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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#411

Post by krageon »

inglor_cz wrote: post #132
dmitriid wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more money you have the luckier you are.

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. Starting with distant relatives that got into trouble and suddenly found a familial love for them, continuing with various false friends, gold diggers of both sexes and people hustling investment opportunities. Ending with lawyers and doctors who might induce you to und…

> a constant target of other people

When you're poor, you're also a constant target of other people. When you're rich, perhaps that single aspect is the same but everything else in your life is so much better that it's kind of disingenuous to ignore it.

Re: Just Be Rich

#412

Post by agustif »

Arkhaine_kupo wrote: post #350
kuu wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spain and its empty 3.5M houses send you regards. https://www.thelocal.es/20140225/spain-worst-in-europe-for-e...

The price of those houses should be 10% of what it is, but the problem is banks own them and if they reduce the price then their numbers look red. They are artificially inflated housing prices to keep bank bonds from plummeting.

So how do you fix this shit? We're basically fucked.

It's not like our government will get EU's permission to let the banks fail or something...

Re: Just Be Rich

#413

Post by teddyh »

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…

Whenever this topic comes up, I like to link to these excellent and eye-opening articles:

• 5 Things Nobody Tells You About Being Poor, May 27, 2011: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-nobody-tells-you-about...)

• The 5 Stupidest Habits You Develop Growing Up Poor, January 19, 2012: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never...)

• 4 Things Politicians Will Never Understand About Poor People, February 21, 2013: (https://www.cracked.com/blog/4-things-politicians-will-never...)

Re: Just Be Rich

#414

Post by chii »

EvilEy3 wrote: post #257
hit8run wrote: post #217

That's actually what I do the whole day. I give people good advice. I call myself a generous problem fixer. Yesterday a poor man was complaining that the steel company he worked for closed a few years ago and since then he did not get any job. I saved his life by telling him the following: "The solution to your problem is easy. Stop being poor and start being rich. You made a mistake by choosing to be poor so my seco…

Nice! Can you also write a book on "to solve inequality we just need to stop inequality and make everyone richer"?

Just cut to the chase, and say "Let them eat cake"!

Re: Just Be Rich

#415

Post by flexie »

heavyset_go wrote: post #326
flexie wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protestant zealotry? Seriously? When you bring religion into it, at least get the religion right: The Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, had Jewish backgrounds but consider themselves non-religious. Facebook founder Zuckerberg had Jewish background and considered himself atheist at some point. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is Catholic. Paul Allen had Jewish parents. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was raised Catho…

American history and culture is heavily influenced by the Protestants that made up the early US. The Protestant work ethic is a commonly referenced aspect of American culture, and most Americans regardless of religion are not free of its influence.

Yes, but when literally none of the founders of the largest IT-companies - the very richest of the "Nouveau riche" that we are talking about - are Protestant, whereas much of the old money is, the comment is quite off.

Re: Just Be Rich

#416

Post by eevilspock »

flexie wrote: post #274
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,…

Protestant zealotry? Seriously? When you bring religion into it, at least get the religion right: The Google founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, had Jewish backgrounds but consider themselves non-religious. Facebook founder Zuckerberg had Jewish background and considered himself atheist at some point. Microsoft founder Bill Gates is Catholic. Paul Allen had Jewish parents. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was raised Catho…

It's a metaphor.

If you prefer the literal, think "Ayn Randian / Objectivist zealotry".

Re: Just Be Rich

#417

Post by arkh »

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…

It reads like you think progressive taxation is not bracketed. Which is something often found with people from poor background.

Let's say you have some system where your taxed 0% for income Now the problem comes from social benefits which usually are not regressive and work on a all or nothing system.

Re: Just Be Rich

#418

Post by karl11 »

Author should consider data for wealth and class mobility. Inequality might be rising but also there is more mobility (upwards and downwards) than there ever has been. Meaning it has also never been easier for someone in poverty to become wealthy than it is today (not saying it's easy). And not saying things are great now or not, but mobility needs to be factored in when discussing inequality.

Re: Just Be Rich

#419

Post by krageon »

varispeed wrote: post #397
namdnay wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 That's very easy to test, by comparing social mobility in countries with more or less progressive tax rates. I think the results say the opposite: progressive tax rates encourage greater mobility (because those taxes go t…

Most countries (at least here in Europe) have very high taxes, so whenever you go, you'll pay pretty much the same. So if people move, they do it for what they can get back for the money they pay. However the problem is that the system is setup so that it penalises ambitious people while protecting the rich. In many countries the governing parties see people as their clients and in their interest is to keep everyone…

> whenever you go, you'll pay pretty much the same

Perhaps in terms of tax you are right (though I know of at least 10+% differences even between the richer countries, so I doubt it), but the cost of living varies dramatically even within Europe. You don't need to move to a poor/bad part of Europe to profit either, as for example Lissabon is relatively cheap.

Re: Just Be Rich

#420

Post by kgantchev »

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…

I will add one more thing to your analysis of the possible negative outcomes: the market effects of the government selling the stocks of a company.

I suspect these two things will happen on the market:

1. You'd need to have a wealthy enough buyer for the assets - it's going to be kinda hard to convince the wealthy to buy back their own assets. 2. In the absence of sufficiently large market makers, the prices of these assets will certainly tank since these assets will have to be liquidated.

So where is the government going to find the buyers of the assets? What are the economic effects?

Well, we can look to Switzerland for that answer. It is one of the only countries that have wealth taxes, but it's on the canton level (the equivalent of the state level). It has no national wealth taxes. The difference in wealth tax rates makes a huge impact on the behavior of citizens and the wealth distribution:

"According to our baseline estimate, a 1 percentage point drop in the top wealth tax rate raises reported wealth by 43%." https://voxeu.org/article/wealth-taxation-swiss-experience

"The evaluations with both datasets lead to similar estimates: an increase in the wealth tax rate by one tenth of a percent, whether this be at the cantonal or municipal level, reduces the amount of declared wealth by around 3%. This implies that the tax elasticity of wealth is at least twice as large as that of personal income.4 In other words, wealth reacts more sensitively to taxes. Our estimates also exceed the wealth tax elasticities of other studies, which is presumably due to the higher quality of the data available to us (panel data) (Seim 2017; Zoutman 2015)." https://www.ifo.de/DocDL/dice-report-2018-2-bruelhart-schmid...

In essence, it second article highlights your point: the behavior isn't changed much in terms of productivity because wealthy people simply hire competent accountants to minimize their wealth tax burden with better accounting structures.

BTW, we do have a wealth tax in the US in terms of private property. Most states have private property taxes which are a form of wealth tax. The effect of that is that each person has to generate an income high enough to afford the tax or else they will get a lien on their assets.

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