Many people say "The rich do this, the rich do that." Who are the rich?
The use of vague and ill defined words is useful for only two purposes, making noise, and lying. For this reason, the word rich should be defined, or not used as a description for the classification of people. Rich could be defined in terms of U.S.Dollars, but the value of a dollar is vague, and changes with time. I intend to define rich in ways such that the word rich will be useful as a description for the classification of people.
On a related matter I will propose definitions for high income, very high income, low income, very low income and ordinary income.
If one is to measure, well, anything really* ,one must use a unit of measure. A unit of measure, should be well defined, and well known. The definition of the unit of measure should be accessible to the ordinary individual. For my proposed units of measure, I plan to use as the unit, the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman, which is well known, and is adjusted by congress to mitigate the ravages of inflation. In fact, congress may adjust their salaries for any reason which is useful as well, because I want congress to be able to change my definitions with respect to the value of the dollar..
I propose that the very rich are those individuals whose net worth is greater than 10,000 times the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman. I chose one thousand because it is easy to remember and makes very rich a rather inassesable target.
Then rich are those individuals whose net worth is greater than 100 times the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
People of ordinary wealth are those individuals whose net worth is greater than the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
Income needs its own definition. A careful definition of income runs to a thousand pages or more I have been told.
For this pamphlet, I define income as wages plus net gain from the trade of assets received in a defined period of 365 or 366 days.
I propose that very high income be defined as income 4 times greater than the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
I propose that high income be defined as income 2 times greater than the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
I propose that low income be defined as income less than one half the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
I propose that very low income be defined as income less than one quarter the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
I define ordinary income as income more than one half and less then twice the annual salary of the ordinary U.S. congressman.
Who Makes the Rules?