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How the Rich Got Rich

inc.com

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Re: How the Rich Got Rich

#3

Post by FrancescoRizzi »

when we see these reports/analysis it seems the answer is always the same: Capital Gain. However, I think this whole line of inquiry is mis-titled: these reports always tell us how the rich people are making now their income. Which, I feel, is not a good hint as to how you can become rich.

For the greater public, the question of "how the rich people went from 0 to $1B" might more interesting than "how the rich people maintain their $1B+". Definitely I find the latter more interesting than the former (probably because I don't have $1B+)

Re: How the Rich Got Rich

#4

Post by DanielBMarkham »

FrancescoRizzi wrote: post #3

when we see these reports/analysis it seems the answer is always the same: Capital Gain. However, I think this whole line of inquiry is mis-titled: these reports always tell us how the rich people are making now their income. Which, I feel, is not a good hint as to how you can become rich. For the greater public, the question of "how the rich people went from 0 to $1B" might more interesting than "how the rich people…

I had the same exact reaction, but looking at the article again, it clearly says A total of over 3,800 taxpayers have made the top 400 since 1992, but only 27% appear more than once, and only 2% appear 10 or more times.

That means these are not people who are necessarily rich and are raking in the money. These are most likely people who have a company, have stock options, and are cashing out. Most of them never come back to the list. The point here is that grabbing on to a company could be like catching a rocket -- your ticket to the stars. Whereas working an hourly wage is likely never going to do much more than make you upper-middle-class.

I realize you could interpret these numbers differently, but that's what it looked like to me. You can't have big capital gains income without some kind of underlying company that's doing tremendously well.

Re: How the Rich Got Rich

#7

Post by dmix »

The Rockefeller quote is interesting

  "If your only goal is to become rich, you'll never achieve it."
But I've always felt Citizen Kane's was more accurate:

  "It's easy to make a lot of money, if that's all you want to do 
  is make a lot of money."

Re: How the Rich Got Rich

#9

Post by DanielBMarkham »

cagenut wrote: post #8

great example of why arguing over the income tax rate is a distraction from the real issue: the capital gains rate

You'll need to explain yourself a little more. Why is the real issue capital gains? No matter what the rate is, it wouldn't amount to much of anything compared to the money brought in from income taxes.
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