Secular Talk: London Mayor: Rich People Are Oppressed

[WhoIsNumberNone]

London mayor Boris Johnson wants to help one of London's oppressed minority groups in every way possible. He compared the U.K's super rich to the homeless and to Irish travelers in an article in The Telegraph, saying that they are just another battered minority that needs someone to speak up for them. To him, these ultra-wealthy individuals are bullied incessantly by the less fortunate, the government, even the archbishop of Canterbury, and this behavior must stop...

[IrishAyes]

1. What?????

If he thinks they're oppressed now, wait until he gets an eyeful of the oligarchy-provoked revolution(s) on the way. He'll long for these good old days then.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

2. +1000

I've been saying the same kind of thing since OWS.

[oldbanjo]

6. Very true

[sakabatou]

3. Johnson's living in another usniverse

[WhoIsNumberNone]

4. Most right wingers are

I hear goatees are all the rage there...

[erpowers]

5. Something Else The Speaker Should Have Said

The speaker in the video put out some very interesting facts. However, I think he left out something very important. Rich people who own businesses need workers to make, market, and sell their products. If it were not for workers entrepreneurs would not be able to become rich because most entrepreneurs cannot, by themselves, make enough of their products to sell to all those who want to buy the products.

Most entrepreneurs who created a business did not work 24 hours a day 7 days a week to produce, market, and sell their product becoming vastly wealthy and then decided to give the money to lazy people who do not work. Yes, they may have come up with an idea or a design, but they, in most cases, needed workers in order to sell their products. Workers are not given handouts; they are paid because they do a job.

[WhoIsNumberNone]

7. Not to mention buy their products

I mean, how many TVs can one rich person buy?

[Igel]

8. My first real job was with a small company.

It started with the owner working. Then managing. Then hiring a manager. He had a job, even without being the full-time "fat-cat" owner.

His workers didn't come up with the idea. They were fungible. I was hired not because of my great skill but because I could pick up things and put them in boxes. If not for his idea, probably there'd be fewer jobs. Did he originate the product? No. But he improved it enough to drive his competition out of business. His product was more expensive. It was also better.

Once he was off the production floor he spent most of his time trying to figure out what the clients needed to keep them happy, working out logistics to make deliveries and production more efficient, and figuring out what non-clients needed to make them into clients.

As I worked there winter breaks and summer vacations for 3 years I kept noticing more and more clients. Every year there'd be another employee. Not just a different one. An additional one. The company was inevitably approaching the point of diminishing returns. At some point the delivery area was too large to be manageable.

The guy worked like a dog. His idea. His implementation. His ideas caused expansion. Some of the employees were competent enough to be the manager, but none had the education or know-how or ambition to spend most of their time trying to drum up more business. I only spoke with him when I was interviewed for the job. The rest of the time he was an eminence gris in the background. Then again, I could call on Friday and say I had break in two weeks and he'd say to show up when I could. I let him employees have vacations. And proved useful.

Not only did he come up with the jobs in his company, but he expanded the range of offerings and increased sales for a number of suppliers.

My only real complaint was about the manager. She was one of the early employees, kept on out of loyalty to a worker. But the place was always barely ahead of deliveries when she was in charge. We'd hold the truck for the last run of a shipment. On a good day we might finish up last thing on Monday for what had to be shipped Tuesday a.m. But when she was on vacation for two weeks we'd typically get 3-4 days ahead of delivery schedule. Nobody liked her, but strictly speaking she provided a full-time job or two. Without her in the way, we'd quickly have gotten weeks ahead of schedule and the owner would have realized we were actually overstaffed.

[erpowers]

9. He Still Needed Workers

Yes, he may have come up with the idea, but if he did not have workers he would not have been able to move his product no matter how good of a product he created, or how many clients he brought to his business. He did not by himself come up with the idea, pack the packages, and ship them to the clients.

[fasttense]

13. I know of several people who started successful businesses when they were on unemployment.

It does NOT take a rich snob, with a trust fund to create a good business and create jobs.

The problem comes in when they expand past a certain size. Then they are in competition with mega international corporations. These Corporations then make them a deal they can not refuse. They either sell off their business to the corporation for millions or the corporation spends millions to put them out of business. The uber rich swallow up all their competition and actually REDUCE jobs, NOT create jobs.

When two stores become one store the number of jobs are reduced by half. By buying up other businesses corporations reduce jobs. A bunch of Mom and Pop stores provides more jobs than a corporation buying up all those stores and wiping out the competition.

[blkmusclmachine]

10. Bwahahaha

[valerief]

11. Is this another crackhead mayor? nt

[Crowman1979]

12. Oh great, another Tory twat!

Hopefully he will be out of office in the near future.

[DeSwiss]

14. Fortunately for Old Bor' there, I've got just the ticket for his problems:

- As you can see, Marie's mention of cake for the poor got her some assistance with her oppressed mouth.

Hang-on, we'll see what we can come up with to accommodate you.....

K&R