[Dani]

Keith,

A very negative outlook on that. You make it sound like anytime you recieve money you are actually depriving someone of something. taking it from them without providing anything.

A 'dollar' is simply an expression of value. Currency was brought into existence to make trading goods easier and you then trade what you wanted to who you wanted instead of having to find someone with what you wanted and who wanted what you had.

e.g. before if I made chairs and I wanted food, I would have to find someone with food who wanted a chair.

In this scenario I am trading the value of my chair for the same value of food.

Now I find anyone who wants a chair, get their money, and then go find someone with food to sell and give them the money I earned with my chair.

This is the same transaction, the value of the chair in food, only it is made easier to accomplish by money existing.

In neither case was anything taken without equal value being returned. I recieved money for my chair, the person gave me their money and recieved the chair.

Every -honest- wealthy person recieves their money by providing value to others. How much value has Bill Gates given the world with windows? As much as people whine about him and MS, can you imagine a world still using 086 IBM pcs and DOS? We wouldn't be here on this forum right now if it wasn't for rich people.

What about our oil Barons everyone hates so much. Next time you get into your car, train, taxi, or buy food from the supermarket that was imported on ships, transported by trucks or trains or type on your refined petrol keyboard while looking at your refined petrol computer monitor. Ask yourself how much value they have actually brought to your life.

Yes there are dishonest people who lie about the value you are getting when you spend your cash. But they are most certainly not exclusively rich. I think you will find the overwhelming majority of criminals for example are actually poor people who want -something for nothing-.

As long as a nation is creating real value they will continue to create, and circulate money without inflation. Inflation sets in when a country prints more money than it is actually producing value to back up.

You are also assuming that when I recieve x dollars form x person that I sit on them and do nothing thus taking it out of the system and giving it to me not another person. But that money will actually be very quickly handed on by that rich person to someone else.

They may buy a new car, giving jobs to hundreds of people. Or a house, or food, or clothes etc etc. The dollar they 'took' from someone else will soon get given to a third person for the value they are offering.

The porer you are, the less you spend, the less you give to your fellow man. You are more selfish (for want of a better word) when you are poor because you give less to other people.

Money is only scarce for those people who are not providing value. If you want more money, it's very simple. Provide more value than you are currently getting paid for.

Most people do the bare minimum at work and expect a pay rise. How can you call yourself honest and then turn around and expect more value to be given to you than you are giving out???

If you want the pay rise you need to be giving more value than they are paying you for. This single idea has netted me a minimum 15% pay raise every year up to more than 50% some years.

After ten years in IT when comparing the salaries of my University classmates to my own I was earning literally 5-8 times their salaries. I wasn't any smarter than them, in fact many of them are better programmers than me. The difference is that I am constantly looking for ways to add value to my company over an above what they are paying me to do.

Even here in Japan where you -don't- get pay raises except tiny incremental ones, I will be getting at least 15% this year because I am adding so much extra value to my company.

Very simply, it is more expensive for me to leave, than to give me my pay rise. Value is the key to wealth. If you are not providing value to your fellow man, you cant hope to get rich.

If you provide value, then money is effectively limitless. Because value is limitless and can be infinitely produced, and money is simply a reflection of value.

To someones comment earlier about the rich being snobs.

There two sides to this. First the fake rich, the people who are up to their eyeballs in debt trying to look they are rich. These people are so afraid of being poor that they will often try to lord it over poor people to make themselves feel like they aren't. These snobs however are still poor people.

The truly wealthy, simply cannot spend much time with poor people unless they want to become poor again. Their outlooks on life are completely different. The poor want to be pessimistic and complain about how hard life is. The wealthy want to be optomisitic and talk about new ideas and goals.

Hanging out with poor people is emotionally draining for a wealthy person. I am not even significantly wealthy and I find it draining hanging out with poor minded people because the negativity is just so strong around them.

Hanging out with wealthy people is intimidating for poor. The wealthy don't agree with them that they are hard done by and that there is no chance for a little guy in the world. etc. They will have to answer questions like - Why don't you...? Have you tried....? To which the answer always seems to be 'I can't, I can't I F^%$N CANT'

I use this last example because my highschool friends I would firmly place in the 'poor' class. They all work dead end jobs, have low incomes and ♥♥♥♥♥ adn wine constantly about how hard life is. Whenever I offer to help them lay out a plan to show them how to improve their lives they respond with very agressive 'I can't's until I give up.

I can't hang out with them anymore either because I feel depressed whenever I am with them because I want to talk abotu what I can do, not what I can't do.

So wealthy MUST seperate themselves from the chronically poor unless they want to become poor. The poor blame the rich, but really they don't want a rich person hanging out with them either. Because they get intimidated and angry that they wont pander to their self pity.