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Do you know Peter Cancro? Peter is 69 years old and someone to be admired, someone who started out very ordinary and in one transaction became a new US billionaire, around $4.9 billion netted from selling his business.
I greatly admire such people, I wish I was as ambitious, a risk taker and committed to success. Sure he had help along the way, notably his high school football coach who was also a banker, but he started this journey at age 14 and took the big risk at age 17.
That’s a long journey from age 17 to 69 and quite a retirement your plan with a $8 billion dollar sale for part of the business you built.
And yet, there are many who resent his success, his multi-billion dollar net worth. Why I’m not sure. I bet there are 20,000 workers in 4000 shops across the Country and beyond who appreciate it.
I hope he has many years to enjoy his success in any way he likes. Hey, I could go for a “Jersey Mike’s” sub now, hold the hot peppers though.
I’d never been to Jersey MIkes. After working hard in the yard this morning, Chrissy told me that I would love to take her to lunch 🥰. Out of the blue she said we should try Jersey Mike’s. I figured if you’ve been to one sub shop, you’ve pretty much been to them all; I was wrong. That may have been the best Philly Cheesesteak sandwich I ever had, outside of Philly of course.
I like their turkey club. I’m going to try the cheesesteak though.
Extreme inequality hurts all of us, even the rich. Studies have shown that the more
unequal a society is the lower life expectancy they have, even the most wealthy have.
A partial list of why this is so:
* These societies tend to force workers to be further away from their jobs to find affordable housing, meaning they drive more, leading to more carnage on highways.
* It makes health care more expensive for someone to access and don’t offer sick pay
for many. This means people don’t go to doctors, potentially spreading deadly diseases.
Or they go in when they really have bad health that is harder to treat, tying up resources
that won’t be available for someone having a heart attack or other serious problem
* It allows powerful corporations to dump toxic pollution with impunity. True, this mostly
affects poorer people, but we all breath some polluted air & drink polluted water
CEOs are already swelled headed egotists enough without repeating the elitist myths that
they somehow singlehandedly “create thousands of jobs”. A typical CEO claims they are solely responsible for a company’s success.
But as soon it goes South, suddenly they discover there are others working there, and those others are solely responsible for a company’s woes. And those other poor souls pay the price with mass layoffs.
The other factor in the healthcare realm is those that can’t afford healthcare still get sick and injured and the hospital writes the expense off but then raises rates to recoup the losses. This results in those that do have health insurance paying higher premiums.
Also if there is bifurcated wealth in a country sure the wealthy can prop up the economy to some degree. The poor mostly limits their spending to fulfilling their needs necessary to survive, ie have little to no disposable income. In this type of economy there eventually are not enough wealthy citizens spending to grow the economy. You need a strong middle class with larger number of people doing well enough to buy more than the essentials. This can be accomplished by more of the poor being elevated to the middle class. If this occurs companies have more people to sell to which would result in greater profits which then makes the wealth wealthier.
I summary then, helping the poor earn more increases the wealth of the rich. It doesn’t have to be an I win, you lose society, but everyone wins.