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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#161

Post by mordae »

inglor_cz wrote: post #132
dmitriid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more money you have the luckier you are.

Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to und…

Yes. Having extra cash means you can eat out (saves 1+ hour a day), buy an automated vacuum, dishwasher (extra 30 minutes a day), get a car or use taxi (1-2 hours, depending on location), hire a personal assistant (better organization, hard to estimate), get better medical care (less pain = better concentration)...

You also have access to specialists. You can hire a lawyer, people to help you with research, people to help you present yourself on social media.

In the end, you can extend your day and improve your productivity significantly, resulting in more hours available "to get lucky" effectively. I mean, being lucky when washing dishes does not help a lot, but being lucky when shopping for business opportunities...

Re: Just Be Rich

#162

Post by camillomiller »

As usual, this entire argument, both the PG essay and the response, in focusing basically only on Silicon Valley and the US. The real difference that nobody seem to notice is that 1982 rich people from Pg’s data were locally rich. Tech has enable a class of globally reach people, whose riches, even tho they live and prosper in Silicon Valley, is the product of global unregulated resources extraction. Unlike oil and real estate, which were already quite regulated and fundamentally local (not limited to the country of the rich man, in case of multinationals, but definitely localized), tech prospers on the borderless nature of the Internet, and the borderless nature of media.

Re: Just Be Rich

#163

Post by sai_c »

reader_mode wrote: post #82
ironman1478 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Poverty doesn't just cause immediate issues it can also cause long term issues that can effect not only adults, but the children who grew up in that environment. This is largely because families in poverty tend to also abuse their kids at higher rates (this includes mental abuse) or at least foster an extremely unhealthy environment due to the stress it causes. So even a generation later it can be difficult for…

I grew up in a family of 7 (4 younger siblings), during civil war, father was into gamling and drinking, mother was unemployed and constantly on the verge of a mental breakdown (understandable given the conditions she was living in). To paint the picture, I have vivid memories of vomiting a boiled onion I ate after not eating for days (I think I was arround 5 years old). And we were poor well into my early 20s untill…

This is probably not the place to say the following, but I just have to.

Reading your comment nearly made me cry, because it (strikingly) reminded me of my own story. You are not alone.

Keep your head up (as you seem to always have done), and if you can, make peace with the past and your parents. This took me a LOT of time, but it helped me.

Thank you for sharing your story.

Re: Just Be Rich

#165

Post by kortilla »

The author posts some charts about wealth, then writes:

> Paul paints a rosy picture but doesn't mention that incomes for lower and middle-class families have fallen since the 80s.

If you don’t know the difference between wealth and income, maybe you shouldn’t be blogging about these topics.

This is not meant to be some low-brow dismissal. How can you have any serious discussion when two completely different things are used interchangeably?

P.S. a chart that shows shares each class’s percentage shares of total wealth is pointless. It doesn’t actually tell you if the middle class is getting poorer. The middle class and lower class can have a constant inflation adjusted wealth (or even wealth outpacing inflation) and this chart will still look bad if we have more people moving into the upper class.

Re: Just Be Rich

#166

Post by inglor_cz »

mordae wrote: post #161
inglor_cz wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to und…

Yes. Having extra cash means you can eat out (saves 1+ hour a day), buy an automated vacuum, dishwasher (extra 30 minutes a day), get a car or use taxi (1-2 hours, depending on location), hire a personal assistant (better organization, hard to estimate), get better medical care (less pain = better concentration)... You also have access to specialists. You can hire a lawyer, people to help you with research, people to…

Oh yes, but depending on where you live, these effects kick in way under the "being rich" threshold. (America with its strange and expensive healthcare being an outlier in the developed world, I understand that.)

What I was speaking about was the simplistic "more of X, more of Y" approach of the OP, though I understand that it was mostly sarcastic in nature.

I would even argue that there is a sweet spot where you have enough money to live comfortably, but not enough to be a promising scam/crime target.

Re: Just Be Rich

#167

Post by comp_throw7 »

teraku wrote: post #140
zachkatz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/7/3/making-normal-n...

But there is nothing about pricing in there. I mean, I'll be honest and share that I didn't know the housing regulations are so f-ed up in the US, but they are pretty complicated everywhere. What drives housing prices is a deflation of living goods coupled with an inflation of luxury goods which makes finding safe investments for large sums of money with relatively high yields hard to find. This is driven by an incre…

Many things driving housing pricing (nothing is monocausal!), but the main thing driving housing pricing in the locations where people constantly talk about housing pricing (SFBA, NYC, London, etc) are restrictions on building. That's basically it. Housing is a relatively poor investment vehicle compared to broad equity market indices; the only reason you'd want exposure as a "rich person" to it is for diversification, and for that you wouldn't really care to buy in overinflated markets with significant political risks.

Re: Just Be Rich

#168

Post by RHSeeger »

raspasov wrote: post #92
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.

You seem to be making the assumption that "A is easier if B" implies "A is impossible without B", which is not what is being said. I guess the question is, of the new wealthy, how many came from a situation of already having access to wealth (either directly or by proxy)?

Re: Just Be Rich

#169

Post by fer »

inglor_cz wrote: post #132
dmitriid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more money you have the luckier you are.

Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to und…

> Are you sure? From what I see around me, people who have money are a constant target of other people who want to drop their beaks into it, so to say.

I'd say that's largely a new-rich problem. People born in rich families generally have the wealth management groomed in. I'm far from being rich, but that's something I'll teach my kids, as I believe one major driving factor in poor families staying poor is lack of education in economy and finance.

Re: Just Be Rich

#170

Post by kortilla »

d_silin wrote: post #7

A lot of people who are just as smart and motived as Elon Musk or Steve Jobs will never be able to start their own companies and get rich. Because they have family obligations that take priority. Because they live outside high-income countries. Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. Because they may have made a crippling mistake in their pasts that now prev…

So? Is this somehow related to the fact that getting rich by creating these companies is now an option? Just because you can think of 99 reasons people can’t do this doesn’t mean app people shouldn’t.
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