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How People Get Rich Now

paulgraham.com

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Re: How People Get Rich Now

#871

Post by mmmmmbop »

mike00632 wrote: post #753
mmmmmbop wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: Do you have any more background on this? Who are these rich people that are not listed in Forbes?

This is an ongoing curiosity of mine. One really cool example is Mubarak of Egypt who became wealthy from corruption. When he lost power he had some wealth exposed and he was richer than any known person in the world. https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2011/04/11/egyptia... It's very likely that the richest person in the world right now is Vladimir Putin.

Thanks for the link. I'm a bit skeptical of that number ($700B). Intuitively, it's just a very large amount of money to hide without anyone noticing. It should be relatively easy to track down most of it.

However, after searching for follow-ups on that story, I wasn't able to find any news article saying that any significant (>$1B) amount of wealth was found. There were $664M that were frozen in Switzerland, as well as an undisclosed amount in the EU [1] (but both freezes were annulled in the meantime). Additionally, there were some properties and luxury cars he owned in Western cities [2].

All of these (and some generous extra for wealth he was able to hide) would add up to wealth in the order of billions, but most likely below $70B, and definitely below $700B.

[0] https://dailynewsegypt.com/2018/11/25/the-years-long-tale-of... [1] https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/396228/Egypt/P... [2] https://cifar.eu/6-years-later-mubaraks-billions/

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#872

Post by jason0597 »

TapWaterBandit wrote: post #859
jdgoesmarching wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is my point. You are the people who want to believe that all it takes to be comfortable in life is to “follow some basic rules.” Putting aside that the circumstances of your birth are already a huge matter of luck, I’ll point to the entire US working class and unemployed college graduates as evidence to the contrary. At some point those of us who have grown up in this economy stopped believing in fairy tale…

> Putting aside that the circumstances of your birth are already a huge matter of luck This is another one of those points that sounds superficially plausible on the surface but makes little sense once you think it through. The circumstances of my birth weren't a matter of luck. My (married) parents decided to have 4 children of which I was one. Before doing this they both finished high school, and stayed away from d…

Before you are conceived, before you even become a zygote, who rolls the dice for which womb you'll end up in? Who decides whether you'll be in the womb of a Japanese mother, an American mother, or a Greek mother? Do we as individuals have any control over which country we are born in?

To pretend as if this is not pure chance (luck) is bonkers.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#873

Post by tim333 »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #827
mmmmmbop wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genuinely curious: Do you have any more background on this? Who are these rich people that are not listed in Forbes?

Cryptocurrencies have created many paper-rich people who wont be on the list. Just 10k bitcoin would make you very rich these days, and there must be a few low-profile geeks with that may coins on a HDD. Also anyone rich, non-domiciled and "avoiding tax" will presumably not be on the list.

There are lots of rich non doms on the Forbes list.

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#874

Post by jason0597 »

ikeboy wrote: post #720
extra88 wrote: post #694

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The workers that produce 10 times as much today (because of newer technologies, techniques, etc.) don't get paid 10 times as much. Worker productivity has continued to climb, decade after decade, but inflation-adjusted worker pay is basically flat over the same time period.

This is a myth, and if you look into the statistics of the people pushing this Big Lie, you'll find that they cheat and use different inflation metrics for productivity and for compensation.

Can you show us these Big Lie statistics? Can you post a link or two for further reading?

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#875

Post by [deleted] »

jason0597 wrote: post #872
TapWaterBandit wrote: post #859

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Putting aside that the circumstances of your birth are already a huge matter of luck This is another one of those points that sounds superficially plausible on the surface but makes little sense once you think it through. The circumstances of my birth weren't a matter of luck. My (married) parents decided to have 4 children of which I was one. Before doing this they both finished high school, and stayed away from d…

Before you are conceived, before you even become a zygote, who rolls the dice for which womb you'll end up in? Who decides whether you'll be in the womb of a Japanese mother, an American mother, or a Greek mother? Do we as individuals have any control over which country we are born in? To pretend as if this is not pure chance (luck) is bonkers.

[deleted]

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#876

Post by ruined »

adwn wrote: post #831
shlep21 wrote: post #758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. You can't stay focused for 11.5 hours a day, especially not 7 days in a row, especially especially not week after week after week. I'm a former software engineer. The best engineers absolutely, genuinely can work very long hours and remain productive. 80 hrs/week might be a bit high, but 65 hours a week at 3x average-programmer-productivity is definitely something that exists in the real world, and although it is…

> [...] and because the rest of us are literally slacking as we post here, and want to believe our slacking is some kind of biological necessity Maybe that's because we've observed one too many "I work 80-100 hours per week" CEOs, who still find time to write blog posts, keep up with the latest memes, and shitpost on Twitter.

hey now. that blog is part of the job, memes are cultural research, and shitposting is how you stay in touch with retail investors. that's at least thirty hours a week together

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#877

Post by [deleted] »

mmmmmbop wrote: post #611
qzw wrote: post #464

I'm rather disappointed PG would think that the Forbes wealth list could support any kind of conclusion whatsoever. One of the biggest reasons that the top of the list is filled with tech billionaires is that their wealth is relatively transparent, being mostly in the form of stock holdings in publicly traded companies and often directly disclosed. This makes it much easier for Forbes to estimate their net worth with…

Genuinely curious: Do you have any more background on this? Who are these rich people that are not listed in Forbes?

[deleted]

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#878

Post by extra88 »

jason0597 wrote: post #874
ikeboy wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth, and if you look into the statistics of the people pushing this Big Lie, you'll find that they cheat and use different inflation metrics for productivity and for compensation.

Can you show us these Big Lie statistics? Can you post a link or two for further reading?

They probably won't deliver but I will. Here's a top hit "The Productivity–Pay Gap" [0], what I was talking about, from the Economic Policy Institute, a pro-worker, left-leaning think tank [1].

The top google hit for the "myth" is "Debunking a Myth in 1 Chart: Wage & Productivity Growth" [2] from the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank affiliated with a conservative, Republican advocacy group [3]. Basically it claims the original report compared data that aren't comparable. There's also "Why the gap between worker pay and productivity might be a myth" [4] from the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank [5].

I didn't read them closely but part of the methodology in the AEI article used salary and benefits instead of just salary to draw a compensation line closer to productivity. Given that health care is such a huge part of the cost of those benefits, maybe the claim should be that company shareholders are sharing the wealth with workers but that health care costs are so out of control it's eating up all the workers' gains.

EPI response to criticisms, "Understanding the Historic Divergence Between Productivity and a Typical Worker’s Pay" [6].

[0] https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Policy_Institute [2] https://www.americanactionforum.org/insight/debunking-a-myth... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Action_Network [4] https://www.aei.org/economics/political-economy/the-decline-... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute [6] https://www.epi.org/publication/understanding-the-historic-d...

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#879

Post by ashtonbaker »

d110af5ccf wrote: post #814
ashtonbaker wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No real argument with this! I think we're talking about different things. If I could put my difference in opinion in my own words, it would be that I believe many people play the startup game with the right "intrinsic" qualities - hard work, brilliance, etc - many more than the number who exit with a billion dollars. Hence, "lottery". Of course, some of that luck can carry forward in terms of experience, networking..…

> even in the face of evidence to the contrary This is the problem though. There really isn't any clear evidence one way or the other in your example. Predicting how someone will perform in a particular context is incredibly difficult (see the frequent disagreements on HN surrounding the hiring process). More technical proficiency might or might not translate to better overall performance in your particular case. Mea…

The first part of your comment is arguing for the second justification. Which I agreed was logically fine to do, and I think you laid out the case well.

The second part seems to reveal a difference in opinion unlikely to be resolved easily in this forum. Food for thought, though - thank you!

Re: How People Get Rich Now

#880

Post by ikeboy »

jason0597 wrote: post #874
ikeboy wrote: post #720

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a myth, and if you look into the statistics of the people pushing this Big Lie, you'll find that they cheat and use different inflation metrics for productivity and for compensation.

Can you show us these Big Lie statistics? Can you post a link or two for further reading?

https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/6rtoh4/produc...

Sure, a bunch of sources linked here.

https://piie.com/blogs/realtime-economic-issues-watch/growin... this is linked there and goes through how the data looks if you correct for all the issues.

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