Speaker Myron Golden argues that 'income inequality' is better understood as 'value-added inequality': income is an effect of the value one creates for others. He explains that anyone can increase income by becoming more valuable—through continuous learning, acquiring marketable skills, spotting unmet needs, and serving others—illustrated with examples (founders sold a video platform for $1.6 billion) and personal biography (raised poor, contracted polio, no college degree). The talk ends with practical prescriptions (read more, attend seminars, observe service gaps) and a call to subscribe/share.
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Hello. My friend Myron golden here, and I want to talk to you about something that's really been talked about a lot on the news lately, and that is income inequality, which is a really a funny term when you think about it. And I don't mean funny haha, I mean just funny, peculiar income inequality. I want you to think about how ridiculous the term is, and then I want to show you how to solve the ridiculousness of income inequality in your life. So when you think of income inequality, they talk about income, politicians talk about income. You know, we're coming up on an election year, so everybody wants to have these issues they want to talk about. But income doesn't exist in a vacuum. And I think that's the first thing we have to understand is that income doesn't exist in a vacuum. And income is an effect of something. It's not a cause. People act like it's a cause. And I think one of the biggest problems in our society today is people get causes confused with effects and effect confused with causes. But income is the result of something. Income is not just something that happens because the government says, okay, I dub you with more income, but income is the result of value. And the reason we have income inequality. The reason we have income.
Inequality. I'm going to use a different marker here, but the reason we have income inequality.
Is because we have value.
Added.
Inequality.
So you say, Myron, what do you mean value added inequality? Well, income, income is the result of creating value for other people. And if you don't create value for other people, then you don't get to have any income. If you create a little bit of value, then you get to have a little bit of income. And if you create a lot of value, then you get to create a lot of income. Now, I know people would argue that people who start companies or people who are CEOs of companies.
They don't create as much value as the person actually doing the work. But actually they do create more value than the person doing the work because they're the one who created the opportunity for the person to do the work in the first place. So you have to understand that things aren't always as they seem. And I'm here to let you know that you can that any individual can increase their income by increasing the value that they add to other people's lives or that they add into the marketplace. You know, we live in a free market society here in the United States of America. And in a free market society, you can add as much value as you'd like to. Who would have thought a couple of years ago that a couple of guys who said, well, we're going to allow you to put video on the Internet so that you can, people can watch you. We're going to create a television station or a channel, if you will, a television station on the Internet where everybody can have their own channel. Who would have thought that those guys, when they came up with that idea back in 2006, that within a few short years their company would be bought by Google for $1.6 billion. Why did that happen? Because they took something that was missing in the marketplace. They created some value there. They created a lot of value for a lot of people because apparently a lot of people wanted to get their mess out. Whether their message was a song they wanted to sing, a lesson they wanted to teach, or whether they wanted to show somebody that they could do something that was value that was added and that value that they added added to their income. One of the things that I believe that everybody who is poor, and by the way, I can talk to poor people because I used to be poor. I used to be pitiful poor. You say, myron, what's pitiful poor? That's when you're so poor, the poor people feel sorry for you. And I used to be so poor that it was really hard for me to figure out which bill I was going to pay. And one of the problems with the way politicians talk about poverty is they talk about poverty as if it is stagnant or even they talk about financial status as if it is. As if it is somehow static. Whatever financial situation you are born into, you have to be in that financial situation your entire life. No. I was born the second of seven brothers to hard working poor parents who taught us the value of work. And they taught us the value of learning and they taught us the value of treating people good. And as a direct result of that, my life was, and my six brothers lives, we were able to create a better experience of life than our parents. Our parents were able to create a better experience of life than their parents. And our children are already on the path to creating a better experience of life than we were able to do. Why? Because it's all about adding value. So if you want to solve income inequality, here's what you have to do. You have to teach people how to add more value. And the way you add more value is by becoming more valuable. I'm not talking about more valuable as a person. I'm not saying, you know, rich people are more valuable as a person than poor people, but they are more valuable to society. People who contribute, I should say, are more valuable to society than people who don't contribute. People who contribute a lot are more valuable to society than people who contribute a little. And what you have to do, if you want to change your financial state in life, you've got to get to the point where you add more value. In fact, I like to think of money as certificates of value. So if I take a dollar bill out of my wallet, what this dollar bill does is this dollar bill proves to the people that I desire services from that I deserve to have that service because I serve somebody else. And they gave me this certificate of service. They gave me this certificate of value added. Every dollar that you have in your pocket, every dollar that you have in your bank account is a certificate that shows and demonstrates that you've added value to other people. And that's why you take a bunch of pieces of paper and you put them together. And those pieces of paper may have cost a dollar and fifty cents, but you put some information in there that teaches a lesson, and now you can sell it as a book. And that book might sell for $20. Why? It's not because the paper itself, you're not buying just the paper, you're buying the value that was added to that paper. So I'm here to let you know that no matter what your state in life, you can become more valuable. And the way you become more valuable is by learning to add more value to other people. Increased earning comes from increased learning. And when I say increased learning, I'm not just talking about learning from the educational system. The educational system does a really good job at teaching people how to get a job. But the educational system doesn't necessarily do a good job of teaching people how to think if you really want to, and how to add value if you really want to add more value. Learn some skills that are valuable to other people. And when you provide that value, it will automatically increase your income. And I'm going to end with this part of the story. I'm going to tell you a couple things that you can do to add more value. You know, I was born in a segregated hospital in Tampa, Florida. I was in that hospital. I contracted polio before I was a year old. So I grew up walking with a brace on my leg. I did well in school all the way through the third grade. And it went downhill from the third grade all the way up until the time I graduated. I don't have a college degree, but yet, and Still, I learned how to add value to other people's lives and I've become a best selling author and I have trained people and coached business owners and to the point where they're making millions and even tens of millions of dollars. And the reason that was able to take place is because I didn't stop learning when I got out of school. So here's what you can do if you desire to increase your income. Always be learning. Spend more time reading than you do watching television. That's one of the things that you can do. Another thing that you can do is attend more seminars than you do sporting events that will change your life. Then begin to pay attention. Pay attention to what. Pay attention to what is missing in the area of service every time you go somewhere. And if you will find out where the holes are in other people's lives and the value that they're seeking, then that will make you more valuable in the marketplace and you can increase your income. Don't allow somebody to insult you by making you believe that the only way your life can get better is if they make it better. The only way your life can truly get better is if you do something about it. If you enjoyed this video, by all means, go ahead and subscribe to our videos. Like it? And leave a comment below. Feel free to use it on your blog. Feel free to use it to share it on your Facebook page. But I trust that this video has added value to your life and I look forward to seeing you on the next video.
