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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#631

Post by aantix »

yarcob wrote: post #573
McScroogy wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich outbidding poor people is not what is causing a housing shortage. There are only so many houses a rich person can occupy. Even if you assume that every rich person keeps a number of spare houses, there are not enough rich people to cause a housing shortage.

The problem isn't a "housing shortage". The problem is that interest rates are so low, so everyone who has a bit of money on the side tries to invest in the real estate market. The result is that for every house thats sold, there isn't just someone who wants it as a living space, but also 5 people who want it as an investment. So 5 people outbid each other, the highest bidder gets it, and then the sucker who wanted t…

The renter doesn’t hold the risk. They can walk away.

If you want the profit, then hold the risk.

If you want the freedom of mobility, then rent.

Re: Just Be Rich

#632

Post by dTal »

laurent92 wrote: post #605
adriancr wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The aristocrats and oligarchs of the olden days might have been corrupt, debauched and half-useless, but at least they knew it. Corruption is an incredible poverty multiplier, combined with debauched and half-useless is just insane. Living in a society led by such people isn't fair by any means. Arrogant new wealth is 100x better then old corrupt wealth that only seeks to entrench itself and friends. New wealth in…

Entrenched money stabilizes the world. Imagine putting 10% of the billionaires of the world on a boat, those who pull the strings of their empires to keep their nations into status-quo, and imagine the boat sinks. A year later, all those entrenched interests dematerialize, fewer powers hold people together, diplomacy isn’t as balanced as it has been when billionaires weighed in, and war starts. That’s the story of th…

The Titanic sank in 1912. That's a pretty glaring error when you're making such a sweeping assertion as this.

Re: Just Be Rich

#633

Post by hit8run »

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"?

I’m more of a maker because done is better than perfect. Leave the two letters ‚in‘ out of the word and therefore eliminate inequality in favor of equality.

The message is clear: Stop being unequal and start being equal!

Today is my AMA so feel free to ask for solutions to common problems of mankind.

Re: Just Be Rich

#634

Post by adriancr »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #627
adriancr wrote: post #588

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The aristocrats and oligarchs of the olden days might have been corrupt, debauched and half-useless, but at least they knew it. Corruption is an incredible poverty multiplier, combined with debauched and half-useless is just insane. Living in a society led by such people isn't fair by any means. Arrogant new wealth is 100x better then old corrupt wealth that only seeks to entrench itself and friends. New wealth in…

Bill Gates 501c3 puts back less than 1 percent off their benovelent humanitarian money back to the United States. The country that coddled him, an his connected mother. Personally, I think these good ole nonprofit boys; Billy, Zuck, Warren, etc. are tax dodgers. Obama wanted to reform nonprofit regulations, but chickened out.

Imagine if Microsoft were Chinese or Japanese or based in the EU. Would that have been better?

Also, Bill Gates revolutionized the computer industry and brought a lot of wealth and power to the US and control of a good industry.

The fact that he right now goes for diseases world wide is great, I would not want to die from Polio or Malaria, those disease can always make a comeback and spread like Covid... it would be better to have them eradicated entirely.

Re: Just Be Rich

#635

Post by mdorazio »

bkirkby wrote: post #561

As economist Russ Roberts often points out in these inequality discussions, the quintiles that are used to show growth only in the upper class does not refer to the same people over time. When you follow people over time, they generally move up into higher quintiles thus "getting richer." https://russroberts.medium.com/do-the-rich-capture-all-the-g... He also talks about "what happened in 1972" is more about demograp…

You and Russ both need to take a look at [1]. Socioeconomic mobility has massively fallen in the US over time.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...

Re: Just Be Rich

#636

Post by gre »

TuringNYC wrote: post #602
yarcob wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't a "housing shortage". The problem is that interest rates are so low, so everyone who has a bit of money on the side tries to invest in the real estate market. The result is that for every house thats sold, there isn't just someone who wants it as a living space, but also 5 people who want it as an investment. So 5 people outbid each other, the highest bidder gets it, and then the sucker who wanted t…

I agree with the premise of what youre saying. I dont think the ratio is 5:1, but probably more like 1:5 -- but -- more importantly -- doesnt this make it good for renters because now there are investment properties in an ample environment looking for people to rent? I would argue that it is low interest rates AND low supply. If supply was sufficient then renters would just rent the houses which were purchased, possi…

Nobody should have to rent.

Re: Just Be Rich

#637

Post by SamBam »

vekker wrote: post #506
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…

Simplicity is also often an indicator of truth. I think you completely missed another important point hidden in PG's article, besides the obvious compounding effect, and that is that unrealized gains would be taxed under a wealth tax regime. To simplify with a ridiculous example: suppose I have $0 to my name and I inherit a family art piece from my grandmother that happens to be valued at $2 million. The next year, u…

You're making an obvious strawman argument by deliberately picking an asset that isn't fungible and doesn't increase in value like everything else. Any sensible person would, at that point, sell the art, so now we can talk in sensible terms, with real fungible and taxable assets.

Wealth compounds much, much faster than the tax burden grows. Someone who inherits $3 million (not much from the point of view of the very-wealthy) can live comfortably on the growth alone while still compounding their wealth further every year.

The only way a wealth tax would compound faster than the wealth itself is if it is larger than the growth rate of the wealth. And since the growth of wealth (e.g. by just putting it in the stock market) has averaged at ~8-10% over the past several decades, a 1% tax is not going to eat into a person's wealth over time. It's simply going to slightly slow that growth down.

Re: Just Be Rich

#638

Post by stephanheijl »

mdorazio wrote: post #606
timwaagh wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands we already have wealth tax (capital gains tax, but doesn't care whether you gained or not). It's nothing particularly disruptive. We still have the most wealth inequality in all the world. It might be a bit pointless to tax wealth in addition to capital gains though. You could just raise the former instead.

I think you need to revisit your assumption about wealth inequality in The Netherlands. It’s on par with that of most of Europe, significantly lower than in the US [1]. [1] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.GINI/rank...

You linked an income inequality graph, which is distinct from wealth. If you look at the list on Wikipedia [1] and sort by Wealth Gini (2019) you will find that the Netherlands are #1.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq...

Re: Just Be Rich

#639

Post by RJuall »

timwaagh wrote: post #545
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…

In the Netherlands we already have wealth tax (capital gains tax, but doesn't care whether you gained or not). It's nothing particularly disruptive. We still have the most wealth inequality in all the world. It might be a bit pointless to tax wealth in addition to capital gains though. You could just raise the former instead.

A quick look at Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_eq...) shows that the Netherlands does not have the most wealth inequality in the world. What an odd assertion.

Re: Just Be Rich

#640

Post by spamizbad »

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,…

noblesse oblige is, best I can tell, a cultural myth. There’s been quite a bit of writing on this subject[1]. I’m not convinced self-made wealth of today is any better or worse than the concentration of family money in the past - so I think your point is half correct.

[1] https://www.worldcat.org/title/executive-imperialism-the-myt...

(And the paper) https://calisphere.org/item/ark:/28722/bk0003v1h0r/

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2018/04/the-ignoble-lie

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