn't living within his means, and so his economic drop hurt him far more than some one who would be making less.
Think about how much cost of living affects your lifestyle too. Different parts of the country have cost of living indexes that affect how much you can expect to make based on the cost of housing and price of consumer goods. Also, consider that different state and local rates affect this, and the fact that the progressive Federal tax system doesn't factor in cost of living.
So really, $160,000 in a nice part of Boston might be like making $80,000 in podunk West Virginia.
Eh, no. The movie concentrated on a man who lived a very comfortable lifestyle while not taking into account his expenses, or at least not reflecting on them enough to say "This is gluttony. I need to become more financially responsible." No where in the movie did it say that people who make six figures or white collared jobs are less intelligent when compared to someone who makes signicantly less (or vice versa) -- it's just that people who find themselves making good income can spend beyond their means since their mentality is "I have money! I can finally buy [insert whatever toy or whatever want]," which carries over to other purchases.
2014: Whiplash, Cold in July, that Terrence Malick project set in Austin