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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#781

Post by sanedigital »

McScroogy wrote: post #644
sanedigital wrote: post #538

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not just “rich people,” it’s “wealth.” Speculation in there housing market is a widely accepted contributor to rising housing prices: https://www.princeton.edu/~wxiong/papers/Speculation.pdf

[flagged]

It’s the second sentence on the page:

“We find that housing speculation, anchored, in part, on extrapolation of past housing price changes, led not only to greater price increases and more housing construction during the boom in 2004 to 2006, but also to more severe economic downturns during the subsequent bust in 2007 to 2009.”

Re: Just Be Rich

#782

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

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…

Wow! Are you planning maybe a Clubhouse session where we can learn more about this?

Re: Just Be Rich

#783

Post by scottious »

saberdancer wrote: post #213
jwr wrote: post #158

The really shocking quote from the article is the part of the caption below one of the charts: "Data for families in the first quintile (bottom 20%) are not shown. Their median wealth was as follows: 1989 — $0; 1998 — $0; 2007 - $36 and 2016 — negative $1,099." BOTTOM 20%. Has has zero or negative wealth. And that has only changed for the worse during the last 30 years. If one FIFTH of your country has $0 or negative…

If you are in depth, your wealth is negative. After I finished school, as a software engineer I bought a home and a car (by taking a loan) and effectively I had negative wealth. I was by no means in a bad situation, I just consciously took a loan against my future earnings to improve my life quality now rather than after I saved up. Many of these charts ignore this.

> After I finished school, as a software engineer I bought a home and a car (by taking a loan) and effectively I had negative wealth.

I mean, sure... but your wealth was only negative for a VERY short period of time. Your car still had value and you could close that gap in probably a few months and be net-worth positive.

I think there are way more people who are paycheck-to-paycheck at best. The average credit card debt in the USA is thousands of dollars. I don't think that's because people are just stupid with money, I think a lot of that comes out of necessity because they can't keep their head above water.

Re: Just Be Rich

#784

Post by joyeuse6701 »

spamizbad wrote: post #640
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.fir…

In the Gulag Archipelago, there's a story about Tsar Nicholas asking to be placed in solitary confinement so as to understand the conditions. The author notes that even this gesture was an indication of at least moral aspiration. Which I believe may fall under the umbrella of noblesse oblige

This is in stark contrast to the Organs operating the prisons during the Soviet era who would never submit themselves to torture to understand the plight of the prisoners they sentenced.

Anyway, just a fun anecdote, clearly noblesse oblige wasn't enough to stop the people from revolting in several cases.

Re: Just Be Rich

#785

Post by jberryman »

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,…

> Because at least old money understands the concept of noblesse oblige

Interesting observation. I recently learned from a Fresh Air interview with Heather McGhee about Hinton Rowan Helper, a white racist Southerner abolitionist. He wrote a book analyzing the way chattel slavery harmed working-class whites and white society, the essential dynamic being:

the wealth of the plantation class did not depend on the labor of the white working class, nor their ability to buy product from the plantation class (cotton and tobacco were shipped north and globally); as a result the plantation (ruling) class had no incentive to invest in society; Helper quantified this by looking at number of libraries, schools, etc. in the North vs the deep South.

Obviously I don't want to claim the horrors of slavery are comparable to the effects of tech companies on the economy... but I wonder if the same _essential dynamic_ is there:

- wealth equating to political power

- an industry driven to remove any reliance on an educated populous or satisfied workforce (through automation, and the secondary effects of automation as in the way Uber etc. offloads risk onto drivers/society)

- an industry for whom the populous are not customers but "the product"

Re: Just Be Rich

#786

Post by stephanheijl »

Bootvis wrote: post #660
stephanheijl wrote: post #638

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Any explanation for the jump from 2018 to 2019?

Based on the Global Wealth Book 2018 and 2019 from Credit Suisse, comparing Table 3-1 in both books, it appears that the number of adults in "under 10.000" range increased significantly in 2019. This is likely not a real change, but rather a change of methodology or data sources. As far as I can tell however, this is not detailed in the text. I have directed an email to Credit Suisse on this, as it's a rather interesting piece of data.

Re: Just Be Rich

#787

Post by seabird »

dasil003 wrote: post #709
nindalf wrote: post #662

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure I’ll give credit for his recent philanthropy, but the man crushed a generation of innovative software companies under his heel. Fortunately he didn’t see the web coming and failed to stop Linux, but make no mistake was not a good person for most of his career, and we are still feeling the effects of the damage he did to the software world.

Microsoft also gave countless thousands of people the opportunity to get into the field. I know it's easy to shit on them now, because we can look back and say that just about everybody then was an idiot by today's standards, but if you compare what your options were, Microsoft was by and away the best option for a lot of people getting started. I have an interest in what computers were like around 2000 (I didn't live it at the time, so I don't have any warm, fuzzy feelings towards any of these systems in particular), and as far as I've seen, you had three options:

1.) Proprietary UNIX vendors. Cheap workstations? Fuck you. OS without a support contract? Fuck you. First party compiler? Fuck you. These started to improve after 2000 with ports of open source tools, but most people would realistically be in way over their head price-wise unless they were accessing these systems through a university or workplace.

2.) Open source UNIX and UNIX-like systems. Linux was still pretty rough around the edges, and BSD derivatives were still pretty widespread. All said and done, you had to know these existed, know how to be involved in the community, and deal with the reality that the money just wasn't there yet. These options were not without compromise -- it would be years before Linux began making inroads in the "serious" deployment market.

3.) Microsoft. They did shitty things, but it was possible to get affordable development tools on affordable (and actually quite performant, all things considered) hardware, instead of needing tens of thousands of dollars for option 1 or being in the right place and time for option 2. Windows, VB, etc. causes lots of moaning and groaning today, but it had to have been magical at the time.

Give them all a try on period accurate hardware, one after another. You will become acutely aware why people put up with Microsoft.

Re: Just Be Rich

#788

Post by benrbray »

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…

I have a different idea that maybe I can get some feedback on here. Maybe it's really dumb for obvious reasons, so please tell me.

Construction companies that build residences are clearly creating value for society, so they should be allowed to make some kind of profit. Real estate agencies that buy property from construction companies are doing a very bad thing by renting them as "luxury" housing to people who otherwise have no choice since their livelihood is tied to an urban area.

Why not put a cap on the profit that can be made from a residence? Something like 5x construction costs, plus ongoing costs of maintenance. Suddenly, the "luxury" housing market is no longer suffocating all the affordable housing out of town since the property owner can't expect to rake in the piles of money every month.

Re: Just Be Rich

#789

Post by cbslinger »

sbacic wrote: post #183
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,…

> Because at least old money understands the concept of noblesse oblige. Source please. > it's that this mentality of earned wealth completely rids the owner of any sort of responsibility. Allow me to offer a different view. If you're one of the lucky few who went from nothing to millions (or even billions) you'd be pissed if society came and started talking about responsibility and equality _now_. Where was society…

Noblesse Oblige came less from the old wealthy being kind and more from them being physically close to poor people. They were under constant threat of physical violence by sheer proximity, so they had to care - because they likely realized how tenuous their positions were.

The ultra-rich nowadays physically isolate themselves from the working class and generally have security forces and bodyguards to further ensure their separation.

Re: Just Be Rich

#790

Post by ryanianian »

gre wrote: post #636
TuringNYC wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not even 18-year-olds fresh out of their parents' house with no considerable assets, employment prospects, or credit history?
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