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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#691

Post by typon »

qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #510
pydry wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got cause and effect reversed. Bill Gates started giving his money away after he was attacked for his anti competitive behavior and attempts to kill open source, etc. The rich donate because they are protecting their reputation and for the sake of their own self image (everybody needs to be the hero of their own story). The only ones who can manage that and not be charitable are the utterly self deluded (e.g.…

I suggest you watch the documentary Inside Bill's Brain https://www.netflix.com/title/80184771 Bill is way too invested in this stuff for it to be a cynical PR effort. And he himself states it was his mother who inspired him to give: https://www.businessinsider.com/bill-gates-mother-inspired-p... If Bill's giving was a cynical PR play, why would he be pushing other HNWs to give through the giving pledge? Wouldn't it…

> Bill is way too invested in this stuff for it to be a cynical PR effort

Proceeds to link a literal PR propaganda piece by Gates and Co.

Re: Just Be Rich

#692

Post by chrisseaton »

rychco wrote: post #663
chrisseaton wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Owning a house is becoming more and more a thing for the upper classes Something like 60% of US people own a home. 30% even own their home completely outright, with no mortgage. Obviously 30%, let alone 60%, of the population cannot be considered 'upper class', and 'middle class' is probably even a stretch. The home ownership rate seems broadly stable since the 60s to me, with gentle ups and downs with the economy,…

As someone in their mid 20’s with a tech job, it blows my mind that 60% of people own a home. I can’t imagine having enough money to own a home in a major city.

> I can’t imagine having enough money to own a home in a major city.

Who do you think owns the homes all around you, and in all the suburban streets around the city? Normal people like you. There aren't hundreds of elites living on every US street, clearly. They're just normal people who saved up over a few years or got a little helper money from their parents.

Re: Just Be Rich

#693

Post by mahogany »

Bootvis wrote: post #655
csomar wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit surprising, huh? According to this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq... The Netherland, indeed, is the worst. It's close to having a minority own everything while everybody else has 0 (a 1.0 coefficient).

I’m really surprised. It went up a lot from 2018 and 2019 so I don’t fully trust the result but that might be bias talking.

Yeah, jumping from #65 to #1 in a single year is... surprising.

Re: Just Be Rich

#694

Post by rjmunro »

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…

In the UK, it's not just low interest rates, it's also that the rules on renting have made it more attractive for landlords and less attractive for tenants. For example, you used to need a good reason to evict someone, now you can just evict them whenever you like.

Once you moved in, increases in rent used to be regulated. Now a landlord can charge whatever they want after the initial period and if you can't afford it you have to leave.

Landlords used to have to maintain and fix the property. While they still do in theory, in practise they often just threaten one of the two options above to anyone who wants a repair done.

Re: Just Be Rich

#695

Post by everybodyknows »

saint_angels wrote: post #423
mytherin wrote: post #304

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. 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…

> Amazon [...] simply taking all of the customers and wealth away from all of the smaller businesses Amazon doesn't "simply" take others wealth. It wins by providing a better service

Half-true. Amazon also wins by monopoly tactics:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-29/amazon-em...

And offering new, but delivering used, damaged products to customers:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26320094

Re: Just Be Rich

#696

Post by ralphhughes »

px43 wrote: post #664
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…

My brilliant* idea to solve the real estate problem is to tax the hell out of properties that are sitting empty. Something like a 2x or 3x multiplier on property taxes or something, especially in densely populated areas, and especially in areas where there is rampant housing insecurity. The tax needs to be greater than the potential gamble of waiting for occupants. This should be both for residential and commercial u…

This is actually being tried, starting this month, in my area (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56293250)

Monthly council tax will double for properties that do not have occupants. This is due to my area having over 10% of houses being bought as holiday homes or investments that stay empty for most of the year.

Re: Just Be Rich

#697

Post by sthnblllII »

microtherion wrote: post #689
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,…

"Silicon Valley money" also got you the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the Computer History Museum and lots of other nice things. You see a Hewlett, a Packard, or another legendary Silicon Valley name on almost every Nice Thing in the Bay Area.

That's like pointing to the free turkeys Mexican drug cartels give out on Christmas as an argument for letting them murder people.

Re: Just Be Rich

#698

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

dTal wrote: post #632
laurent92 wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The movie did feel a year long.

Re: Just Be Rich

#699

Post by jimbokun »

xbpx wrote: post #488
refurb wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because of a tiny wealth tax that is already lower than in many other countries? You think a relatively well off individual from a less wealthy country facing many systemic problems for business will pass up the opportunity to migrate to the US because they may need to pay a couple percent if they strike gold?

"facing many systemic problems for business"

Like a wealth tax?

Re: Just Be Rich

#700

Post by yiyus »

camhart wrote: post #387
yiyus wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There isn't a finite amount of "wealth" in the world. Yes, there is. It is not limited, we can do more of it, but of course it is finite. It is also important that, the more wealth you have, the easier it becomes to make more of it. So, indeed, the rich obtaining more of it does mean there's less for you and me.

I can go outside and carve a wooden spoon out of a piece of fallen wood. I've just created wealth without taking it from anyone. Even if I had to buy the wood from someone else, I took a $1 piece of wood and turned it into a $20 spoon. Wealth was just created without anyone loosing it. Wealth is infinite. Sure the amount of currency in circulation is finite, but currency isn't wealth. > It is also important that, the…

> Wealth was just created without anyone loosing it.

If you use the wood for the spoon, it means someone else cannot use that wood for making a ship or heating their house. You cannot go and make a million spoons to get rich without either having money to invest or breaking a few laws. And this happens because the amount of wood (or resources, in general) is not only finite but relatively scarce.

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