Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Well, I had to chuckle watching Oprah yesterday, when she had all of these folks on talking about how America isn’t a classless society, and that the “American Dream” that any little boy or girl can grow up to be President (or better still a CEO who resigns for $210M) is dead.

Doesn’t Oprah read this blog? I posted an article a while back about how the gap between the RICH and the POOR (in Canada at least) is definitely widening. Oprah’s glances of shock and surprise about how 1% of Americans control 40% of the wealth and that these rich folk, live lives that most Americans would never dream of, were classic “Theatre Fou”. She had a Johnson & Johnson heir who makes films (and is supported by his family) about how this Class Gap exists, and Oprah asked, “Do you think you’ll get cut out of the will for this?”, I almost fell off my couch laughing. At least this heir was honest enough to say, “I hope not”.

The fact that Oprah was talking about this was the “Coup de Grace” on this, one of the richest women in America and most powerful, talking about how folks can’t get ahead. She did it, yet she laments others can’t? There is a dichotomy there, but I am not sure what it is. Is she saying she was “lucky”, and that she is an exception? Not sure.

Truth: There are incredibly rich People in Canada and America, who have never had to work a day in their lives to “earn” it. CEO’s in most fortune 500 companies make more in 1 day than a great deal of average households do all year. The working poor are increasing as a percentage of the total population.

I think most folks “get” this, but I didn’t really get the sense that their was a resolution to the expose that Oprah was doing, it was simply exposing that their is a Class Society in America (wish that was the Daily Double question).

How can you change it? Give opportunities to the less fortunate? Make sure our education system gives kids opportunities, instead of frustrating them and causing them to drop out? Make Universities available and affordable for EVERYONE? These are a start, but not pious rants about how TERRIBLE it is, that is for sure (much like this one). There is your dichotomy from me (he complains yet does not offer any concrete solutions). I should run for office.

In my list of sites that I think are interesting (and that I read myself most every day) is a site by John Chow called, “John Chow Dot Com” (yes very original, ha ha), in it John talks about a lot of things, Cars, Family, but mostly about the business of being an Internet Dot Com Mogul (his words not mine, in fact he has a book out). John isn’t apologetic that he tries to make money, and this site in specific is an experiment to see how successful he can be doing this, but I still enjoy reading it most every day. He talks about how much money he makes from advertising on his site (which I thought was TABOO in this community), but it is very helpful for neophytes like me to have heart that one day I might make a tenth of what he makes.

I would suggest having a look at the site, and adding his feedburner to your RSS reader (which is how I keep up with him). There is a lot of content put out, and in fact he has a famous post now about whacky new Urinals in Vancouver, have a read it’s interesting stuff.