T-Mobile doesn’t seem content, so it decided to do what most of the carriers should have done a long time ago. T-Mobile is breaking the wireless carrier contract hegemony and offering pure service without the BS. For ANYONE who can count, this makes the decision to go with T-Mobile as brainless a decision,,,,,,,,,,,
T-Mobile may actually profit where other companies take a loss by eliminating the expensive and risk subsidy/contract trap.
Who ultimately benefits?
First, you, the consumer. Thsi competition is very good. The second beneficiary also happens to be the one that started this mess in the first place, Google! You see, Google is a data company, and data companies need bandwidth.
1. Wealth – the pre-eminent factor, for in a capitalistic society, capital reigns supreme. Remember, what is being preached is far from materialism, and those who confuse the pursuit of capital as materialism are erring on the side of ignorance. I consistently remind my children what money is for. When you ask many people lower on the socio-economic ladder what money is for, you frequently get in response “to buy things”. This mentality and belief leads to a circular situation wherein the lack of understanding of the nature of money leads to an inherent lack of it. Capital in its purest essence – or to put it more simply, money – is used as a proxy for labor. As a result, the more capital that you have, the less you have to toil in your own labor. Once you have reached the point of equilibrium where your capital is equivalent to your labor, you no longer have to work to retain your current standard of living. All capital above this point of equilibrium can then be used to purchase the labor (hence the livelihoods) of others. The more capital you have, the more control you have over your own destiny, and then over the destiny of others. Capital is defined as property, eg. Cash, income producing assets (bonds, businesses, rental properties, mortgage notes, royalty generating intellectual property, etc.), appreciating assets (eg. Stocks, real estate, businesses, readily tradable antiquities, etc.), and to a much lesser extent in terms of value, depreciating assets (cars, jewelry, clothing, etc.). Wealth is defined as total assets (capital) minus all liabilities (debts and obligations). With these explicit definitions, we can now see the pursuit of wealth not as a material pursuit, but as a means of gaining control over the economy (notice I stated “the” economy not “our” economy), the political system, the social structure of the country and the futures of ourselves, our children, and others.
2. Income – provides the liquidity needed for day-to-day operations as well as long term planning. Income is often quoted as the primary determinant of class and is often mistaken as a proxy for wealth. This is patently false, for one can have high income and very little wealth, and this situation very, very prevalent. High income equates to social prestige, but is not nearly as accurate a determinate of power, influence or socio-economic standing as wealth is.
3. Income source – where income is derived dictates the autonomy, independence and reliability of that income. For instance, income derived from a salaried job is less secure and desirable (you can always get fired from your job, or become incapacitated due to illness) than income derived from one’s own business which is less secure and desirable (you ca become incapacitated due to illness in smaller companies, where the markets can move against you in larger businesses) then income from a broadly diversified portfolio of investments (which could easily include your own business) since it is virtually impossible to get fired, suffer financial distress from incapacitation, or have an adverse move in markets significantly damage your financial standing.
4. Occupation – while less important from an economic perspective, this factor is significant in the social purview. What you do often transcends how much you make or even how much you have in many social circles. For instance, a untenured college professor can easily make less then a prison corrections officer that works overtime, yet the college professor is deemed to be of higher social standing, even if he rents subsidized housing from his school/employer (aka social welfare, popularly thought to be only the province of the lower classes) while the corrections officer can not only own his own residence in the same neighborhood, but also own the one next to it for investment income.
5. Education – Academic education has traditionally been seen as the key to success in many circles. I have come to the conclusion that it is far from the key to ultimate success, but it is an important, if not necessary, component. This issue boils down to cause and effect. It is obvious that many successful people are well educated, but is that because successful families get educations or educations lead to successful families. Regardless of the chronological linkage of the occurrences, highly educated individuals are viewed with more prestige then lower educated individuals, and this prestige leads to a higher social standing. There is also significant evidence that academic education does have a connection to improved economic standing as well, but it is much more complex than popular opinion would have many to believe.
6. Dwelling area – basically, you are where you live. Very few powerful or wealthy people live in the ghetto unless their power is solely or derived from the economic underground (eg. Drugs, prostitution, etc.) that is forced to fly under the radar of mainstream social circles, which by default forces them into the lower classes. Conversely, very few powerless poor people live in the Gold Coast areas unless they are there as live in domestic help. People of like means tend to cluster together, so dwelling area has a high correlation to class.
7. Housing – highly correlated to class due to the fact that home ownership is a class marker. So is the value and size of the home. Most of those on the very low end of the SES scale do not own their own homes, while most on the very high end tend to own several homes.
Class consciousness (affiliations) – The ability to actually know where you stand and influence others in the group that you stand is a class marker, as well as the ability to know where others stand in relation to your standing and influence. Your affiliations help label your class strata. For instance, being a leader of local PTA, and being aware of that positions influence puts you in a higher standing than no group membership or just belonging to the local bowling team. The same goes to membership to a Fortune 500 or multinational not-for-profit board as compared to PTA membership. The more you know about class and class affiliation, chances are the higher you will be in the class standing.
As excerpted from Super Brokers form to push Super Broken products to make those with High Net Worth Super Broke
Social Mobility: Unlike the Jefferson’s, We’re moving on down!
Social class is defined (on this blog) as the amount of control one has over one’s socio-economic environment. It is much more than money, although money is a large component. For instance, Barack Obama is in a higher class than Robert DeNiro or Michael Jackson, although Robert DeNiro and Michael Jackson are most likely wealthier (although that is quite debatable after taking into consideration the value of Obama’s campaign contribution list and membership database from his social networking site!). Obama’s higher class stems from his ability to exert more control over his socio-economic environment. The factors that this author uses to determine class combine (with the associated weights) to create a “socioeconomic index”:
| Socioeconomic Index= | (Occupation X 12) + (Income source X12) + (Income X 7) + (Wealth X 14) +(Education X 7) + (Dwelling area X 15) + (Class Consciousness X 7) +(Housing X 12) |
There is a handy dandy BoomBustBlog class model (based loosely upon the Index of Status Charcteristics) available for download for anyone interested in delving into this further. See boombustblog.com_social_class_model v.7.3 156.00 Kb.
The accompanying graphic easily encapsulates a material portion of the piece, basically illustrating how the public school system serves as a mass indoctrination machine which has close to nothing in common with true education, knowledge dissemination, creativity or value creation.
The post secondary and private school systems are simply continuations of the same, but worse yet, charge exorbitant fees for said injustice. Many poor victim either saves up a half lifetime of savings or worse yet goes into insolvency skirting debt to purchase a so-called education (which as described above is nothing of the sort) that is represented buy a piece of paper known as a diploma that is literally not worth the paper it is written on.
What Is This Really About?
Eventually, the principal bitched and complained because she felt the program was becoming too successful and the kids were learning too much outside of the city’s core curriculum – in other words they were learning how to be successful instead of learning toa) slave for someone else or b) perpetuate the groupthink of the status quo oligarchs until said groupthink can no longer support the current oligarchical regime and the whole thing comes tumbling down(this was 2007,fastforward to 2012 and this is where we are now).