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Why should it?
How the .0001% Made Its Money
121–130 of 154 posts
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
They're talking about these people's origins, not their current wealth.
Alright, pg, I had enough. I looked at the list of Russia's billionaires. At least 5 of them had humble backgrounds. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gutseriev ) 1 has a Muslim father. Some have Jewish sounding last names. Some of them had no early data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_people_by_net_w... EDIT: Will check my hypothesis that Communist politburo members had an even more varied backgro…
Well I'd think that Russia is rather unique in that their power structure semi-collapsed during the 90's and during the chaos of America trying to turn the country to capitalism there were some who were able to jump into the power vacuum and rise to the top.
Most of them have since been disposed (like the guy you linked to) or brought into the fold of the new power structure that arose around Putin.
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not that he inherited his wealth, it's that he grew up in a privileged environment that gave him opportunities most other people didn't have.
> he grew up in a privileged environment Sure, as did you when compared with 99% of the worlds' population.
But we're not comparing with the rest of the world.
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alright, pg, I had enough. I looked at the list of Russia's billionaires. At least 5 of them had humble backgrounds. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gutseriev ) 1 has a Muslim father. Some have Jewish sounding last names. Some of them had no early data. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Russian_people_by_net_w... EDIT: Will check my hypothesis that Communist politburo members had an even more varied backgro…
Well I'd think that Russia is rather unique in that their power structure semi-collapsed during the 90's and during the chaos of America trying to turn the country to capitalism there were some who were able to jump into the power vacuum and rise to the top. Most of them have since been disposed (like the guy you linked to) or brought into the fold of the new power structure that arose around Putin.
I will do a more comprehensive study soon, but my comments about politburo members (especially late soviet ones) was meant to preempt such points as yours. If you look at the billionaires from other countries, it is also as diverse if not more so than the US. In fact it makes some sense (to me at least) that a survey of any extreme outlier populations should show such diversity, it is rather the opposite (a homogeneity) that is interesting...
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#125Surest way is real estate. Just buy real estate and rent it. Repeat over 3 or 4 generations. Congratulations. You created a rich family. All other ways involve luck.
The stock market has performed better than real estate over the same 4 generations.
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#126> The economic story of the past decades is supposed to be the death of the American Dream. Income inequality has risen, the wealth of the middle class stagnated, and stories of the poor working their way to prosperity became just stories. I think the article doesn't really do a good job to change that view. The inequality has risen and the wealth of the middle class has stagnated. This is absolutely true. Things lik…
The widening wealth inequality as it relates to inheritance can be explained mostly by one simple concept, something Buffett himself call the most powerful force in the universe: compounding. Wise people with money, given enough time, will rocket to become insanely wealthy. Compounding does nothing for the middle class who generally spend most of their income, and it works the opposite way for the poor who are debtor…
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Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
The last sentence is the most important point of the article and probably should have been a separate article on its own: > America’s .0001% is becoming more meritocratic, but the means of a middle class background remain a necessary launching board. So in other words the most important aspect is to be from the middle class to be successful otherwise your chances are much less. Makes sense on many levels such as chan…
> being poor impacts IQ simply because it becomes the mind's obsession of finding means to survive. While that's poetic, I'm very skeptical that you could even prove that empirically. It's much more likely (because it is empirically demonstrable) that IQ is more strongly impacted by genetics (IQ of the parents), prenatal care (especially with respect to smoking and binge drinking), and childhood (mal)nutrition. I'm n…
Don't make the really vapid errors in logic of trying to dismiss something by name-calling it "poetic", followed by the really vapid claim that IQ "strongly impacted by genetics", followed by failing to link to a single fucking legitimate study showing that "strong impact".
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > being poor impacts IQ simply because it becomes the mind's obsession of finding means to survive. > While that's poetic, I'm very skeptical that you could even prove that empirically. A study which claims to show exactly this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6298326 Anecdotally, I consider this plausible based on my own experiences during lean months as a startup founder.
I read that article. While those studies are interesting, they are definitely limited and far from conclusive. For example, they didn't control for genetics as far as I can tell. It's entirely plausible that "rich" people are rich in the first place because, statistically speaking, innate intelligence lets them make better financial decisions even under duress. While it's possible and interesting, I certainly wouldn'…
I do know that I felt less intelligent when I was more worried about money, as though some fixed cognitive reserve were depleted by worrying about uncertain near-term survival, leaving fewer intellectual resources for long-term planning and development.
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read that article. While those studies are interesting, they are definitely limited and far from conclusive. For example, they didn't control for genetics as far as I can tell. It's entirely plausible that "rich" people are rich in the first place because, statistically speaking, innate intelligence lets them make better financial decisions even under duress. While it's possible and interesting, I certainly wouldn'…
I don't think you can control for genetics, at least not directly. There is no intelligence genetic marker as far as I know which only leaves testing the IQ/intelligence of the whole family tree as the only option. However getting access to ancestors might not be feasible. On the other hand having a large pool of people is good enough since the distribution of intelligence is usually uniform and not restricted to thi…
Here's one way to control for genetics - compare orphans who were adopted early (Pre 1yo) and then see what the correlation between their IQ and both the parents and adoptive parents IQ. (Or use income as a proxy for intelligence; it might be hard to get the dead parents to take an IQ test)
Re: How the .0001% Made Its Money
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> His mother didn't make the deal with IBM (in fact Ballmer was arguably most instrumental in the nuanced legal structure that gave Microsoft its position) Just for the sake of discussion: if his mother and her relation to the IBM top executive had a critical part in IBM's biggest business mistake ever - doesn't it make sense that they won't want to share those details ?
Quotation needed about mother's involvement. The story that I've read was that IBM had the hardware but didn't think they could make software on time so they went shopping for the OS. First they went to Digital Research who didn't want to do it. Microsoft jumped in and promised to deliver what would become MS-DOS. The rest is history. In no way was Gate's mother instrumental in the process. Citation: http://forwardth…
> Quotation needed about mother's involvement.
"In 1980, she discussed with then-IBM Corp. Chairman John Opel, who was also on the United Way committee, the business IBM was doing with Microsoft. Opel, some accounts say, knew little about the venture, but mentioned Mary Gates to IBM executives who introduced Microsoft at a meeting of IBM's top-level management committee a few weeks later."
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-06-11/news/mn-2837_1_mary-g...
The episode is a textbook example of "social connections" at work.