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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#431

Post by qazpot »

rypskar wrote: post #111
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…

And a lot of people who are as smart and motivated will start their own company but will not get rich because they are not as lucky. Luck play a big part in success

In startups you have to be right only once.

Re: Just Be Rich

#432

Post by flippinburgers »

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 isn't a literal argument that tech founders are protestants and I think you know that.

Re: Just Be Rich

#433

Post by Vinnl »

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…

> And global poverty has collapsed since 1980.

IIRC it's only extreme poverty (i.e. living off $1.90 a day) that has collapsed; other poverty has seen more modest reductions.

Re: Just Be Rich

#434

Post by goodpoint »

donw wrote: post #338
ramblerman wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

I'm not sure that's specific to scarcity, though. Imagine two rooms, each with a caged bear. The bear is not happy being in a cage. A rich man, and a poor man, are ushered into their respective rooms, and told that the lock on the cage isn't all that reliable. I'd wager that they'd both suffer roughly equally on a provided IQ test. If you can't afford it, that car repair is an existential threat. You don't get that c…

> I think it's not scarcity itself, but constantly living under existential fear that causes so many problems.

Correct: it's not money per-se, it's about desperately needing money in a society where money are crucial for survival.

Often economists make the mistake of equating poverty == no money.

Instead, not all economies are money-driven.

Re: Just Be Rich

#435

Post by eevilspock »

hyko wrote: post #421

I'm not sure why people think Paul Graham's perspective on wealth inequality is in response to a recent shift in public opinion; he's taken this position since at least 2004: http://www.paulgraham.com/gap.html (the basic premise of that essay was that in the tradeoff between freedom and wealth inequality, the latter didn't matter because everyone's living standards are converging). From that essay: Materially and soc…

What's the non-paraphrased version of Feynman's words? I could use that quote.

Re: Just Be Rich

#436

Post by michaelmrose »

kortilla wrote: post #184
ludocode wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This statistic is misleading. The U.S. government defines the poverty line based on a 1955 model of spending patterns. It's completely inadequate for modern needs. The poverty line for a family of four is defined as a household income of $26,200. Any reasonable person knows it's impossible to pay rent and feed and clothe two adults and two kids on less than $2200 a month. Nevermind owning a home, having a car, saving…

> Any reasonable person knows it's impossible to pay rent and feed and clothe two adults and two kids on less than $2200 a month. Step outside of your bubble. This is very feasible in low CoL areas all over the US. And remember that’s the line so it’s going to be difficult, but it can be done.

The lowest CoL areas in the US are low because nobody wants to live their because there is no money to be made their either. 80% of Americans live in urban areas where the jobs are.

Re: Just Be Rich

#437

Post by twic »

kgantchev wrote: post #420
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…

If this company is growing at the rates PG says it is, then the existing investors should be happy to buy more of the stock.

Re: Just Be Rich

#438

Post by janeroe »

nullptr_deref wrote: post #78

This is pretty accurate. When I went through that essay (by PG), I got the similar idea. The essay read to me like, "Oh, you are white guy, your parents are well off, you must have been studying in some tier 1 school, why not risk 1/2 yrs of your life to start a company, while you are in college. Chances are you may get some money from us too! You should try a lot. Infact the more you try, the better we earn." edit:…

>> There is a very small chance that people in US would trust a revolutionary product built outside.

Maybe it's not that revolutionary after all?

Re: Just Be Rich

#439

Post by twic »

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…

What if the founder borrows against their stock to pay the wealth tax? Or uses a sale-and-repurchase agreement? That way, they can use the present value of the stock to pay their taxes, while hanging on to the upside.

You need to account for interest in this situation, but that should be less than the growth of the company.

PG's story doesn't even hold water in dollar terms.

Re: Just Be Rich

#440

Post by kgantchev »

twic wrote: post #437
kgantchev wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If this company is growing at the rates PG says it is, then the existing investors should be happy to buy more of the stock.

But the existing investors are the ones whose wealth is being taken and being put up on the market. :)

So who is going to buy the existing investor's wealth? Are they just going to buy each other's wealth?

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