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Are super-rich people just better at making money?

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Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#421

Post by throwaway161718 »

sam_lowry_ wrote: post #194
Yizahi wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have clarified - I don't propose to "ban" half the planet because they the not optimal with their laws or prosecution. Offshore usually means tax heavens, usually the tiny island countries with small native population and incredibly lax financial regulation or none at all. Those are the primary targets.

Start with Delaware.

don't forget South Dakota - it will be put most tax havens to shame. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-amer...

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#422

Post by AnimalMuppet »

cloutchaser wrote: post #280
gabesullice wrote: post #97

This is a dishonest piece. It ignores that it's based on a zero-sum game and the world isn't zero sum. The quoted economists know that very well. I like that the coin flip game illustrates the concept of compounding interest, but it doesn't model wealth creation at all. Most new ventures aren't I-win-you-lose, they're we-win-or-I-lose. Wealthy people really can take bigger bets more frequently like the article sugges…

It also ignores another big factor if psychology, humans are a lot more afraid of losing what they have than gaining anything. So even in this stupid simulation, it just doesn’t work, as people get wealthier they actually risk less. This whole article is Marxist academic bullshit, eaten up by Marxist upper class tech 20 year olds in this thread.

> It also ignores another big factor if psychology, humans are a lot more afraid of losing what they have than gaining anything.

Rightly, I think. The marginal utility of the next dollar is higher when you have fewer dollars. (I think of it as roughly a 1/x curve, but I have no solid data for this.) This means that, if I bet 50% of my available money on a 50/50 chance, I will lose more utility with a loss than I will gain with a win.

But the more I have, the flatter the curve out where I am. So the richer I am, the more I can make that 50/50 bet, not just because I can take the loss better, but also because in terms of my personal utility, the rewards and losses are more evenly balanced.

Also note that if you have a 20% loss, it takes a 25% gain (on what you have left) to bring you back to even.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#423

Post by c22 »

pigsty wrote: post #41
hackerman123469 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But tell me, how are you going to tax the super rich? It's incredibly difficult to tax someone who's actually poor on paper. Most super rich people actually don't seem to have much wealth officially declared, all of their wealth is sort of like "pseudo" in that it's all tied up in assets, and sometimes assets that aren't directly owned by them but their companies etc. and they have a lot of shortcuts for tax breaks o…

It’s a problem of choosing not to enforce it. Some rich person says “teehee, I actually have no money! It’s all in (some country)!” and the US gov says “oops! Guess you really are poor!” They take a letter of the law instead of a spirit of the law approach with taxes. If they start seizing mansions because clearly they have no money and the only way they could afford it is through ill-gotten means, people will start…

Your solution to inequality is to double down on civil asset forfeiture?

Please try this somewhere I don't live and let me know how it works out.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#424

Post by AuthorizedCust »

29athrowaway wrote: post #412
AuthorizedCust wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wealth isn’t zero sum but power over law… Religious extremism isn’t coming mainly from the wealthy. It’s dominantly a lower-strata southern thing, with notable metastases all around the country, yet it plays strongly in the US system. That some wealthy co-opt the extremists doesn’t change the above.

If you have a tornado coming straight at your house with your family inside you will be praying I guarantee you. If you lived in a sparse, lonely place, with a bad economy, maybe joining a church starts sounding like a good idea. Instead of judging people consider yourself lucky.

Nice strawman. I wrote “extremism”. You’re responding to something else.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#425

Post by dang »

gabesullice wrote: post #97

This is a dishonest piece. It ignores that it's based on a zero-sum game and the world isn't zero sum. The quoted economists know that very well. I like that the coin flip game illustrates the concept of compounding interest, but it doesn't model wealth creation at all. Most new ventures aren't I-win-you-lose, they're we-win-or-I-lose. Wealthy people really can take bigger bets more frequently like the article sugges…

Please make your substantive points without name-calling or swipes (like "dishonest"). They don't add to the informational comment and they tend to irritate, distract, and ultimately evoke worse from others.

This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#426

Post by SyzygistSix »

seunosewa wrote: post #53
smilekzs wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I've noticed consistently, is when politicians talk about "taxing the wealthy", they almost always follow that with "earning more than $xxxk a year". This is conflating wealth with income. Being within this tax bracket myself, I do not deny that I am biased, but I do hope this bullshit gets called out hard whenever someone brings up yet another underhanded measure to milk us (typical SFBay SWE) above and be…

They want as many voters as possible to feel that they won't be among those who will be taxed. You're in the minority.

The people who vote are indeed more likely the ones to be taxed. It's not the business and homeowners who are the 80%+ skipping every single primary election since they were established. But then considering the ideas I'm seeing on this page, that isn't necessarily a bad idea.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#427

Post by danaris »

bamboozled wrote: post #309
danaris wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something can be very simple, and still be very hard to achieve because of resistance to it.

Which is why I don't think it's very simple, you have to convince a lot of powerful people they should pay more tax to achieve said goal, that's not easy.

"Simple" is the opposite of "complicated".

"Easy" is the opposite of "hard".

Reaching a high shelf is very simple. But if you're short, it may be hard.

Calculus is very complicated. But if you're a third-year grad student in mathematics, it may also be very easy for you.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#428

Post by SyzygistSix »

prottog wrote: post #307
bmitc wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because of who is in control, who has also brainwashed the poor into "someday this could be you living this lifestyle".

> brainwashed the poor Yes, let the enlightened bureaucrats and their Ivy League-educated advisors make the decisions for the great unwashed masses who clearly cannot think for themselves.

The overly simplistic takes on wealth on this page and the 80%+ who don't bother to vote in the primaries when it counts makes a good case for that.

None of the proposed wealth distribution solutions on this page do anything to address the real problems of lack of housing, poor working conditions, and reducing poverty. Punishing the wealthy doesn't actually fix anything. Wealth redistribution could well be the result of implementing policies that make people's lives better. It could be they may become even wealthier. I don't care either way if the actual problems get addressed.

Nothing gets fixed by punishing the winners after the fact. The real solution is to make the conditions of winning dependent upon providing the solutions to poverty and scarcity in the first place. Which they already do a decent job of in many cases.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#429

Post by Beldin »

988747 wrote: post #140
danny_codes wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of our money does not go to the military. Defense spending is about 700b per year, while the budget is over 4t. The government doesn't need to handle capitol allocation. We can simply shift the tax burden upwards. Poorer people get reduced tax, rich people get more.

Poor people already pay next to nothing in taxes - the bottom 60% of society, making less than $50k only contributes 7% of total tax revenue from income taxes, while 0.3% of those making more than $1M per year contributes 27%. [1] I think the US has pretty good revenue structure in that regard. In my country 62% of federal budget comes from sales taxes (e.g. 23% VAT), which disproportionately affects poor people. [1]…

I would suggest to think of this not in terms of contribution to the whole, but percentage of ($income - $housing - $food - $stdxpenses). With $stdxpenses covering standard living expenses including energy, water, basic insurance, basic commute.

I would be somewhat surprised (rather flabbergasted) if rich folks paid anywhere close to the percentage that poor people do.

In other words: if you want to compare by measuring contribution, measure tax rate to what's left for that individual's personal use.

Re: Are super-rich people just better at making money?

#430

Post by c22 »

johnfn wrote: post #51
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #34

This combines with the observation that intelligence is normally distributed, so the rich people are more likely to be average people that got lucky, because there's more of them than smart people with a good strategy. It also applies in the opposite direction, there's more unlucky average people than true failures.

That doesn't seem to follow, unless intelligence and ability to make money are mostly uncorrelated, which I think is a very strong claim that needs to be substantiated.

From my observations these traits may be inversely correlated.
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