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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#91

Post by babesh »

The creation and adoption of new technology has created a lot of new wealth. This has increased inequality just as it has done in the past. This creates power disparity and envy.

The creation and adoption of new technology has decreased the wealth of people obsoleted by new technology. Additionally, our system has grown many oligopolies including healthcare, education, utilities, etc... that increasingly leech off the system.

Poverty not only makes it harder to become wealthy but can also be debilitating. Some poverty has been alleviated by the social system but poverty's effect is lives long.

It is possible to retrain people who have been obsoleted by technology but in many cases people will end up with a lower pay than before.

I don't trust either side (this writer or Paul Graham) to come up with good solutions because both are partisan. The wealth redistributors focus on redistribution but actually cause wealth to be destroyed since they disincentize the creation of wealth for all. The other side does not spend enough energy on eliminating misery and dysfunction.

Re: Just Be Rich

#92

Post by raspasov »

throwaway127f09 wrote: post #62

Recently I made the oldest startup mistake in the book: Exercising too many ISOs and incurring the AMT to the tune of $350,000. I have talked to probably a dozen various professionals - accountants, lawyers, wealth managers, liquidity providers, etc - and they all give the exact same advice: 1. Borrow from family or friends. 2. Leverage existing assets (mortgage, stocks) to pay it. Every one of them has mentioned tho…

"it's much easier to become wealthy if you're already wealthy or have access to wealth"

If this was true in reality, then why are there so many new wealthy people that didn't come from wealth? [1] How do you define "access to wealth"?

[1] My definition of wealth: having more money than you can spend in a lifetime.

Re: Just Be Rich

#93

Post by seibelj »

o_p wrote: post #76
baron816 wrote: post #58

Inequality by itself is not a bad thing. Let's start from there. If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic. Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to ceme…

Economy is closer to a zero-sum game, after all theres limited resources in a period of time. We cannot be all rich because we cannot all own the capital, if we did, who does the work? To invest you need workers, to produce you need consumers, to rent you need renter, etc. Then the rich class exist because theres a poor class, a zero-sum game.

You can be rich, invest, and still work. You don’t magically putter around all day once you make money. Or at least all the self-made wealthy I know are still actively productive.

Re: Just Be Rich

#94

Post by solveit »

d_silin wrote: post #70
mulcahey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the portion of people without those restrictions increasing or decreasing? How would you measure it?

In the US at least, it is definitely decreasing. Income inequality is growing, as the original essay noted.

Increasing income inequality does not necessarily imply that. In fact, the US poverty rate has been more or less stable for the past 50 years[1]. And the worldwide poverty rate is dropping like a stone.

[1] To be clear, I very much view this as a failure given how much richer the US has become in the same period. Nevertheless, it is not true (or at least not clear) that the portion of people who are able to actualize their potential is falling.

Re: Just Be Rich

#95

Post by Fomite »

Barrin92 wrote: post #49

I'm just gonna quote what I think is a very important part from the Graham piece itself >" People who don't look any deeper than the Gini coefficient look back on the world of 1982 as the good old days, because those who got rich then didn't get as rich. But if you dig into how they got rich, the old days don't look so good. In 1982, 84% of the richest 100 people got rich by inheritance, extracting natural resources,…

I've also seen this referred to as guillotine protection taxes.

Re: Just Be Rich

#96

Post by dv_dt »

missedthecue wrote: post #69
donnythecroc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is all down to the basic human need of a home. In the 70s and 80s even 90s someone on a teacher's salary could own their own home in a major world city - say London. Now, literally zero chance. Because homes have become an asset class and the rich can outbid regular people so they are pushed out. That's the problem. I couldn't care less how many billionaires there are if regular people can afford a decent…

Homes in the US today are much larger than they were in the 1970s. About 2x as large! Per square foot, the average home is actually cheaper today than it was then, inflation adjusted, and this isn't even factoring in the modern 2.2% mortgage rates vs the 13% mortgage rates of those days.

Housing built small in the 1960's is still going for unaffordable for most rates in my area ...

Re: Just Be Rich

#97

Post by onion2k »

Barrin92 wrote: post #49

I'm just gonna quote what I think is a very important part from the Graham piece itself >" People who don't look any deeper than the Gini coefficient look back on the world of 1982 as the good old days, because those who got rich then didn't get as rich. But if you dig into how they got rich, the old days don't look so good. In 1982, 84% of the richest 100 people got rich by inheritance, extracting natural resources,…

I suspect that in 100 years time getting rich through Silicon Valley style tech companies will be a lot less common. Tech will have been throughly commoditized, it'll be cheap to build things, and most of the knowledge will have been disseminated around the world. Anyone in a small city will be able to hire enough developer talent to compete.

We're still near the beginning of the internet revolution. We're in the era where the inventors of things can get rich through their own talents. In every other industry that has undergone a technological leap forwards the same thing has happened until other people have bought up their talent and ideas and the inventors no longer make the big money. Just look at agriculture, manufacturing, publishing, news, automotive, aerospace, computing... They all saw the same cycle. The internet won't be different.

Re: Just Be Rich

#98

Post by faeyanpiraat »

dignick wrote: post #90
baron816 wrote: post #58

Inequality by itself is not a bad thing. Let's start from there. If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic. Inequality is only bad if you're in a zero-sum game. The rich do have the power to extract rents and "rig the system" to ceme…

> If 90% of the population had a (sustainable) lifestyle of current dollar millionaires, and the remaining 10% had a (sustainable) lifestyle of dollar billionaires, there would be lots of inequality, but it wouldn't be problematic. You are looking at this from a world where that isn’t the case. Money would be worth less in that scenario, and that 10% owns 99% of the wealth, which is still going to cause problems.

Yes but OP meant the 90% of people would get access to opportunities like the millionaires today.

So even if inequality would be wild, nobody would worry about “issues of the poor”, like food or healthcare bills.

Re: Just Be Rich

#99

Post by solveit »

Barrin92 wrote: post #49

I'm just gonna quote what I think is a very important part from the Graham piece itself >" People who don't look any deeper than the Gini coefficient look back on the world of 1982 as the good old days, because those who got rich then didn't get as rich. But if you dig into how they got rich, the old days don't look so good. In 1982, 84% of the richest 100 people got rich by inheritance, extracting natural resources,…

> they have a Protestant zealotry associated with their money

To be clear, you are comparing the mindset of new money to the pious protestants who held overwhelming sway over US society for almost two centuries? Just who do you think the old money is?

Re: Just Be Rich

#100

Post by ac29 »

donnythecroc wrote: post #64
Barrin92 wrote: post #49

I'm just gonna quote what I think is a very important part from the Graham piece itself >" People who don't look any deeper than the Gini coefficient look back on the world of 1982 as the good old days, because those who got rich then didn't get as rich. But if you dig into how they got rich, the old days don't look so good. In 1982, 84% of the richest 100 people got rich by inheritance, extracting natural resources,…

The problem is all down to the basic human need of a home. In the 70s and 80s even 90s someone on a teacher's salary could own their own home in a major world city - say London. Now, literally zero chance. Because homes have become an asset class and the rich can outbid regular people so they are pushed out. That's the problem. I couldn't care less how many billionaires there are if regular people can afford a decent…

World population crossed 4B in the 1970s and 5B in the 1980s, now we are about to cross 8B in the next few years. I agree with your point about real estate becoming more heavily securitized, as well as being used as a method to escape capital controls. But, you cant ignore the fact that there are a lot more people both rich and working class competing for those major world city houses than there were 40 or 50 years ago.
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