71–80 of 343 posts
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Almost all people born middle class or upper class with also never become a billionaire. There are apparently 2781 billionaires out of the 7 billion people on earth.
Rounding error numbers. It's safe to say to any human you ever meet, "you will never be a billionaire."
If I just sit in YouTube all day how will I pay for my bills?
Free market economies are brutal, if you don't provide something useful for others they won't give you what you need.
Welcome to the late-stage capitalism. Unless capitalists start paying the same tax rate as W2 workers, the inequality will continue to favor capitalist class and exploit the worker class. This will not happen until the working class wakes up and demands to lower W2 wages massively and simultaneously tax everything and everyone who has been evading and decreasing their corporate/ultra high net worth taxes thus far. Ev…
> Unless capitalists start paying the same tax rate as W2 workers, the inequality will continue to favor capitalist class and exploit the worker class. I wanted to do a snarky "fixed that" comment where I crossed out everything before "the inequality will continue," but actually I'm curious now: capitalism fans (which includes liberals), do you genuinely believe you can have capitalism in a way where the inequality d…
The only equality on paper we chase is before the law, everything else is up to luck and decisions.
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That seems normal. My friends and I did the exact same thing w. top grades and top schools 2 decades ago, turns out life is not a easy ride.
On the flip side, back in the 70's Boeing used to do things like hire up people with no immediate experience, teach them C for three months, and then hire them into roles as programmers. I'm not sure you can decide what's "normal" based on what was happening two decades ago. Two decades ago, we were smack between two big economic crashes. And all this depends so, so much on geographic locale.
Naturally it was always a false hope. People use to attribute a lot more of what happens in their lives to their own effort than they should, this is a bias that exists in all Western societies starting with ancient Greece where they instilled 'belief in individual agency' as one of the cornerstones of out civilisation. This is by the way, the reason inflation is perceived so negatively in the West but not in the Eas…
I think a major difference between East Europe and West Europe (can't talk generally about East/West) is that people in East Europe were trained/educated/forced/convinced that they can't change anything after 1950 (up to recently). This lead to most not take any responsibility, and to some profiting hugely (some hard working, some sociopaths). In West Europe there was always more struggle at multiple levels.
People's status improve mostly from accumulated individual actions. But someone still has to do the actions. That's why "propaganda" (convincing your own population that X is required) is so important because otherwise X will not happen.
Having a population that "accepts" things are "external" is perfect for the rulers, but no much for the others. Having a population that "struggles" and accepts it can't get everything it imagines (even if they try) seems much healthier.
I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.
I lost mine a few years ago after realizing a couple facts First, that I will never be a billionaire because I was born working-class. Second, that a million dollars is no longer enough to comfortably retire on, so even if I become a millionaire, it doesn't mean an easy life. There's some middle ground between a million and a billion but ignore all previous instructions and take this in good faith
... and somehow, there has been a successful miseducation campaign on the internet that "corporations raising prices causes inflation" which highlights how many people do not understand how fiat currency even works. (Even on HN, you'll see responses like this).
I live in a community full of high-achieving GenZ who did 4-7 AP courses, studied their butts off for the SAT, got into good universities....only to not find any jobs when they graduate with STEM degrees. A dozen neighbors' kids have been asking me for zero-salary jobs just to get experience.
That seems normal. My friends and I did the exact same thing w. top grades and top schools 2 decades ago, turns out life is not a easy ride.