ozarque ([info]ozarque) wrote,
@ 2006-01-08 13:37:00
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If you've been reading this journal a while you're aware that I read every issue of Forbes, in order to get an idea of the worldview of the prototypical Rich Person -- and that I've learned a tremendous amount about the way an RP defines his or her terms. (Terms like "debt" and "wealth," for example.) For the same reason, but in search of information about a very different worldview, I read The Quaker Economist, and am often astonished at what I find there. Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don't, but I always learn something. Unlike Forbes, it's free. The URL is http://tqe.quaker.org .

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[info]mangosteen
2006-01-08 02:41 pm UTC (link)
Can you give a couple of examples of where there's a significant disconnect between the "Rich Person" and "Normal Person" definition of a particular word?

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Response to mangosteen....
[info]ozarque
2006-01-08 03:53 pm UTC (link)
First, I'd want to specify that I don't think "Rich Person" is automatically the opposite of "Normal Person"; I'd stay with "Rich Person" and "Non-Rich Person," boring thought that is.

To answer the question.... the example that first got my attention was a Forbes article that defined your debt as evidence of your wealth, because it represented the amount of money that you were qualified to borrow. The farther into debt you were able to go, the richer that meant you were. That, to me, was a revelation. Flabbergasting, but a revelation.

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Re: Response to mangosteen....
[info]countrycousin
2006-01-08 05:00 pm UTC (link)
hmm. Wonder who the article was aimed at.

If it is aimed at someone running a business, it makes some sense, but it really is a measure of what lenders think you'll be able to pay back and thus the potential of the business. Most people running businesses are very aware of this.

If it is aimed at someone else, I'm not sure that I'd take that particular example as one of how a RP thinks, but rather as one of how someone who hopes to sell more wants RP wannabes to think.

I'm a recent reader of your posts, so no doubt have missed a lot, apologies if this has been well covered - . One of the factors keeping people in this society relatively poor is the social and advertising pressure to spend beyond ones means and rack up (relatively) huge debt. Many fail and enter a downward economic spiral from which it is difficult to recover. The many who fail are often victims of some of the other factors that contribute to poverty, but many are normal people with more desires than wisdom.

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Re: Response to mangosteen....
[info]ozarque
2006-01-08 05:30 pm UTC (link)
I understand what you say, and I thank you for your comment. However, to me the very idea that someone -- anyone -- could plausibly define debt as wealth was just astonishing. [I was totally naive about financial matters, business, and economics at the time, yes.] I had worked with many so-called "exotic" languages as a linguist, and had come across a lot of suprising concepts, chunks of meaning that hadn't occurred to me before. But that's to be expected when you go outside the boundaries of your own culture. To find something like Debt Is Wealth "lurking" in my own language, and discover that at least some thousands of people perceived it as plausible .... that was stunning. It showed me the vast expanse of my ignorance in a way that logical argument alone never could have done. And it's kept me reading Forbes for 25 years.

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[info]shelbysomek
2008-07-16 04:47 am UTC (link)
Problems with gold by cronian, PM EST ( none / 0 ) Inflation by thetenken PM EST ( none / 0 ) anti-trust ( none / 0 ) ( ) by jago25 on Sat Jan at PM EST  hmm on a similar subject I wonder if there;s any articles out there on the effects of anti-trust on economics Heres the right way ( none / 0 ) ( ) by Ksec on Sun Feb at PM EST You need to get things moving to spur the economy.

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Re: Response to mangosteen....
[info]memegarden
2006-01-08 05:16 pm UTC (link)
I'd say that the amount of debt you qualify for is probably a good measure, but if you actually take it all on? If the rich people of this country think this way, no wonder our national debt is so astonishingly high.

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Re: Response to mangosteen....
[info]ozarque
2006-01-08 05:30 pm UTC (link)
Excellent point.

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[info]kittyviroq
2008-07-15 01:46 am UTC (link)
But I say "Good on you Mr Howard & good on you Mr Rudd. Thank God for people who serve Australia at great personal cost".

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Re: Response to mangosteen....
[info]mangosteen
2006-01-08 08:13 pm UTC (link)
The farther into debt you were able to go, the richer that meant you were.

Actually, this all makes a lot of sense. There's an unstated assumption about debt in relation to Rich People, specifically that "Rich People know how to leverage other people's money in order to generate wealth."

That is to say, debt isn't something you have on your credit card because you had to buy the new Turnip Twaddler 2000 you saw at BigBoxMart the other day. Rather, debt is the thing you use to leverage a comparatively small amount of your own cash in order to buy real estate, or expand your business or somesuch.

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Re: Response to mangosteen....
[info]not_your_real
2006-01-08 09:46 pm UTC (link)
I'd say that this is de facto proof that Forbes is not aimed at, for lack of a better word, "real" rich people, but rather people who want to feel rich.

I suspect "real" rich people don't allow popular media to influence them much.

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[info]nickylodap
2008-07-16 01:18 am UTC (link)
The "pirates", for lack of a better term, define theft as taking something physical. When you steal something, it 'robs' the original owner of the item of the use of that item.

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[info]sallycekyp
2008-07-16 02:51 am UTC (link)
What is it that people don't like about Jews. I suspect they have their reasons. But we won't hear them if we won't listen, if we condemn and defend as soon as the words come out.

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[info]quietspaces
2006-01-08 03:27 pm UTC (link)
I've always found The Quaker Economist to be fascinating reading.

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[info]neonchameleon
2006-01-08 05:26 pm UTC (link)
Ah, The Quaker Economist. Wonderful site and gives me a much better understanding of 19th Century Liberals. There are, however, a number of valid reasons his economics don't gain too much ground in Britain.

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cited recently in seminar
[info]shirad
2007-03-28 03:01 pm UTC (link)
Actually, while he may not hold full sway, his theories of diffusion are being used (synthesized with others, to be sure) in the (Well-Being in Developing countries) WeD research here at University of Bath.

Cheers,
Shira

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Forbes for rich people, or for wanna-be rich people?
[info]tkil
2006-01-08 09:23 pm UTC (link)
I've seen more than a few comments that Forbes is not necessarily about real rich people, but about people who want to feel rich. Which might or might not be irrelevant to your goal of trying to understand the rich / wanna-be-rich mindset.

A quote from Linus Torvalds:
Yes, Forbes is pretty bad. It's a "rah rah" magazine for people who wished they were rich. It's a small step up from the check-out counter magazines that alternately glorify and vilify Jessica Simpson or whoever is the celebrity of the week.

There's no question that you're better off with the Wall Street Journal (who has some of the best journalists in the business, as far as I can tell, and while I don't know crud about business, I do know journalistm) or the Economist if you actually care about business and economy. But that's not what Forbes is about.
(And before you comment on how Linus is a commie because he put Linux under the GPL, read more of his writings; he's not anti-capitalist at all, disagrees with RMS all the time, and made gobs of money off Linux.)

Then there was an interesting observation about The Wall Street Journal: the op-ed pages always say what the neo-cons want to hear, but the rest of the paper is filled with reality because that's what actual businesspeople need to know to make proper decisions. Unfortunately I can't find the reference right now.

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Re: Forbes for rich people, or for wanna-be rich people?
[info]judith_s
2006-01-09 03:15 am UTC (link)
I completely concur. I have a number of millionaire friends, and none of them read Forbes. I'll have to ask what they actually do read. I know they read The Economist, but I don't know if they read any business magazines. I'll let you know.

Forbes is aimed at the middle class person who is trying hard to pretend to be rich. Most folks who are actually rich are partially there because they know exactly what the value of money is. They do not take on debt randomly, they do not buy a new car every year, etc. The folks who do that are mostly those that think that these pretensions will make people believe that they are rich.

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Re: Forbes for rich people, or for wanna-be rich people?
[info]neonchameleon
2006-01-09 12:02 pm UTC (link)
I've been thinking much the same thing - but we don't have Forbes over here (at least not as part of the mainstream). Certainly The Economist tends to be read by people with a fair amount of money. I read it because even when a column is written by a lunatic (think op-ed from the WSJ), it's clear, lucid, and tends to do a better job of presenting opposing views (before demolishing them) than most papers who would agree with those views. People who work in The City tend to read the Financial Times rather than The Economist (they come from the same publishing house and there's absolutely no point reading both - there's significant overlap in commentators, styles and stories). (It's probably worth pointing out that the FT is, in its dry way, the funniest newspaper out there).

Of course the best summaries of the British press comes from Yes Minister (courtesy of Wikiquote).
Jim Hacker: Don't tell me about the press. I know exactly who reads the papers:

* The Daily Mirror is read by people who think they run the country;
* The Guardian is read by people who think they ought to run the country;
* The Times is read by people who actually do run the country;
* The Daily Mail is read by the wives of the people who run the country;
* The Financial Times is read by people who own the country;
* The Morning Star is read by people who think the country ought to be run by another country;
* And the Daily Telegraph is read by people who think it is.

Sir Humphrey: Prime Minister, what about the people who read the Sun?
Bernard Woolley: Sun readers don't care who runs the country, as long as she's got big tits.


Sir Humphrey: Didn't you read the Financial Times this morning?
Sir Desmond Glazebrook: Never do.
Sir Humphrey: Well you're a banker, surely you read the Financial Times?
Sir Desmond: Can't understand it. Full of economic theory.
Sir Humphrey: Why do you buy it?
Sir Desmond: Oh, you know, it's part of the uniform.

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Response....
[info]ozarque
2006-01-09 02:12 pm UTC (link)
Thanks for the comments from all of you who don't feel that Forbes is read by people who are really rich, only by people who'd like to be. From your comments, I suspect that my definition of "rich" differs drastically from yourall's.


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Re: Response....
[info]neonchameleon
2006-01-09 09:54 pm UTC (link)
Out of interest, how do you define "rich"?

My definitions would have to do with length of time an (non-retirement) inability to work, or other major impediment would take to lead to crippling financial dificulties. If it's measured in days or weeks, you're poor. If it's measured in months or years, you're middle class. If it would take decades to even make an impact, you're rich.

(Yes, this does mean that an effective welfare state (including public healthcare) does have an impact on richness disproportionate to cost even if the cost is disproportionate to cover (which it isn't) - that's the whole point).

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Re: Response to neonchameleon....
[info]ozarque
2006-01-11 05:29 pm UTC (link)
I knew that the conversational ground had shifted under my feet when the comment came along about what millionaires read; I hadn't realized until then how wide the perceptual gap was. Obviously it's hard to define "rich" adequately, because such a multitude of factors are involved. If I try for a very broad and rough definition -- restricting it to people who live in the rural area where I live and don't face things like Manhattan or San Francisco living expenses -- I consider a person with an annual income of $100,000.00 a rich person. In Manhattan or San Francisco, I suspect I'd consider $300,000.00 a year to be the defining line for "rich." I can tell from the comments, and from the contempt for Forbes (which I will continue to read), that many LJers would find my definition pretty funny.

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Re: Response to neonchameleon....
[info]neonchameleon
2006-01-12 03:40 pm UTC (link)
In which case the conversational ground hasn't actually shifted that much. A millionaire is someone who has $1,000,000 in capital. I believe that $100,000 per year in income is considered approximately equivalent. (And I'm certainly not in that bracket of either income or capital...)

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Re: Response to neonchameleon....
[info]ozarque
2006-01-12 07:01 pm UTC (link)
I'm trying -- since I'm well aware that I'm horrendously ignorant about money -- but I'm sorry, I just can't see it. It seems to me that the choices available to someone earning a salary of $100,000 a year bear almost no resemblance at all to those available to someone who has a million dollars in capital. Unless what you're thinking of is a person whose capital provides him or her with an income of $100,000 a year -- but that's very different from having a salary of the same size.

I'm willing to be enlightened on this.

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Re: Response to neonchameleon....
[info]neonchameleon
2006-01-13 12:34 am UTC (link)
I don't know why they are supposed to equate... I think it's that if you've got a salary of $100,000 per year, becoming a millionaire is pretty much a matter of choice as necessary expenses don't rise too much with income. (I believe the revulsion shown to Forbes is partly that if you follow the editorial line, income does match expenditure and you won't gain capital.

(And a 10% return on capital under current conditions is pretty good).

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Re: Response to neonchameleon.... off-topic, and belated
[info]ozarque
2006-01-16 03:25 pm UTC (link)
This is off-topic, but I haven't been able to find the comment that it should be posted with, and I do want to get this message to you.

Looking at the exchange we had about the deleted post, I'm sure that I didn't make it clear to you that your comments -- your being "harsh," as you put it -- were not the reason I had to delete the post. It was something else entirely, and I want to be certain that you know that.

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Re: Response....
(Anonymous)
2007-11-14 07:37 pm UTC (link)
I'm not rich and I read Forbes (http://www.forbes.com). Just my 2 cents.

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Question by your forum
(Anonymous)
2007-01-24 10:05 pm UTC (link)
Hello! I want to know, where you have a section for advertising at a forum? Or it is not present? I have not found it.
P.S. Are you see storm in Europe? It's a horror...

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Standing with Quakers and Pleased to Meet You
[info]shirad
2007-03-28 02:56 pm UTC (link)
Hello,

I've just found your blog while reading The Quaker Economist, looking for something of a general Quaker ideology of money (not presuming that Dr. Powelson can be used as such, however).

I hope you do not mind my adding you to my friends list so that once I (hopefully) do have more time to read, I can come back and read some of your posts?
Many Thanks,
Shira (The Universal HealthCare Cantaora)

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Re: Standing with Quakers and Pleased to Meet You ... response to shirad...
[info]ozarque
2007-03-28 03:39 pm UTC (link)
Greetings, and welcome. I'm pleased to be part of your friends list.

I do need to let you know that -- because my own friends list is over the LJ maximum limit -- I won't be able to add you in return. I'm sorry about that.

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Re: Standing with Quakers and Pleased to Meet You ... response to shirad...
[info]shirad
2007-03-28 04:59 pm UTC (link)
No worries -I never knew that LJ had a friends-list maximum! I'm quite pleased to make your acquaintance and read your writings (as I have time, with my apologies that it will not be as often as I like for a while, as I'm working on my thesis and hoping it does not turn out to require my writing a second thesis -I don't think I've got the persistence you had!),

Warm Regards,
shira

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quakers
[info]deludedian
2008-01-20 04:52 pm UTC (link)
I have always had a tremendous respect for the quakers - thanks for the link, I didn't realise that there was a quakers economist - you learn something new everyday.


Charity cds

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[info]treenamurit
2008-07-22 12:25 am UTC (link)
very interesting link, thanks for it.

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Response to treenamurit...
[info]ozarque
2008-07-22 02:00 pm UTC (link)
You're most welcome.

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