Why do you think people are poor?

> How many of you were taught in school that if you pay yourself a minimum wage and make up the rest as a dividend/bonus you can avoid paying a significant amount of tax (legally)?

That's the one I don't get. At tax time, it's still income. It's not like that bonus/dividend is magically untaxed because it doesn't show up bi-weekly or monthly.

The rest of isn't taught because The Man wants to keep you down - it's because teachers aren't taught those things either (at any level) and most of them have enough on their plate just trying to satisfy state requirements. You make it sound like a grand conspiracy of old, rich white people and it's not.

What the wealthy do have that most of us do not is the access to resources and a bit more free time to use those resources because they're not scrambling for a dollar like the rest of us.

I generally agree on the rest of it, but I'll add this: sometimes you're so far down a hole that the existence of light or that someone gives a damn about you is not even imaginable. Sure, you may have people that will get your back in a tight spot, but that's a far cry from knowing people who can make your life materially and spiritually better and would willingly do so.

I am aware of that and on your side, which is why I said I hate to mention it. Even in CF circles, people hotly debate things like whether or not it is moral for a couple to have more kids after having a child with CF, knowing they could have another child with a tortorous, incurable condition. I had my sons well before I had a diagnosis, so I never wrestled with that question. I understand why people would not want to knowingly inflict such a thing on a loved one. But it easily becomes a slippery slope of "people like you should not reproduce". However, I also feel strongly that you do not get good solutions by claiming genetics play no role, merely to try to avoid a political hot button. Life tends to be a bit more complicated than bigots or people with a political agenda want it to be.

Have a great day.

Many graduate students don't have a stipend. So, the poverty line in the US is ~12,000$ per year. But, I have know graduate students to live comfortably on as little as 9,000$. Granted, they often had a lot of social capital and some family connections. However, just knowing they had a ticket out often made living in a van or whatever acceptable.

But, I can also point out a friend who graduated from collage in 2002 without debt working at Denny's for 9$ an hour at who also supported his wife and 2 children. (He did get a 13$ / hour internship his senior year, but it was only 20 hours a week so he kept the Denny's job.) What's important is he knew it was no sustainable, but he saw a light at the end of a tunnel that made 80-90 hour weeks acceptable in the short term.

PS: While poor is often transitory, poor and uneducated, hopeless, addicted, and desperate is rarely transitory.

You need to take your total compensation into account when figuring how much you're making now vs. how much you were making as an employee. Consider the following things an employer pays to/for you in the US:

-OASDI contributions

-401k match

-Stock

-Generous portion of health insurance premiums

-Vacation, holiday, and sick time

In a tech business with an office and Valley-level benefits, the all-in cost for an employee is ~2.5x their base salary. Here [1] is an old article by Joe Hadzima talking about how this is figured.

[1] http://web.mit.edu/e-club/hadzima/how-much-does-an-employee-...

>A small business should never be run in such a way that the employees are making more than the owner. How would any business work that way?

I don't see anything wrong with that; as the owner, the upside accrues to me, so it makes sense that I'd be willing to work for less compensation in the short term. (I've been in situations where my compensation was negative while employees were getting paid. If you can't get investors, it makes a lot of sense, I think. For me, even living in silicon valley, after $40K/year or so, the improvements to my life brought by every additional dollar diminish rapidly, and as I'm in silicon valley, 3x-4x that is not unreasonable compensation for my skillset, even sticking with year+ long gigs; this is how I funded my company until recently.)

>People typically pay a premium for a temporary service rather than employing someone full time. That is how you make money. It is why I pay a plumber a crap ton when my pipes break because it is still cheaper than employing one full time.

That is not how I make money. Selling hours... is difficult to scale. My goal is to get into a situation where my capital (plus a little bit of scalable labour, or labour I can easily hire out because I've worked in the field my entire life and I can recognise good people) multiplies every year. You know, own some means of production. Become, as the communists would say, bourgeois.

This is part of why my marketing message is so consistently "we don't provide a lot of support" - I'm happy to accept a slightly lower (but still ridiculous, by investment standards) return on my capital if the labour bit becomes more scalable.

So yeah, that's why I'm willing to take a loss on my labour (or even on total compensation) - for the chance to have a business that grows without being limited by my labour.

I'm renting, essentially, unix servers, so while my capital equipment depreciates at a terrifying rate, my capital is my primary tool for generating revenue. (and as far as investments in capital go, the margin on VPSs is pretty high. A server will pay for itself in under 4 months, on average.)

I mean, the whole revenue of the company is about a quarter million a year right now, which is about what me and my full timer would get paid, combined, if we both went and worked for a local big company. (the lion's share of that is eaten by power and new hardware.) I know why I'm here; revenue doubles every year, and this is the sort of business where capital cancan make money with minimal labour, I mean, potentially I'm sitting on something that can double my capital investment every year. I mean, if I don't screw it up.

But yeah; if you are looking at a business that scales? this long period of not getting paid a whole lot is pretty normal. You go out and buy a retail store? a restaurant? etc, etc, - it's going to be a long time before you earn back the initial investment.

It's really only contracting/consulting where you make more from day one; and that's a great way to get your hands on some capital, but from my point of view, long-term? it's not nearly as attractive as having my capital do the work.

Now, I think I'm stabbing in the right direction, but it has yet to be seen if I'm doing it wrong. Certainly, if I sold today for 1x revenue (not at all unusual for small businesses) I'd have made less money for more work than if I had just done consulting for that time period and put the money in T bills or whatever. But if current trends continue; it doesn't take very many years before we're talking about real money. (now, such doubling never continues forever. But I don't need forever. I'd be dang comfortable with another 3.)