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RE: Bill Gates makes a case for consumption taxes rather than income taxes
I find it interesting that you mention your friend's occupation, but not your own. Also, is inheritance somehow immoral in your opinion?
At the time I was a Bakery Manager for Cinnabon, performing many hours of physical labor, 10-18 a day, and my wife was a cook at Round Table Pizza, making minimum wage to keep up with high volume food orders. And no, I do not find inheritance immoral. When I received my own I paid tax for receiving it and considered it both repayment for the government benefits I have personally needed to use and a pay it forward to people less fortunate.
Edit Also my wealthy former friend is not living on inheritance, his parents are still alive
Okay, you write:
But you seem to neglect that there's a reason there's such an occupational inequality. For if there wasn't, you could easily drop that job and become a grant writer yourself, like your friend. A grant writer requires at least a bachelor's degree, whereas a bakery manager requires at least a high school diploma + maybe some experience. Even then, the average salary for a grant writer is about $44k while the average salary for $49k. This implies that your friend might have gotten some further education than a bachelor's degree, or that she was lucky (i.e. took advantage of an opportunity).
So why do you have to work "harder" to earn less? Because you didn't invest as much time into your education and/or didn't realize or take advantage of an opportunity (which usually means didn't take a risk).
In this case, my friend learned to write grants from her parents who had earned the education. Grant writers do not need any academic certification, they simply need to know where to look for grants and how to write the proposals (it's actually a relatively unskilled job).
A bakery manager doesn't even require a high-school diploma, but it does require years of practical experience (typically 5+) and subjects the worker to high-risk conditions such as heat exhaustion, burns, chemical exposure, fatigue, and a myriad of other health risks.
The difference in the reward is only in "perceived value". In our society we assign work that we perceive as being more valuable (College Education, White-collar, Executive ...) a higher value than we do for work we perceive as having no value (food workers, cleaning staff, cashiers ...). This inequality is so societally ingrained that many people assume the guy in a suit is more valuable than the one in Blue jeans and a torn t-shirt, regardless of their respective skills.
While many people are happy to devalue jobs based on opinion, I seriously doubt that just anyone could handle all of the requirements that must be met to "flip burgers". I've actually had executives in several of the kitchens I've worked and very few of them even knew how to use the industries most common machines.
Even if there was a disparity in skill set, why should my skills be worth any more or less than yours? I still had to learn the skill, practice and hone it to be competitive in the market I worked in.
BTW I am currently a Senior in my Bachelor's of Business Administration with multiple recommendations to Cal-Poly Pomona for a Master's with a focus in Entrepreneurial management and workplace equality