Distribution of wealth

Does a Michelin starred chef work harder than a McDonald's cook? Probably not. Given the same ingredients, however, one creates with equal effort an item of far greater value than the other.

All work is not equal, effort does not equate to quality of output.

Which articles woud those be?

Have they factored in how beneficial to an economy wealthy people relocating elsewhere?

After all, I don't doubt that a lot of teh UKs income inequality figures get massivley skewed by super rich people relocating to London rather than stay at home.

They were given the same opportunities in life and the banker made the most of them. The cleaner didn't. I went to a state school and I know several people who now work in the finance industry, as lawyers, as doctors, as accountants..they didn't inherit their wealth, they worked for it. If you spend your entire life in a minimum wage job in a country full of opportunity such as the UK then no doubt you didn't make the effort to better yourself, to learn new skills and to make yourself valuable to potential employers. No one forced your hypothetical cleaner to have two children, that was their choice, and hell they would have benefited massively from the generosity of the social security system through free education, healthcare and benefits for their children. The tax contributions made on a minimum wage wouldn't come close to paying for all this, so she would have no doubt been subsidized by the people that did make a success of themselves and contribute far more to the system than they take out. Fair? Easily..

Also to your earlier ridiculous point about CEO pay, you don't get paid based on how "hard" you work (as if the number of hours is the only measure of work), you are paid on how much your work is worth to the company. The good CEO being worth 100 times more to the company than a regular employee is quite plausible.

It may take 'work' in a technical sense but not in a productive, meaningful sense. You buy somebody else's share of the business from them and watch the dividends roll in. It's more like a form of saving than real investment. Absolutely nothing productive has occurred. Besides, most investments are virtually risk free - and why should risk necessarily be rewarded anyway?

Most investments are risk free? There's a risk associated with everything financial. Investments go up as well as down.

Risk is rewarded otherwise nobody would invest.

http://www.businesszone.co.uk/blogs/colin-willman/federation-small-businesses039-fsb-member-services-blog/business-start-ups-why-d

I bet the majority of those that failed had a perfectly acceptable business model and forecast. But it's the way if the world. Most won't make it.

Investing in start ups is risky sure, that's why they provide large returns on investment. If you have a lot of capital to begin with though you don't need to invest in high risk high return investments.

Even larger investments are risky .

Remember, Organisations like banks invest on behalf of smaller investors.

If you diversify your investments and only invest in low risk investments then the risk is minimal. Invest enough money and you only need the smallest return and you've got yourself a nice income.

I fully agree. But you'd need to have a large capital outlay for a nice income on low risk investments.

but to following your logic, investors should only invest in low risk, established companies. That's likely to reduce new technologies. Do you think an investor would've taken a gamble on companies like Apple or Microsoft or the Internet or space travel for ordinary people.

There's some fabulously wealthy people out there worth Billions. I hate to break it to you but they don't have lots of bank accounts with lots of zeros attached to the balance. There assets are worth a lot. assets that are business's that employ people.

I know their money is not just sat there doing nothing, lots of it is circulating around the economy. There is no reason why money would not continue to flow around the economy if wealth was wasn't so extremely highly concentrated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj2LA8rEqQ4
Brilliant video.

A McDonald's cook does far more good to the economy and the world than a Michelin starred Chef - who serves only an elite section of the population that we shouldn't concern ourselves with anyway.

One of the main problems is that much of the wealth is concentrated into a small minority and retain that wealth throughout the generations and thus there offspring have far better chances in life through in particular private school through virtue of their ancestors.

For example, in the UK, a CEO can expect to earn 50-150 times as much money as the lowest paid worker in his company. Does the CEO work 100 times harder than the average-salaried employee? Of course not - so why does he deserve that pay scale?

Or, let's take another example. The richest people in our country earn money through investments, which require absolutely no work at all - they simply place bets on the hard work of other people. This nets them insane profits, yet they don't have to work for that money themselves. And, if those investments go wrong as they did in 2008, the government bails them out.

There are bankers and businessmen living extravagant lifestyles in London while other families are struggling to feed themselves. Inequality and poverty are scandals of the 21st century.

Just tell me this guys. Why is it fair a retired banker earns more than cleaner who works 12 hour days on zero hour contracts for her whole life while trying to support her two kids? Why is it fair that the richest merely inherit their wealth while the rest of us work for it?

It's not fair. The working class are the wealth creators and the investors are the wealth holders - it isn't fair and it needs to change.

Income and wealth are completely different things. Besides, we know from academic research that heavily concentrated wealth is bad for business and investment and that the idea that the rich flee as soon as tax goes up is largely just a myth.

A McDonald's cook does far more good to the economy and the world than a Michelin starred Chef - who serves only an elite section of the population that we shouldn't concern ourselves with anyway.

This post simply is untrue. The banker had rich parents and was privately educated (generally).