The rich are getting richer.With the Occupy Wall Street movement making the 99%/1% claim, it’s a good time to take a quick look at the old adage that the rich really are getting richer. And yes, this does have a connection to the world of Internet marketing. Here’s what you need to know:

The 99% Argument

For those who don’t happen to be familiar with the Occupy Wall Street Movement (mostly those who don’t live in the United States – I know we have a number of readers from outside the country), the movement is loosely based on the Arab Spring and Tea Party movements before them. In essence, the argument is that the richest 1% of the world’s people are getting richer while the poorest 99% (the rest of us) are getting poorer.

It Is True – To a Point

Okay, first the bad news: it is 100% true that those who do ordinary jobs are falling further and further behind. In real terms, salaries today have declined greatly and the amount of purchasing power that a minimum wage worker has today has not kept up with inflation.

Trillions to Bail Out Wall Street

The fact is that trillions of dollars have been poured into bailing out Wall Street and the nation’s leading banks, with the US government giving them $800 billion in TARP money and the Federal Reserve lending a whopping $7.7 trillion to those same banks which they then loaned back to the Federal Government, turning a profit in the billions. All of this was reported recently by Bloomberg News and is not in dispute.

The Banks Continue to Give Bonuses

The fact is as well that the banks have continued to hand out massive bonuses to people who basically took money at an effective zero interest rate (.1%) and loaned it at around 3% interest, raking in more than $10 billion in profits. Again, this is not in dispute. Now, you may be wondering what all this has to do with Internet marketing. Well I’ll tell you…

You Can Still Get Ahead

Yes, the rich are getting richer. Yes, the system is broken and corrupt and all that. These things are not going to be changed by you or me. It’s going to take fundamental changes in the way our government does its job (like actually getting members of Congress to talk to each other and make a deal for starters) to make things change. Nor is this blog suddenly becoming a political blog.
However, since we are an internet marketing/SEO blog, I thought I’d share a bit of good news: Even today, the American Dream isn’t dead. If you work hard and do the right things, you can turn a healthy profit online. While you may never be one of those gagillionaires who seem to be in the top 1%, you can at least get to the top 10% if you play your cards right.

How to Make it to the 10%

In essence, you can make it to that 10% by having an entrepreneurial spirit and building a business of your own. Yes, you’ll have to work hard. Yes, you’ll probably need to hire an SEO specialist like us. However, you’ll also find that you can become of those rich getting richer stories, because once you get to the top, things do start to snowball.
So don’t despair too much. Our country may be going through some problems, but America is still one of the great places to live in the world and you can still make money online if you are smart and don’t fixate too much on the unfairness of the “rich getting richer” thing.