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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#711

Post by ColFrancis »

molszanski wrote: post #280

The poor get poorer not because tech startups get richer. If we remove tech startups, the poor wood get poorer just as fast. The difference would be that there would be less tech-rich people to calculate the Gini coefficient. The real question is: "why poor are getting poorer?" It is a very complicated question involving taxes, capitalism and hundreds of broken policies and institutions, like mass incarceration that…

> The poor get poorer not because tech startups get richer.

Not that Uber has made any money, but it's certainly dropped the price of taxis and their market. Someone got poorer.

Re: Just Be Rich

#712

Post by AlexandrB »

nindalf wrote: post #662
hellbannedguy wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah Bill Gates - terrible guy. Spending money trying to eradicate diseases that kill poor people. What's worse, here's him in 2015 ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI ) wasting money and faffing on about some pandemic. As if that's going to happen, and even if it does the pandemic won't affect rich countries in any way.

Here's an alternative perspective: https://newrepublic.com/article/162000/bill-gates-impeded-gl.... Bill Gates may want to eradicate disease, but he's not willing to give up on IP protection maximalism while doing so. Whether his approach is net-positive or net-negative remains to be seen.

Re: Just Be Rich

#713

Post by literallycancer »

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…

If you think being a landlord is such a great deal, why don't you do it?

Re: Just Be Rich

#714

Post by pc86 »

bkirkby wrote: post #565
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,…

You seem to be talking about a caricature of the "silicon valley rich." Who are you talking about when you say "this mentality of earned wealth completely rids the owner of any sense of responsibility"?

It seems pretty straightforward to me.

If you believe that your wealth is entirely, or almost entirely, through sheer force of your own will, skills, and abilities, you have no responsibility to anyone with regard to that wealth. You earned it all without anyone's help. It's all yours. They can pound sand.

If you believe that your wealth is in part due to factors outside of your control - having connected family, having family money, attending good schools, lucky breaks early in your career, etc. - you're much more likely to feel a sense of responsibility toward the next generation. To give other people lucky breaks, maybe even ones less deserving than you were. To set up scholarship funds so other kids can attend good schools they otherwise wouldn't be able to.

Edit to add: People in group 2 don't feel they "deserve" it any less. They still earned it. It's still theirs. They just understand the difference between being born on third base and hitting a triple. The run still counts at the end of the day.

Re: Just Be Rich

#715

Post by nerdkid93 »

Kbelicius wrote: post #600
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.

> We still have the most wealth inequality in all the world. No you don't, not even close. Where did you get that idea?

see page 199 in this dataset[0] which is the dataset used for this list of countries on Wikipedia[1]. If you sort on Wealth Gini (2019), then Netherlands is ranked first.

0: https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...

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

Re: Just Be Rich

#716

Post by McScroogy »

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…

From your description, it seems to me that renting is cheaper than buying. So it seems renters get the better deal.

It's a pity if a flat is empty for a year, but that in itself also does not cause a shortage. After all, it was rented out after a year.

The market is supposed to deliver the flat to the person who needs it most. In that case, apparently it was you. Without the speculator, somebody would have rented it for a very low price long ago, and you would not have been able to live there at all. So maybe the market worked.

Re: Just Be Rich

#717

Post by AlexandrB »

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.

So you're saying we need a 100% estate tax? Because the same applies to those lucky enough to be born into rich families.

Re: Just Be Rich

#718

Post by Shugarl »

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…

Well, real estate has always been one of the best ways to invest money. But the problem is that there's much more demand than there are supply in some places. If a lot of people wish to live in a specific place, then the price will go up, and vice versa. You could buy several houses in small cities for the price of only one house in Paris, for example.

Re: Just Be Rich

#719

Post by plank_time »

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.

You make a good point that I never thought about. People who donate their money get tax breaks because it’s sorting offsetting government spending.

But if they donate to a charity that spends the money outside of the US, should they get the full benefit of that tax break? It’s an interesting question that I never thought about.

Re: Just Be Rich

#720

Post by Agenttin »

refurb wrote: post #371
ElKrist wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then go. If the price of having them here is that they get to not pay their fair share while taking advantage of our infrastructure and workforce, they can pound sand.
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