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Just Be Rich

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Re: Just Be Rich

#911

Post by stjohnswarts »

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 mind "rich, middle class poor" what I do mind is the vast difference in that spectrum and how bad the bottom 20% of the USA really do have it. You shouldn't have to work 12-16 hours a day of unskilled labor to have a car and decent place to live. No to mention the few million homeless that we have. While the upper 0.1% are grotesquely richer than the rest of us and continue to only enlarge that gap. I can't agree with you at all. With technology improvements we should have a decent spread in wealth and it should be diminishing not increasing. This is indeed where the government should come in with wealth distribution. For a human being it doesn't matter if you have 1 billion or 100 billion you really still have far more than enough money.

Re: Just Be Rich

#912

Post by Joker_vD »

tjs8rj wrote: post #891
Joker_vD wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pro-communist argument really is founded on two points: a) it's impossible for everyone to be a (successful) businessman: somebody has to be an employee and do the actual work, y'know? b) to be "actually rich" -- which is not just "being on the level of personally comfortable standard of living", it's more of "having certain level of personal influence" -- you have to own a share in a commercial enterprise and ge…

These points seem to forget about income mobility. How about the fact that almost nobody under 40 is a millionaire (rich), but just about 20% of Americans over 65 are? We can’t all be rich at the same time, but we can all be rich by taking turns, which tends to be what happens as people accumulate wealth over decades. The rich people today were more often than not the poor and middle class of yesterday.

And those points "ignore" income mobility because it mostly comes from transitioning from being a worker to being a entrepreneur of sorts. You don't generally work your whole life as a welder, for example, or a woodworker, and retire with $1M in the savings account (perhaps if you work as a surgeon, you do...)

Also, should we perhaps count the people who didn't manage to live to be over 65 in this percentage calculation of "20%"? That'll move that number down quite a bit, I am afraid.

> The rich people today were more often than not the poor and middle class of yesterday.

Well, poor people today are more often than not were the poor and middle class of yesterday too.

Re: Just Be Rich

#913

Post by raspasov »

RHSeeger wrote: post #741
raspasov wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't make such an assumption. I ask again: How do you define "access to wealth"?

> If this was true in reality, then why are there so many new wealthy people that didn't come from wealth? The way I am reading this is you are saying > It is easier to become wealthy if you're already wealthy or have access to wealth is disproven by the fact that > There exist people that became wealthy without already I do not see any other way to take your statement. If you meant it some other way, please explain.…

Fair enough.

Re: Just Be Rich

#914

Post by stjohnswarts »

bko wrote: post #832
dougmwne wrote: post #807

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't wor…

> I strongly disagree with this and I think it runs counter to human nature. You're looking at quality of life as if there were some kind of absolute measure of it, but it really doesn't work like that. Quality of life is always measured relative to the people around us or to whom we are exposed in media or social media. If you're looking for validation and happiness based on what you see in social media, quality of…

Because when you say "oh I'm happy with Bezos and Zuck having over 100 billion when I'm lucky to put food in my kid's mouths" you are going to revert back to the monarchy, we need to continue to fight these people who think that the rich should continue to trample the poor, especially the really poor of the world. I have no problem with an upper crust, but currently we're moving back to just a few people controlling the world, politics, and freedom.

Re: Just Be Rich

#915

Post by stjohnswarts »

dougmwne wrote: post #892
solipsism wrote: post #880

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've made the case that what you call "social suffering" exists, but you haven't made the case that we should care about it. There are people struggling to survive, even in a country like the US. We have people dying in hospitals at differential rates based on their poverty level. One sweet day when everyone is guaranteed the most basic of human necessities, maybe then we'll start caring about the anxiety a (small-…

In a democracy the concerns of everyone are brought to the table, both the starving and the well fed.

Well I'd say the well fed are getting 90% of the food while they are only 1% of the table

Re: Just Be Rich

#916

Post by askesum »

Inequality is dangerous. When welfare was introduced in european societies some centurys ago, the main reason was security. For the rich.

Re: Just Be Rich

#917

Post by stjohnswarts »

paxys wrote: post #849
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…

Is there a global economy for basic healthcare? For rent? Home services? Insurance? Most people are still at the mercy of the zip code they live in. The "global" economy has pushed wages down and made cheap goods cheaper, but claiming that a bottom 10% American has a good life because they are still the top 10% globally is idiotic.

It maybe have done that in a few countries but in general the world, particularly the 3rd world is a lot "richer" than it was 30 or even 20 years ago.

Re: Just Be Rich

#918

Post by qPM9l3XJrF »

AlexandrB wrote: post #721
qPM9l3XJrF wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> BTW, did demonization of wall street in the wake of the 2008 crash trigger a wave of philanthropic giving from them? You steal a loaf of bread - you go to jail. You commit fraud on a scale that destabilizes the global economy - you get to say that people pointing out your misdeeds are "demonizing" you.

I didn't say it was unjustified, just checking if the hypothesis that bad PR leads to philanthropy is true.

Re: Just Be Rich

#919

Post by sangnoir »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #909
sangnoir wrote: post #867

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think there are other more specific things we could worry about, like house prices out of control, nobody is paying to clean up the waste they produce, governments baling out rich people etc. > Talking about "inequality" in the abstract is not worthwhile. I thought the connection between the problems you state and inequality was obvious. I guess it has to be spelt out: inequality means the super-rich become liter…

I right there with you when you talk about power imbalance, and although wealth and power are tightly linked, I think they can be discussed separately. I have no problem with the 1% having all the money as long as they are not using it to wield power and extracting rent from the rest of us. I think there are issues with our Democracy and our Media, not with our Capitalism. PS: if we wanted to, a democracy could simpl…

> I think there are issues with our Democracy and our Media, not with our Capitalism.

The question is, how do you stop Capitalism from subverting Democracy and the Media to perpetuate itself? I think one can successfully argue that capitalism is a human-scale paperclip maximizer, but for capital.

> PS: if we wanted to, a democracy could simply make it illegal buy investment property insuring that everybody had somewhere to live. Freeing people from the burden of rent.

Only if the wealthy allow it. You don't have to look very hard to find dead-in-the-water concepts/projects that have the support of a large majority of Americans across the political spectrum, but are hated by the wealthy, and therefore their politician proxies. These tend to die despite public popularity - alas, that's the downside of representative democracy.

Re: Just Be Rich

#920

Post by McScroogy »

pnutjam wrote: post #822
McScroogy wrote: post #716

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Renter here. I have yet to find a person who pays a lower mortgage then I pay renting. Renting also goes up every year with little ability of the renter to arrest that increase. In my experience the renter is usually paying the full cost of the mortgage, plus a little to the landlord. The landlord has no savings or interest in improving or fixing anything past the bare minimum.

So why don't you buy? I am in the opposite position. I would like to buy something, but I can not find anything that would be worthwhile (mortgages lower than the rent I pay at the moment, or lower than rent I could ask for renting out).
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