Business Owner Or Conceived in the Right Uterus?

Today I had lunch with a group of friends as well as an acquaintance. I call her that because we don't get along very well. I grew up on a hog farm at the height of Reaganomics. I know what it's like to struggle and do everything you're "supposed" to do and still not get ahead. This woman is just the opposite. She never had to shovel snow because her house had heated sidewalks. Until she met me (at the age of 20), she had never seen a car without remote keyless entry. She had everything, from tuition to spending money paid for when she went to college. Upon (barely) graduating, she told her father she wanted nothing to do with the family business and went out to try to make her way in the world. She didn't stay at the same job for more than three months. Within eighteen months she was working at the family business and within six months had inherited it, now her favorite way to start any sentence is, "As a business owner..." At any rate, she's a friend of my girlfriend so I tolerate being around her as best I can, but today she went too far, and I finally said something.

My acquaintance (let's call her Melissa) had asked for two lemon wedges in her drink, not just one. When the waitress brought them to our table, sure enough, there was only one lemon wedge in her drink. Now, instead of saying what any sane person would say which is, "Excuse me, I asked for two lemon wedges," Melissa proceeds to break this poor girl down. She spent five solid minutes berating and degrading her. She goes beyond rude, beyond mean, and rockets right into just cruel. "Are you learning impaired? All I wanted was two lemon wedges, and you couldn't even do that right..." and on and on and on. This girl was in tears. I mean, people were staring. I finally stepped between the two of them, walked our waitress back to the kitchen, gave her $50 and took back a drink with the coveted second lemon wedge.

As I sat down, I asked her if that was necessary. She looked at me genuinely confused; she had no idea how cruel she had been. When I told her there was no reason to act the way she did, especially considering that girl had to endure that humiliation for all of $2.13 an hour, she sputtered. "It's not my fault she's too lazy to get a real job. People like that always complain about their situation but never want to work hard enough or take the initiative to improve themselves. Now, as a business owner..."

"OK, stop right there," I said. That was it. I'd had all I could stands and I couldn't stands no more. "You are not a business owner."

"What would you call me, then?" she asked, snidely.

I didn't miss a beat, "Conceived in the right uterus."

She stared at me blankly, "Am I wrong? What qualifications do you have that merit your owning a business? There is absolutely no reason you should be where you're at in life other than, but by the Grace of God, who your parents are. A person who wins the lottery has more to do with their own success than you do - they had to choose the numbers, you didn't have to do that much and you have absolutely no right to look down on anyone."

A study done by (I believe) Alan Krueger shows the odds of a child born in the bottom ten percent of income earners in the United States has as much chance of reaching the top ten percent of earners as a father who is 5'6" having a son who is 6'1". Does it happen? Sure, but I wouldn't bet on it. If things keep up, the only way to be a business owner will be to be conceived in the right uterus making our country an aristocracy and rendering every sacrifice our Founding Fathers ever made worthless. How do we make America once again the "Land of Opportunity" it once was?

 

Many people that have it like that are too spoiled/stupid to realize it. as for making us the land of opportunity again... just my opinion, but go back to pre WWI tarrifs as a start. (that may strike a whole other conversation now).

 

I cannot stand people who belittle waiters, good or bad. "As a business owner" myself, I don't always remember everything my clients want and I occasionally make mistakes. But, I do not allow my clientele to chastise me. I never claimed to be Jesus and will not be expected to be perfect. I treat all those who serve me as equals and never tip less than 20%. While I understand the concept of motivation, I believe positive feedback does more good than negative feedback.

 

my scooby-doo senses are kicking into over drive right now... I'm beginning to think "nek07" and "keynes" are the exact same person... two new users to this website who are essentially "story telling" the exact same way... conspiracy theory there... looks like a solid guess though...

why don't you go read the other thread and see my reply for that "story" just like yours... literally the exact same answer, your waitress would be a millionaire with my simple solution that could be done today... by her or the politicians... and then you would have millionaires all over the place being dicks to everyone...

http://www.politicalforum.com/showthread.php?t=440610&p=1065754624#post1065754624

just click the link above to find the solution for all your worries over the poor americans who only put one lemon wedge in the drink... it'll save you $50 next time... not to mention it will get them a million dollars instead, thats a far better tip...

 

Your "friend," who isn't a friend, is a very shallow person, obviously. Unfortunately, the attitude she exhibits isn't confined to overgrown debutantes. Not by a long shot.

Also, no offense, but to me the OP reads like a piece of fiction which only exists to set up the point you're trying to make in the last paragraph.

 

1st not every business owner is rich, most barely make 6 figures and yeah some of them are (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s, but not hardly most. By the way this would be a lot more believable if it had not followed by about a week a TV movie that featured nearly the exact same incident.

 

The uterus is only the begining of the story. A wealthy person, especially one who got that way by his intelligence, will raise his children in a way that prepares them for success in ways that a poor and especially a dull person never does.

 

If you're doing everything you're "supposed" to do and you're not getting ahead, then you're not doing everything you're supposed to do, by definition. Your probably mostly likely stems from others telling you what you are supposed to do, instead of taking the time do your own research and understand the market trends and find out what skills people value more than others.

One thing that has never changed, regardless of whether you're living in Reaganomics or Obamanomics, individuals’ earnings are directly related to their productivity. If you want to make anything of yourself, you simply need to engage in more voluntary transactions of worth. Wealthy people are not wealthy because they have more money; it is because they have greater productivity. Different incomes, thus, reflect different productivity levels.

Now, I really don't care much for personal stories, but while we are sharing anecdotes, let me share one of my own:

I'm a minority and I grew up poor. I attended school and got my BBA in Finance & Economics, went on to get my Series 3, 7, and 63 now I'm working on my Masters and hopefully my CFA, while still working for one of the largest investment banks in the world. According to most people, one would think I don't exist, but my story is only possible I've managed to learn from the many mistakes I've made throughout my life. I've also learned what skills were marketable (Accounting, Finance, Engineering, etc.) and what skills were completely worthless (Law, Public Affairs, Criminal Justice, History African American studies). So, I reject the notion that we need to make America the "Land of Opportunity" it once was, because many of the success stories that we hear (and continue to hear) are not a byproduct of living anywhere else.

I don't know what study you are referring to, but the study I've found from Thomas A. Hirschl and Mark R. Rank says that the probability of making it to the Top1% is 1:9, which are pretty good odds, and believable considering in the age we are living in where anyone can just make a social networking app, have it discovered by a Tech giant and make millions.

 

I believe the French nobility had a similar opinion - especially shortly before the Revolution.

 

That is a mathematical impossibility.

 

I'm not sure where you learned statistics, but the probability is merely the number of favorable outcomes that you want divided by the number of possible outcomes. The only way you can come up with a "mathematical impossibility" when it comes to probability is if you get a result lower than 0 and higher than 1.

 

Yep, sorry for the rudeness, but I believe the OP is entirely fabricated.

On the off chance it isn't a complete hoax of typical LW BS, because my work for 30 years has involved serving small businesses in varying capacities, will clear some things up.

First, small business owners such as the father in this case have generally -earned- the right to dispose of their business as they see fit, both by undertaking huge amounts of personal risk and by providing valuable services, goods, donations, employment, and often civic leadership within their communities. So if someone doesn't like their choice of heir? Too bad so sad, suck it up and find something else to complain about. Or better yet, start your own business, and when you have made the kinds of sacrifices over decades that whomever started the business in question, THEN you might have grounds for complaint, but probably not even then.

Second, there are nearly 18 million small businesses in the US, with all manner and shape of ownership structures and transition planning. Most heirs of small businesses I've ever worked with worked for the business for up to decades, often earning a below market wage and doing far more than 40 hours a week of work. Yet isn't it interesting that when we hear these LW originated stories, it's always the "do-nothing lucky sperm" heir, the drug addict silver spoon, the con artist, the faceless hedge fund manager, the Madoff or Enron? very little coverage of how the real business climate in the US actually is and works. THIS IS PURPOSEFUL, TO KEEP YOU IN THE DARK. Is it working? Are you falling for it?

 

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand my hypothesis was correct. Make the comment that people are poor only because of their own actions and people head Bob..but suggest someone is wealthy simply because of their circumstances and people lose their minds.

 

Biatches come in all shapes, colors, sizes and socioeconomic classes. Nothing special about it. By the same token, not all heirs are this way, and not all businesses are owned by heirs.

 

Not only is this wrong (assuming we are talking about a capitalist economic system), but it has been known to be wrong for over 200 years. You claim to be educated in economics, yet it seems you have never heard of the Law of Rent (formulated by David Ricardo), which is one of the most fundamental laws of economics.

In other words, in a capitalist economic system, income is not related to productivity. Give a dog enough money (or land) and he can out earn (using the word “earn” very loosely) a heart surgeon.

So Gunther's original inheritance was $106 million, but is now $372 million, for a difference of $266 million. So, all you have to do now is explain how Gunther's (remember Gunther is a German Shepard) “productivity” is responsible for that $266 million of income since his inheritance? Also, remember, this is Gunther's income and productivity we are talking about, so leave his trustees out of this conversation; In other words, don't deflect.

 

The study you found is not relevant. We all know that there is rotation in and out of the top 1%, with much of that rotation coming from the top 10%. I don't think anyone cares that out of a group of rich people they occasionally swap in and out of the top spot. What this thread is about is the chances of someone from the bottom making it to the top, and that, I assure you, is nowhere near the 1:9 probability your misleading study shows.

 

Lol. If 1 in 9 become millionaires, many neighbors and coworkers have some splainin' to do.

 

Just a couple of quick observations....

-This story sounds like pure fabrication. You gave her $50 ? I realize the woman in your "story" was very rude ( which happens daily to waitstaff), but certainly $10 or $20 would have more than made up for that transgression and made her very happy. $50 is big shooter territory, and would logically ONLY be given by someone at least sniffing the 1%.

-Being roughly in that income bracket, I can say that no one I know in that income bracket is overly concerned about the notion of " you didn't earn that". People come about their income positioning in many different ways, and delineating between the earners and the inheritors is an exercise in futility. The underlying vitriol that you show towards the well off is typically reserved for people that are distinctly not well off.

-Having been a waiter in college, I have witnessed similar rudeness, countless times, from customers from a wide variety of income classes. To pretend like this is the sole or even primary domain of the wealthy is preposterous.

-The conversation that you described where she asked what you would call her and without missing a beat you replied "conceived in the uterus" just strikes me as prose as opposed to actual heat of the moment conversation/ confrontation.

 

Your opinion.

Feel free to commission your study with your sampling method and your calcuations and let me know how that goes.

 

With such prominent sources from Wikipedia and dogtime.com, I'm guessing you're expecting me to take your assertions seriously, especially since you are sourcing information you clearly don't understand.

 

Are you sure you want to be attached to a woman who would remain friends with the above lady?

 

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. This one says it all.

 

I'm not sure where you learned statistics, or mathematics for that matter. You see you have
stated the probability as the ration 1:9 which is the equivalent of 0.11 . Now if you took large enough sample that probability would result in 11% which is significantly higher than 1%. Now it is quite possible that those in the top 1% is always changing with 11% of the population moving through the top 1% at some point in their life. But that isn't what you claimed. So unless you can show how 11=1 your claim is not mathematically possible.

 

You're confused. The number of possible events in probability exist between the number 0 and 1, not 0% and 1%. 1 is merely expressed in the form of a decimal, and is the same as saying 100%; the same is stated for .11 and 11%. You get these numbers by simply multiplying by 100. Probability is always expressed in terms of a decimal or percent, and the outcome of successful can only be a number greater than or equal to 0 or less than or equal to 1.

Without contributing towards your confusion, I'll explain it in a way you can understand. For example, what is the probability of flipping a coin and it landing on heads? Obviously, 0.50. Since there are only two possible outcomes, heads and tails, the probability of the opposite happening is also 0.50. You don't need to be a math whiz to know that the outcome for both is .5, which is the same as saying 50%. The point of all this, which you seemed to have glossed over, is that all possible events must equal to 1 (50% chance landing on heads, and 50% chance landing on tails). You cannot have more than a 100% chance of something happening or less than a 0 percent chance of something happening. That is what Jonas referred to as a "mathematical impossibility," and anyone who has taken basic statistics before knows that this response doesn't make sense.

I didn't realize the extent of your confusion until I read this statement. 11% or .11 does not equal 1, and no one ever claimed this. 11% or .11 is merely the probability of one possible outcome in a series of possible outcomes: The probability of making it in the top 1%, or P(Top 1%) = .11 as a statistician would express it. That means the probability of not making it to the Top 1% is .89, or P(Not Top 1%) = 1 - P(Top 1%) or 1 - 0.11. Again, those are just a range of possible outcomes. There are other possible outcomes the statisticians in this study may have accounted for, such as the probability of remaining in the bottom 40% or only making the Top 10% or 20%. Regardless, whatever possible outcomes calculated, they MUST equal 1 or 100%. P(Top 1%) = 0.11. 0.11 is merely just one of those possible outcomes.

I understand people may not be involved in work where there is no quantitative analysis, but there are ways of sounding like an outsider without sounding completely uninformed.

 

Today I had lunch with my girlfriend's aunt (Emily) and cousin (Emily's daughter Kate). I always enjoying talking with Emily very much because she is a true business owner in every sense of the word. She put herself through cosmotology school waiting tables (always tips 30%) and when she graduated she had only one client: a shut in for whom she did her hair once every six weeks. This went on for several months when she finally moved into a nursing home, at which time she asked if Emily would continue to do her hair. She did. Every six weeks she came to the nursing home and did her hair. Everybody loved her, (believe me, it's difficult not to) and soon she began coming to the nursing home to do hair every month, then every two weeks, then every month. Eventually the children of the women in the nursing home began asking her to do their hair. Now she has two salons and almost thirty employees. She still goes to the nursing home once a week to do hair.

Her daughter Kate will be graduating cosmotology school in a few weeks so at lunch today I asked what she planned on doing after graduation. "Well," she siad. "I feel really lucky, I'm in a better position than a lot of the other girls there...I mean I already have a job so that's good." Emily seemed surprised, "Oh, really with who?" Kate laughed, a little nervously, but Emily asked again, "No, seriously, I didn't even know you'd applied anywhere." You could tell Kate never thought she would have to explain where she would be working. "Well, you...obviously." Emily shook her head in surprise. "I'm full up..." I won't bore you with the details of the entire conversation but Emily essentially told her daughter, "I don't have room for you and even if I did, you have no clients so what good would you be to me anyway? When I retire you can buy me out...I'm not doing you any favors by, well...doing you any favors."

I almost proposed to Emily on the spot!