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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#221

Post by ramblerman »

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…

Unfortunately the dysfunction and poverty may go hand in hand a lot of the time. There is strong indication that scarcity affects cognitive function.

"Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" is a great book on this.

In essence it is not that people in poverty have less innate executive control / cognitive capacity, but that the situation of poverty causes anyone to lose some significant points of executive control / cognitive capacity.

There are some illuminating (but terryfing) experiments in the book, where they show you can literally sabotage a low income persons score on an IQ test by mentioning a hypothetical car repair of 2000 dollars before they take it.

Re: Just Be Rich

#222

Post by fer »

inglor_cz wrote: post #176
fer wrote: post #169

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. 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 ed…

Now that is a good reply. Where I live (Czechia), pretty much everyone rich is new-rich, the tradition of old money was interrupted in 1948. That is a possible explanation for why I see this pattern fairly frequently, while other commenters seem to disagree.

I can see that happening. In my country rich families don't fall for such things, except for the odd black sheep.

Here you see that happening the most with lottery winners, particularly because people playing lotto are generally poor, and most among them financially illiterate.

Top special price of the state lottery is around 500k€, and some stats showed that 90% of the winners lost 50% of that wealth within 2 years, while just putting it in some fund and sitting on that money would easily double their income while keeping their wealth.

On that line, certain wealthy people tend to win the lotto a lot! It's a sign of fraud: they buy the tickets from the winners for a bigger amount than the prize, so they can insta-launder large sums of money. Then the actual winner sits on a slightly larger amount of money that can't be used for anything other than spending it, which financially is a terrible deal. But they all seem happy to do it, because they don't know any better.

Re: Just Be Rich

#223

Post by jdc »

ironman1478 wrote: post #48
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…

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…

> This is largely because families in poverty tend to also abuse their kids at higher rates

Source?

Re: Just Be Rich

#224

Post by imtringued »

mnsc wrote: post #130
saddlerustle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pretty much every mainstream economist defending the mainstream economy to preserve the status quo in that widening the income gap is a good thing for the mainstream economy you mean?

Pretty much every economist thinks "high prices? make more!". That applies to housing too.

Re: Just Be Rich

#225

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Just Be Rich

#226

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Just Be Rich

#227

Post by marvin »

piva00 wrote: post #199
saddlerustle wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait, all mainstream economists put the blame on massive increase of regulation all around the developed world ? I really doubt it's happened everywhere, from NYC, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Portland, Seattle to Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Oslo, München, Vienna, Brussels, Amsterdam and so on. Everywhere housing prices went way up, I doubt everywhere had the same issues with regulations since the 7…

Yes - GP is right. When they say regulation, they mean preventing market forces from building as much prices allow. This NIMBYism is a global phenomenon and the root cause.

All the other factors certainly contribute, but cheap credit only affects how much the most desperate buyer is able to pay. This becomes the limiting factor almost everywhere, meaning that prices would be equally unaffordable if credit wasn’t cheap.

Building much more is the only fundamental solution, as this will reduce the proportion of desperate buyers. But of course local democracy prevents that - meaning, the problem persists indefinitely and we’re only wasting time discussing it.

Re: Just Be Rich

#228

Post by curo »

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,…

Can't one just counter his arguments without assigning nefarious intent? It feels conspiratorial at times.

- Quoting your comment: "The real sinister psychological thing going on behind the Graham argument is that..."

- Quoting a line from the article: "His seemingly impartial and logical writing attempts to hide his true intentions."

Re: Just Be Rich

#229

Post by pchristensen »

nindalf wrote: post #151

OP mentions PG’s article arguing against a wealth tax. That article is short, simple and to the point - Modelling a Wealth Tax ( http://www.paulgraham.com/wtax.html ). It is so compelling, but also misleading and wrong. Its not easy to spot the sleights of hand he uses. I wrote more about it here - Modelling a Wealth Tax Correctly ( https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/wealth-tax/ ). And yet, I think the simplicity of PG’s…

This is a helpful breakdown of an article that didn’t seem right to me.

Re: Just Be Rich

#230

Post by ummonk »

It’s a valid point that a lot of rising inequality is due to the expansion of the wealthy class as it is no longer restricted to hereditary elites but is being infiltrated by meritocratic newcomers. That doesn’t really mean labor has won though - since the average worker is not getting a better deal.
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