Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

dariusforoux.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 110 posts

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#81

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

WJW wrote: post #50
amelius wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that depends on how you became rich and famous. E.g. if you found the cure to cancer ...

Not at all. Even if you find the cure to cancer tomorrow and it is 100% effective and dirt cheap, there are always enough people willing to make up conspiracies about it and send you threats. There's a semi-well known article from Tim Ferriss [1] where he does the math about prevalence of mental illness in the general population and multiplies that by an audience size of (say) 10 million people. You quickly end up wi…

Yuuuup.

And it's probably 10x worse if you're a woman. And 100x worse if you're gay or bi, and 1000x worse if you're trans.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#82

Post by tristor »

sschueller wrote: post #38
Invictus0 wrote: post #24

Getting rich isn't that hard. Just be born in America or Europe, most careers will afford a comfortable lifestyle. If you want to be richer than that, study engineering or business. Your average businessman does math at the 8th grade level. Getting famous also isn't that hard. Do something funny or creative and post it on TikTok, it's not that hard to get a video with 1e5 or 1e6 views. Hell, you can post cute videos…

You may be rich compared to someone in the poorest of nations but you can still be struggling to get by while working 3 jobs. Getting an engineering degree is also not that easy and for example in the US you will be jailed by huge dept for the rest of your life.

Also, you don't need an engineering degree to get a job in tech as long as you're lucky enough to be born in the West to start with. Things like MIT Open Courseware and similar programs have made it possibly to learn everything needed to know in order to get and excel in a tech job for nearly free. There is absolutely no need to be "jailed by huge debt".

Being born in the West is pretty much required though because decks are stacked hard against immigrants.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#83

Post by sbf501 »

betwixthewires wrote: post #57
sbf501 wrote: post #27

In the Buffet example, OP left out that once you cross a certain threshold of wealth, it is almost impossible to NOT make more. There are hedge funds, exchanges, shell corporations, ways of diffusing assets across businesses, and other strategies that only people with hundreds of millions can access. Not to mention many laws basically stop applying to you once you achieve a certain level of wealth because the vehicle…

Its irrelevant in the example, because the Buffet-like person is only using one strategy in the example, available to everyone.

It isn't irrelevant because Buffet didn't use that strategy.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#85

Post by achenatx »

PuppyTailWags wrote: post #28
rufus_foreman wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> In 1945, as a high school sophomore, Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine, which they placed in the local barber shop. Within months, they owned several machines in three different barber shops across Omaha. They sold the business later in the year for $1,200 That's ~$20k in today's dollars in a few months while still in high school. >> At 15, Warren made more than $175 monthly deliver…

A 15 year old today cannot make ~$3k a month delivering Washington Post newspapers. I think the point still stands what much of wealth gain is lucky opportunity windows, such as being alive during a time where a job like newspaper delivery pays 3k a month.

my daughter is 14, her friend makes $17 hour working at a juice store. She makes about 300/week.

In 1987 I was making about 25/hour doing programming as a senior in high school.

There are always opportunities and those opportunities are not the same in every era.

Kids today are making 100K being influencers opening toys on youtube

Kids today are making 100K playing online poker

Kids today are making $$ writing apps

Kids today are making $$ selling pot

The point is not paper delivery, the point is there is a mindset. I will never be a billionaire because I will stop trying to make money once I have "enough"

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#86

Post by Kon-Peki »

WalterBright wrote: post #42
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 15 year old today cannot make ~$3k a month delivering Washington Post newspapers. I think the point still stands what much of wealth gain is lucky opportunity windows, such as being alive during a time where a job like newspaper delivery pays 3k a month.

I made maybe $100 a month delivering newspapers in the 1970s. It wasn't practical to make much more because the territories were fixed and there was a long waiting list to get one.

I made about $120 a month delivering newspapers in the 1980s in a terrible, small, rust-belt town. With all the overhead involved, it came out to less than $2 an hour.

Nobody was "lucky" to have a paper delivery route.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#87

Post by PuppyTailWags »

achenatx wrote: post #85
PuppyTailWags wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 15 year old today cannot make ~$3k a month delivering Washington Post newspapers. I think the point still stands what much of wealth gain is lucky opportunity windows, such as being alive during a time where a job like newspaper delivery pays 3k a month.

my daughter is 14, her friend makes $17 hour working at a juice store. She makes about 300/week. In 1987 I was making about 25/hour doing programming as a senior in high school. There are always opportunities and those opportunities are not the same in every era. Kids today are making 100K being influencers opening toys on youtube Kids today are making 100K playing online poker Kids today are making $$ writing apps K…

> my daughter is 14, her friend makes $17 hour working at a juice store. She makes about 300/week.

This is not 3k a month. This is less than 1/3 of that.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#88

Post by googlryas »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #79
wpietri wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. When I had a newspaper route in the 1980s, I was getting paid the same per paper delivered as my grandfather was 50 years prior: 2 cents. It reminds me of how people shit on today's college students without realizing how much college costs have risen. I get the initial "kids these days" reaction, but holy moly, fellow olds, please use Google to update your priors a bit.

Drives me bonkers. There was a time when you could just work a minimum wage part time over the summer and it would pay for college the rest of the year. Now, you can work minimum wage full time year-round and if you're lucky, you MIGHT cover tuition at a community college if you're still living with your parents and they don't charge rent.

I think you're exaggerating a little bit. It doesn't help whatever point you're trying to make.

Average community college tuition cost[0]: $3,400/yr.

$3400/yr is $70/week in order to pay your tuition without a loan. Your argument is only lucky people making minimum wage for 40 hours/week, who have their rent paid for, can save $70/week?

[0] https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-community-college

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#89

Post by josephcsible »

Kon-Peki wrote: post #86
WalterBright wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made maybe $100 a month delivering newspapers in the 1970s. It wasn't practical to make much more because the territories were fixed and there was a long waiting list to get one.

I made about $120 a month delivering newspapers in the 1980s in a terrible, small, rust-belt town. With all the overhead involved, it came out to less than $2 an hour. Nobody was "lucky" to have a paper delivery route.

If there were more people who wanted to deliver papers for that price than there were delivery routes available, then you were indeed lucky if you had one.

Re: ‘Why Am I Not Rich and Famous?’ The Delusion of Our Times

#90

Post by NordSteve »

rufus_foreman wrote: post #70
NordSteve wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no way anyone who was doing delivery of newspapers in the 1940s and making $175 nominal. Newspapers then cost roughly 5 cents apiece, and in Omaha a route with 100 doors would take 90 minutes. Your monthly gross sales for a seven day route of that size would be $150, and the vast of that would go to purchase papers. You’d probably net $25, and then get $15 in tips. That’s about the same amount I made on my ro…

He had 3 routes, this was in DC, not Omaha: "Young Warren attended the DC public school Alice Deal Junior High and he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School. Buffett says delivering papers at age 14 instilled the importance of hard work and reliability. Wartime Washington was short of adult men and for that reason, says Buffett, he was able to get multiple paper routes at the Westchester Apartments, a five-buildin…

Thanks for the additional info.

Let's assume for a moment that $0.05 is still a good price for newspapers, and assume that the carrier received 20%, or a penny apiece. Also assume that he delivers every day. That's about 580 papers day. If they're really dense subscribers, I guess you could make a delivery every 10 seconds, so about 95 minutes to deliver that number if you never wait for an elevator, climb stairs, etc.

Certainly was a great opportunity for Warren, but an outlier for paper delivery earnings.

Post reply on HN