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Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.
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Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value other people getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts? I really enjoy going to the theater and seeing performances of all kind, just as I like tech/business advances. I want people to enhance the arts as well as the sciences. I acknowledge the idea of focusing on marketability and "ROI" for someone choosing their own path... However, when providing "access"…
> Serious question, I'm wondering, why you, personally, value other people getting MBA/Engineering degrees over arts? Because they increase GDP, and thereby pay back their education in the form of income taxes, and increase the available wealth for everyone.
First off - I really dislike it when people deal with blocks of people as if they are a monolith. As if all white people have some innate starting advantage, all black people have some disadvantage, etc. It’s a brutally racist mentality that is very common. Secondly, poverty is not a lack of money or material wealth. That is part of it and is definitely a symptom. But actual poverty is a culture and a set of habits t…
All white people do have some innate starting advantage due to their whiteness. That isn't to say they don't also have disadvantages too, for instance poverty, disability etc. Having white skin though gives you an advantage in a system that prioritises whiteness over other colours. Its not racist to discuss this.
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At low levels, which aren't taxed, it's not going to affect anything. At high levels, like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically. You're creating a class of people with indestructible inherited wealth that never have to work, that only have to collect interest and rent on the backs of everyone else. That's what inheritance tax and gift taxes…
>You're creating a class of people with indestructible inherited wealth that never have to work, that only have to collect interest and rent on the backs of everyone else. That wealth is invested in profitable ventures that either create benefits in the system (assuming rational actors) or 2) lose value due to poor choices. Capital is rewarded because the investors are taking opportunity cost risks that advance the s…
It's not investing in "profitable ventures" that "create benefits", it's tied up in businesses they inherited, it's squirreled away in tax havens, it's spent on lavish properties, club memberships, expensive cars, and tuition for their children. If you're lucky a tiny fraction of that trickles down in the form of scholarships or charity work.
Then that money generates enough of a return that their kids can inherit billions in turn and the cycle repeats.
There's a point at which you have so much money that you will no longer ever have to work, but your kids will never have to work, and neither will their kids. It has such a heavy gravitational pull that in the long run there's no way you can lose.
If you have even half competent people managing your money an estate worth $10B can pretty much exist forever and grow at or beyond the rate of inflation even when extravagantly luxurious cost of living expenses are deducted. A million dollar a month allowance won't put a dent in this money.
My guess is this is of interest to us because it sounds an awful lot like UBI. But, I think the key difference is that the money is connected to parents, who presumably have a standard for how it's spent. If E.J. ended up spending it on drugs or other perceived vices, there's a chance the money might be cut off. The point of UBI is that it is 100% no-strings-attached, which has a different dynamic. That dynamic is on…
The point is that the average person doesn't get $28000 a year. A landlord won't raise the rent of the author just because he has more money.
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> like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically. Zero-sum is one perspective, but not one that I subscribe to. Does your neighbor having $10b of stuff make you better or worse off than if than if there's $10b of stuff at the bottom of the ocean?
It does when that neighbor buys my apartment building and hikes my rent.
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I sometimes think about debt the same way. In college I scraped by on ramen noodles and avoided doing anything that cost money. For example I wanted to go camping but didn't have say, $100 for a tent. If I had just put the $100 on my credit card, I'd probably have happy memories with friends, but now I can't get that experience back for any price.
When I was in college I was broke one summer and not keen on working as I was heavily invested in producing music (which wasn't paying at the time). I took a £500 credit card and then immediately blew it on a weekend at the Edinburgh fringe festival. I spent 3 weeks eating plain white rice afterwards until I started working because I had to as that was all I had left at home. Though I'm now interested in FIRE and hav…
I think this is really insightful. The difference between being truly poor and just being a broke college student is that while a broke student may not have any money on their pocket, they can always call it quits if things just too hard.* Makes me think more carefully when people claim "hey I know what it's like to be poor too - I had no money at college!"
*assuming they're not also truly poor.
Does anyone have recommendations on how to overcome the resentment I feel against people like the author? I am jealous and frustrated by their advantage, but that opinion is purely negative and doesn't help me at all.
Mine is basically... The world is decidedly unfair. Even though some people, e.g. trust fund kids, are dealt pocket aces at birth, you can't be angered because you'd be grateful it if happened to you. However, being in this class comes with obligations. These people should be aware of this obligation and they should be striving to produce great things with their means. If they don't, then they don't deserve their advantages, they should illicit frustration, and they should be maligned.
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At low levels, which aren't taxed, it's not going to affect anything. At high levels, like giving your kid ten billion dollars, you're making it impractical or impossible for others to advance economically. You're creating a class of people with indestructible inherited wealth that never have to work, that only have to collect interest and rent on the backs of everyone else. That's what inheritance tax and gift taxes…
I don't think so, this certainly has never been effective at that. I'd say that historically billion dollars fortunes got diluted between the 10 children then the next generation, some of whom might actually burn it stupidly very quickly. Otherwise, it's diluted by wars and calamity. However, there are no major disaster in the past decades and the number of children per family have dropped dramatically. It surely bre…
Throughout history and across most cultures, it was usually the first born son who got the father's legacy and the lion's share of the wealth. It's why it was so important for wives ( especially of the powerful and wealthy ) to produce a male heir. Sometimes it was a matter of life or death. We all know of king henry's wives.
"When Anne failed to quickly produce a male heir, her only son being stillborn, the King grew tired of her, annulled their marriage, and a plot was hatched by Thomas Cromwell to execute her."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wives_of_King_Henry_VI...
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Consider that even well-known black movie stars occasionally get the "shopping while black" treatment. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/19/forest-whitaker-fa... Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away.
And yet I bet that 95%+ of American white males would easily, easily, easily make the trade between 'shopping while black' and $28,000/year. I actually wonder if you took the poorest 50% of white males and asked them what poor treatment they would suffer for $28,000/year tax-free - how much would they willing endure? I dare to say quite a lot. >Having even absurd amounts of money doesn't make bias just go away. And h…