Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Just Be Rich

keenen.xyz

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 1001 posts

Re: Just Be Rich

#231

Post by imtringued »

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…

High prices are a symptom of poorly planned neighborhoods.

Re: Just Be Rich

#232

Post by lordnacho »

goatinaboat wrote: post #188
lordnacho wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing that I'd expand upon is the support network. Somehow I have a wider range of friends and family than most people, and the thing that is missing from this conversation is that most people by far don't know anyone wealthy, especially if they're not themselves wealthy. The issue with that isn't just the money and connections themselves. There's a cultural gap of "I couldn't do that, only people on TV do that"…

I have a cluster of cousins in the bay area, what do they do? None of them do startups. Doctors, nurses, and Google. I wouldn't describe this as risk-averse behaviour. The simple fact is in the modern startup ecosystem, even if the startup has a successful exit, even early stage engineers will see very little wealth having been massively diluted, and would have been much, much better off having worked for an establis…

Maybe I should have expanded upon it. When I went to visit SF with a startup, I naturally thought one of my dozen cousins in the area would know someone who did something with one of the many startups in the world's startup capital. They don't just not work in startups, they seem to not have any connections to it. Granted, I didn't do a thorough survey, but if they knew someone in a prominent firm I think they'd have told me.

Which is kinda surprising, but I guess for all the noise they make it's still a pretty small network.

Re: Just Be Rich

#233

Post by olalonde »

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…

Of course all of that is true but it's irrelevant because you have to take a systemic view when talking about economics. The fact is that capitalism and entrepreneurship, while not fair in the cosmic sense you present it, is the best system we have for creating wealth for both the poor and the rich.

Re: Just Be Rich

#234

Post by crummy »

omnimus wrote: post #146
adrianN wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population in Germany has been pretty much constant since 1970. I'm relatively sure that this is true in many other developed nations too. A more important factor than total population is the fraction of people who want to live in a big city. Urbanization has been ongoing, because jobs have increasingly moved to urban centers. Real estate in small villages is quite cheap.

Its very similar in many european coutries. The problem is that cities are owned by someone else than people living in it. Many flats are empty because development cartels can wait long time before they rent it. This way they push the price and cost perception more and more. They will do so to infinity because they have monopoly.

I've heard this a lot, but is it true? I know some flats are empty because they're between tenants or being renovated, but how many are actually empty for years at a time? The idea that not earning any rental now (and paying tax on the place) in the hope that you'll bump up prices years down the line seems risky to me.

Re: Just Be Rich

#235

Post by hiq »

saberdancer wrote: post #213
jwr wrote: post #158

The really shocking quote from the article is the part of the caption below one of the charts: "Data for families in the first quintile (bottom 20%) are not shown. Their median wealth was as follows: 1989 — $0; 1998 — $0; 2007 - $36 and 2016 — negative $1,099." BOTTOM 20%. Has has zero or negative wealth. And that has only changed for the worse during the last 30 years. If one FIFTH of your country has $0 or negative…

If you are in depth, your wealth is negative. After I finished school, as a software engineer I bought a home and a car (by taking a loan) and effectively I had negative wealth. I was by no means in a bad situation, I just consciously took a loan against my future earnings to improve my life quality now rather than after I saved up. Many of these charts ignore this.

> Many of these charts ignore this.

From https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/01/09/methodo... :

> Wealth, or net worth, is the difference between the value of assets owned by households and the value of the liabilities (or debt) held by the household. Assets include items such as the value of an owned home, value of a business, accounts in financial institutions, stocks and bonds, 401(k) and thrift accounts, individual retirement accounts and Keogh accounts, rental properties, motor vehicles and other personal property. Liabilities include home mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, vehicle loans and business debt. The SCF does not account for the discounted values of Social Security benefits or defined benefit pension plans.

Re: Just Be Rich

#236

Post by ironman1478 »

jdc wrote: post #223
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…

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

Sure. A quick Google search yielded the articles below. I don't have authoritative papers to reference, so you'll have to do your own digging too. But it also makes sense when you are aware of the realities of being in poverty. You also left out what I put in parentheses. Mental abuse is abuse and many children are subject to it. I explicitly called it out because I personally feel that people underestimate the damage it does primarily because it's something that is just completely alien to many people and cannot be related to. I also think people do not tend to realize what mental abuse is and in how many ways it can take shape.

https://stateofopportunity.michiganradio.org/post/poorest-ch... And this https://www.nber.org/digest/jan00/poverty-and-mistreatment-c...

Also, not to make excuses but I think in the mental abuse case people don't always know they are doing it. They do what their parents did or learned from those around them who also didn't know what they were doing.

Re: Just Be Rich

#237

Post by spyckie2 »

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…

I think calling it a wealth gap really misses the point - it's a stability gap. Most upper-middle individuals pass on socio-economic stability to the next generation. Most middle and lower class pass on instability. Wealth is a small part of it.

Re: Just Be Rich

#238

Post by adrianN »

omnimus wrote: post #146
adrianN wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Population in Germany has been pretty much constant since 1970. I'm relatively sure that this is true in many other developed nations too. A more important factor than total population is the fraction of people who want to live in a big city. Urbanization has been ongoing, because jobs have increasingly moved to urban centers. Real estate in small villages is quite cheap.

Its very similar in many european coutries. The problem is that cities are owned by someone else than people living in it. Many flats are empty because development cartels can wait long time before they rent it. This way they push the price and cost perception more and more. They will do so to infinity because they have monopoly.

Only about 1% of the flats in Berlin are empty. Rents have tripled in recent years.

Re: Just Be Rich

#239

Post by rob74 »

reader_mode wrote: post #112
rob74 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the classic "you shouldn't give money to poor people, they are just going to spend it on alcohol, drugs etc." argument. This ignores that there are a lot of people who are unable to make ends meet despite having not one but sometimes several jobs. Maybe people would be less stressed if they knew they wouldn't lose their job if their car (>20 years old, which they can't afford to repair) breaks down...

Where am I saying that ?

Sorry if my comment came across as insensitive, especially since it's your own family history, but you should be aware that people might read your comment that way: "father was into gamling and drinking [...] So I don't think it's something you can solve with money alone". And yeah, the "working poor" I mentioned is a "first world issue" (even though, for the people involved, it's still not a good situation), other countries have worse problems (civil wars, rampant corruption etc.).

Re: Just Be Rich

#240

Post by 3327 »

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…

Gotta love blog posts piggy backing PG's thesis and recycling it.
Post reply on HN