Just Be Rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Be Rich

#201

Post by kjcharles » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:22 AM UTC

jackdh wrote: post #172

kjcharles wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the problem is the supply of housing hasn't kept up with that demand due to artificial limits placed on the market. Single-family zoning has made it illegal to build more of the dense housing that's needed in cities today. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/18/upshot/cities...

To play devils advocate, surely removing the artifical limits won't help in the long run as the city will just continue to spraw until it hits natural limits?

Most American and European cities are significantly less dense than their Asian counterparts. There's a long way to go before they reach any natural limits.

Re: Just Be Rich

#202

Post by stdbrouw » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:22 AM UTC

saddlerustle wrote: post #103

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…

Pretty much every mainstream economist put the blame for this squarely on the massively increased regulation of the housing market since the 70s causing a massive decrease in the amount of new construction, not wealth itself.

That's simply not true. Economists who try to explain the housing crisis have pointed to increased regulation, cheap credit leading to an asset bubble, speculation, ill-advised tax cuts for homeowners, NIMBYism (not by government but by current residents), irrational buy vs. rent decisions, changing preferences for city vs. suburb, relaxed downpayment requirements, changing lifestyles and demographics with bachelors and asset-rich elderly people taking up a lot of housing stock, population increases, stricter building codes and demands for comfort, the rise of short-term rentals for tourism, reluctance by governments and builders to look too far into the future in case demand collapses, and so on, and so on. If you'd have to pick one factor, I'd have to guess it's easy money leading people to buy more expensive homes than they ought to, which drives up prices, but it probably depends a lot from country to country.

Re: Just Be Rich

#203

Post by mLuby » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

ramblerman wrote: post #35

Great article, I wasn't aware the share of the middle class had dropped so significantly. I think there is also another factor that plays a role in the de-democratization of wealth. In the olden days you could be the biggest fish in your pond, but as that pond grows it's becoming more and more a winner takes all ocean. > As more occupations become scalable, jobs that were previously stable are becoming risky. Telehea…

Economics aside, let's not forget that personal relationships are inherently unscalable.

Sure we can get "5 personalized minutes" with that superstar doctor or fitness instructor, but maybe we're missing out on more human connections with average locals.

Re: Just Be Rich

#204

Post by xupybd » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:23 AM UTC

young_unixer wrote: post #45

xupybd wrote: post #29

Absolute wealth has increased as the wealth gap increased. Standards of living for everyone have gotten better, but there is still an issue. Wealth is not just about your buying power it's also about your social status and power. A lot more status and power is concentrated with the few. This is a big problem if you care about individual freedoms. They tend to erode very quickly with a concentration of power.

But it would also be against individual freedom to limit the amount of social status and power one can non-violently attain. I think the limit should be put when that power and status becomes physical violence.

I agree to a point. Wealth redistribution is a huge problem for individual freedom, but extreme wealth in equality is a big problem too.

My solution would be to let things fail. No more government bail outs. Let people take big risks but make sure it falls on them. Prevent Monopolies and keep everyone honest.

Re: Just Be Rich

#205

Post by alexgmcm » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

danillonunes wrote: post #138

EvilEy3 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because they have family obligations that take priority. Is that "I have kids!" I hear now? > Because they live outside high-income countries. Well then move to high-income country. > Because they have no access to support network, so when they fail, they fall all the way to bottom. That's unfortunate, but that's life. A lot of people don't have that safety. And not all of them are poor. > Because they may have mad…

> Well then move to high-income country. You can't just take an Uber to a rich country. You have to do a lot of work to get there. All that work is wasted years compared to someone who was just born there in the first place and can focus 100% on their actual path of getting rich.

Exactly, I live in relatively wealthy Western Europe and emigrating to the United States would still be a hell of a lot of work.

It's not 1900 where you can just jump on a boat. Comments like the one you quoted just seem completely divorced from reality.

Re: Just Be Rich

#206

Post by adwn » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:26 AM UTC

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.

> Economy is closer to a zero-sum game, after all theres limited resources in a period of time.

The "economy" is so much more than just the extraction of natural resources, and it's not a zero-sum game in general. Maybe you're conflating "money" with "wealth"?

Re: Just Be Rich

#207

Post by Mulpze15 » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:27 AM UTC

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 you did not need to pay when you need healthcare, if education was free with equal opportunity, and everybody had enough to eat and a half decent place to live, I would entertain discussing this.

You could have this today in the US, it exists elsewhere. Yes, it would probably cost a bit more for the wealthiest people.

Until then, I believe we should not try to justify inequality based on irrealistic theoretical arguments. I see just a ploy to preserve the current situation by people in a good situation.

Because inequality and poverty is all too real. It hurts real people, unfairly. In the US. And it could change.

Re: Just Be Rich

#208

Post by babesh » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:27 AM UTC

babesh wrote: post #179

feoren wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New technology could create new wealth for everyone, but instead it mostly creates wealth for the people who already own everything. If you own a bunch of factories, and someone combines a bunch of open-source technologies and concepts developed in public universities with a couple good new proprietary ideas to create a robot that replaces all your workforce, congrats! Someone else just made you a billionaire and now…

That new technology benefited someone besides the entrepreneur. All the consumers of that technology benefited from it. Some of that technology was directed to providing services for the wealthy but a lot benefited people widely. That is blindingly obvious: smart phones, covid vaccines, cheap screens, etc... A wealth tax of 100% has been tried before. That definitely disincentivized wealth creation. We have run that…

Examples: increasing capital gains taxes, AMT for corporations above a certain revenue, increasing minimum wage, free college, free healthcare, increasing inheritance taxes, breaking oligopolies by creating competitive markets, universal basic income.

Re: Just Be Rich

#209

Post by reader_mode » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:28 AM UTC

sai_c wrote: post #163

reader_mode wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thank you, it's been a while now since I started improving things so it's easier to look at this more objectively.

I was harsh on my parents in that post, they were dysfunctional but my mother loved all of us in her own way and spent her whole life arround us, and I can't say a lot of good things about my father - dealing with my mother in those days would break anyone.

I'm on good terms with them now and they are in a better place now that we're grown up and independent.

Re: Just Be Rich

#210

Post by dmitriid » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 7:28 AM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #187

dmitriid wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add to what the sibling comment already said: - If you don't have to work two jobs to survive, you have the time to pursue other things, and you're more "lucky". - If you have the ability to not work and can spend a year/two/five working out of a "garage", you're more "lucky" than those who can't. - If you have the ability to send your kids to an expensive college without you or them going into life-long debt, the…

This is quite a huge spectrum of "rich" and "lucky". From absolutely basic things to expensive college. I cannot afford a vacation in Macchu Picchu, but it does not detract from my feeling of being lucky/unlucky. Local vacations in Europe or even in my own country are fine. If anything, Covid era was a good teacher in what really matters. And the college and networking is begging the question (IDK if I use the expres…

> does not detract from my feeling of being lucky/unlucky

The question isn't about feeling lucky/unlucky.

It doesn't matter if you can't take a vacation in Macchu Picchu.

- Can you take a vacation any time you want?

- Can you take a vacation for as long as you can?

- Can you afford to take a full year (or more) to work on a passion project? Or on any project? On a startup idea?

See, the more money you have, the more readily your answer will be yes to all the questions above.

> Shelling out enormous money for getting connections is a conformist (expensive and lazy) way of building career. I do not find much luck in that.

You can spend enormous money and have all the connections you need in four years. Or you can work your entire life and still never get those connections.

> but they are probably less prepared for a possible black swan event

Something tells me that Harvard graduates "survive" any and all black swan events significantly better than many others.