Just Be Rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Be Rich

#371

Post by refurb » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

ElKrist wrote: post #254

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…

Yes that's very helpful. I cannot imagine any founder being deterred to start a company because of this wealth tax. With or without it you'd be very rich under PG's assumptions

It not a matter of a founder not starting a company, it doing it somewhere else than the US.

Didn’t some study show a majority of founders are foreigners? They choose to come to the US. They can choose not to in the future.

Re: Just Be Rich

#372

Post by kypro » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:43 AM UTC

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…

Not that I disagree with anything you said necessarily, but it's so much more complicated than this.

Sometimes being less fortunate is what motivates people to become rich. The truth is I had a huge amount of stuff holding me back as a child, and still do, but imo that is why I managed to succeed (relatively at least) where others I knew who had similar intelligence and better backgrounds did not. Even in my own family the difference between my sister and myself is massive, she's probably in the bottom 10% and I'm probably in the top 1-2%, yet she has almost the exact same background as myself.

Being poor might just be the single greatest motivator. It also teaches people a lot of valuable lessons for acquiring wealth such as how to save and ration. If you look at wealth statistics in the UK some of the wealthy people here are immigrants or second generation immigrants from India and East Asia which doesn't really fit with this narrative of rich people get rich, while poor people stay poor.

I understand sometimes people are so unlucky that the obstacles in front of them are insurmountable, but I also don't think this paints a full picture. I also generally agree with the article, although I think it's easy to criticise without providing answers. It would have been nice to see some suggestions on how to fix the problem of wealth inequality, because unfortunately many of the popular solutions (raising taxes, expanding welfare programs, etc) could just make things worse.

Re: Just Be Rich

#373

Post by southerntofu » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:44 AM UTC

varispeed wrote: post #352

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…

If you are born poor it is extremely difficult to escape poverty, especially because of high taxes that you are going to experience as soon as your education and determination lands you a good job. This severely inhibits your means to save or to invest. The progressive taxation is like a back-stop to keep everyone in check and prevent people from going up the class ladder. Meanwhile the rich, that are supposed to be…

Taxes isn't the reason why more people aren't richer. In fact, taxes is the reason why more people aren't poorer, because they pay for essential social services. At least in most countries, when receiving hospital bills you're not afraid to end up with crippling debt.

The reason more people aren't richer is because of private property and the capitalist system. As a whole, humanity is pretty rich and is severely destroying the environment to make sure of that. Only a fucked up economic system with all the wrong incentives makes sure some people starve when we produce more food than needed to feed the entire population, sleep on the streets when there's millions of empty/abandoned housing units, etc.

So, to be honest with you, i don't think taxes is the solution, because as long as money and private property are a thing, taxes will only be a band-aid on this cancer. Arguably, taxes are also often misused to fund more human misery in the form of military and police services and other harmful institutions we should entirely get rid of. But i would say claiming high taxes is responsible for poverty is really missing the point of how capitalism works.

Re: Just Be Rich

#374

Post by taurath » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:45 AM UTC

zimpenfish wrote: post #361

WalterBright wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been easier to start a company in the US. All you need is a computer. You can create a product on it and reach a worldwide audience, all for free. As for Jobs, he started Apple for a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar.

> All you need is a computer. Plus free time. Plus motivation and energy which is probably in short supply when you've already done 8 hours in a supermarket / your second job / a full day of childcare / etc. > a few hundred bucks. It's a pretty low bar. For a lot of people in the US, a few hundred bucks is the difference between eating that month and going without. Or being able to pay the rent and not be evicted. Or…

Of course they’re not talking about “those people”, aka the 63% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. When the ultra rich speak they’re only speaking to the upper middle 40%. We love a good rags to riches story but economic class changes less in the US than many other countries, despite this “ease”.

Show me any group of founders and you can point to a few outliers but people who have had jobs like grocery store clerk by and large do not go on to make a business. The bar is lowered enough for upper middle class only, with few exceptions.

Re: Just Be Rich

#375

Post by zaptheimpaler » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:48 AM UTC

Lots of personal attacks, zero thought towards solutions. A certain class of people seem to believe attacking rich dudes online magically reduces inequality. It’s just low effort social signalling :/

If you care so much, how about even considering some solutions? Should we raise the minimum wage more? Public healthcare?

Increasing taxes gets the government more money but does nothing to actually decide how to spend it. And given the huge amounts the govt spends on military, or covid this past year, the problem seems to be a lack of agreement and political will on how to spend money to effectively reduce inequality, not a lack of tax dollars.

It seems to me the right place to start raging is against half the government which doesn’t believe in spending money. Which in turn is supported by the ~50% of the US who votes republican and hates the idea of handouts.. so the root is a society wide disagreement, not scrooge mcduck.

Re: Just Be Rich

#376

Post by starfallg » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:52 AM UTC

vishnugupta wrote: post #297

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…

> I personally don't believe that an unskilled worker in the US deserves to be paid 10X what an equivalent worker in Bangladesh makes just because they were lucky enough to be born here. This is a crucial point that gets missed in these debates. Labour price inequality is a driving force of globalisation. That is how Nike pays 1$/day wage to Bangladeshi labourers to manufacture shoes and sell them at $500. And the re…

I find it interesting that both you and the parent poster more or less agree on the same facts, but the framing is diametrically opposed.

From my perspective globalisation is fundamentally broken. Restricting labour flow with unrestricted capital flows between countries is a destabilising force in both economics and politics.

China is also a special case as they fully understood the game that America and the West was playing and hence had a good counterstrategy. The West would promote free trade resulting in investment in developing countries. In return they open up to capital flows and their internal markets, which is what China kept resisting. With the amount of trade deficit most western countries have with China in the past 2 decades, the Chinese market should be a lot more open than it is at the moment. By delaying this the Chinese hope to avoid the middle-income trap that many developing countries fall in to under the globalisation model.

Re: Just Be Rich

#377

Post by camhart » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:52 AM UTC

mytherin wrote: post #304

camhart wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. People need to be able to cover their needs. Food, housing, healthcare, and I'd be open to arguments in favor of education. But I don't see income inequality as bad necessarily. I see massive amounts of people unable to cover those need…

> There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. You can go out and make wealth every single day. The rich obtaining more of it doesn't mean there's less left over for you and I. There is an essence of truth to that, but it certainly does not tell the whole story. Consider what happens with Amazon. When they put a family-owned store out of business, those people need to work somewhere. They then turn to the on…

> In some cases the "creating wealth" argument holds up, but in reality what is mostly happening in the age of globalism is wealth consolidation, not wealth creation. Amazon is not creating new wealth, they are simply taking all of the customers and wealth away from all of the smaller businesses and consolidating it into a single huge entity.

I get where you're going with this... and I'm not in favor of monopolies and anti-competitive behavior... but Amazon is a hugely innovative company, and I do not believe that they've merely consolidated wealth without creating any. Think of just AWS as an example and all of the companies (and their employees) who've created more wealth as a result of it.

Re: Just Be Rich

#378

Post by OnlyOneCannolo » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #239

reader_mode wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> I don't think it's something you can solve with money alone

Emphasis mine. Pretty unambiguous that it says money is necessary but not sufficient. This is on you for misreading it.

Re: Just Be Rich

#379

Post by catears » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:53 AM UTC

kypro wrote: post #372

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…

Not that I disagree with anything you said necessarily, but it's so much more complicated than this. Sometimes being less fortunate is what motivates people to become rich. The truth is I had a huge amount of stuff holding me back as a child, and still do, but imo that is why I managed to succeed (relatively at least) where others I knew who had similar intelligence and better backgrounds did not. Even in my own fami…

I think there is some truth to this. Obviously too complicated subject for me to understand everything, but I wanted to add my own experience.

One of the most motivating things I did to get a well-paying job and work hard to earn it was by having a deadend job as a kid. There is nothing that has motivated me to study hard as much as the realization that some people will be stuck stacking boxes their entire life.

Motivation makes a big difference, but obviously those who always think about how to make rent and still have food on the table don't always have the opportunity to live a better life...

Re: Just Be Rich

#380

Post by irq » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 9:54 AM UTC

raspasov wrote: post #351

irq wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what you wrote, I agree with RHSeeger that you did indeed make that assumption. That you can’t see it speaks volumes about your analysis not matching the facts.

Still no answer to my question about definition of "access to wealth". It's like "access to God", for what I know.

I don’t see how your unanswered question relates to RHSeeger’s statement, but your transparent attempt to deflect by continuing to bring it up, again, says more about the flaws in your thought process than it achieves your aim.