Just Be Rich • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Be Rich

#601

Post by monodeldiablo » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:12 PM UTC

api wrote: post #495

ramblerman wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the dysfunction and poverty may go hand in hand a lot of the time. There is strong indication that scarcity affects cognitive function. "Scarcity: Why having too little means so much" is a great book on this. In essence it is not that people in poverty have less innate executive control / cognitive capacity, but that the situation of poverty causes anyone to lose some significant points of executive con…

> There are some illuminating (but terryfing) experiments in the book, where they show you can literally sabotage a low income persons score on an IQ test by mentioning a hypothetical car repair of 2000 dollars before they take it. Modern humans have existed for something like 100,000 years give or take a few tens of thousands, and yet we only started building anything particularly innovative in the last ~10,000 or s…

I think you're defining innovation too narrowly. There are lots of social, political, and behavioral innovations in hunter gatherer societies that may not necessarily manifest as technological innovations, but are no less innovative or clever.

In my limited experience with these people, they are absolutely capable of higher cognition, including planning into the distant future.

Re: Just Be Rich

#602

Post by TuringNYC » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:13 PM UTC

yarcob wrote: post #573

McScroogy wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich outbidding poor people is not what is causing a housing shortage. There are only so many houses a rich person can occupy. Even if you assume that every rich person keeps a number of spare houses, there are not enough rich people to cause a housing shortage.

The problem isn't a "housing shortage". The problem is that interest rates are so low, so everyone who has a bit of money on the side tries to invest in the real estate market. The result is that for every house thats sold, there isn't just someone who wants it as a living space, but also 5 people who want it as an investment. So 5 people outbid each other, the highest bidder gets it, and then the sucker who wanted t…

I agree with the premise of what youre saying. I dont think the ratio is 5:1, but probably more like 1:5 -- but -- more importantly -- doesnt this make it good for renters because now there are investment properties in an ample environment looking for people to rent?

I would argue that it is low interest rates AND low supply. If supply was sufficient then renters would just rent the houses which were purchased, possibly at a discount.

Re: Just Be Rich

#603

Post by MikeUt » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

> Most people don't have the safety net or mental bandwidth to even consider entrepreneurship. It is not a panacea for the masses.

Even if they did have the resources to go into entrepreneurship, if most people did so, they would run out of employees and markets. Not everyone can be a CEO, at some point you need workers as well, and there's room for only so many Ubers and Facebooks before starting a new one is unprofitable.

Re: Just Be Rich

#604

Post by varispeed » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:14 PM UTC

arkh wrote: post #417

varispeed wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are born poor it is extremely difficult to escape poverty, especially because of high taxes that you are going to experience as soon as your education and determination lands you a good job. This severely inhibits your means to save or to invest. The progressive taxation is like a back-stop to keep everyone in check and prevent people from going up the class ladder. Meanwhile the rich, that are supposed to be…

It reads like you think progressive taxation is not bracketed. Which is something often found with people from poor background. Let's say you have some system where your taxed 0% for income Now the problem comes from social benefits which usually are not regressive and work on a all or nothing system.

The problem is when you get a good job that pays $100k or more. You are not rich, but you are targeted by a tax supposedly for the rich (which they don't pay as they have means to avoid it).

Re: Just Be Rich

#605

Post by laurent92 » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:17 PM UTC

adriancr wrote: post #588

Barrin92 wrote: post #49

I'm just gonna quote what I think is a very important part from the Graham piece itself >" People who don't look any deeper than the Gini coefficient look back on the world of 1982 as the good old days, because those who got rich then didn't get as rich. But if you dig into how they got rich, the old days don't look so good. In 1982, 84% of the richest 100 people got rich by inheritance, extracting natural resources,…

> The aristocrats and oligarchs of the olden days might have been corrupt, debauched and half-useless, but at least they knew it. Corruption is an incredible poverty multiplier, combined with debauched and half-useless is just insane. Living in a society led by such people isn't fair by any means. Arrogant new wealth is 100x better then old corrupt wealth that only seeks to entrench itself and friends. New wealth in…

Entrenched money stabilizes the world. Imagine putting 10% of the billionaires of the world on a boat, those who pull the strings of their empires to keep their nations into status-quo, and imagine the boat sinks. A year later, all those entrenched interests dematerialize, fewer powers hold people together, diplomacy isn’t as balanced as it has been when billionaires weighed in, and war starts.

That’s the story of the Titanic, sunk in 1913.

Re: Just Be Rich

#606

Post by mdorazio » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

timwaagh wrote: post #545

nindalf wrote: post #151

OP mentions PG’s article arguing against a wealth tax. That article is short, simple and to the point - Modelling a Wealth Tax ( http://www.paulgraham.com/wtax.html ). It is so compelling, but also misleading and wrong. Its not easy to spot the sleights of hand he uses. I wrote more about it here - Modelling a Wealth Tax Correctly ( https://blog.nindalf.com/posts/wealth-tax/ ). And yet, I think the simplicity of PG’s…

In the Netherlands we already have wealth tax (capital gains tax, but doesn't care whether you gained or not). It's nothing particularly disruptive. We still have the most wealth inequality in all the world. It might be a bit pointless to tax wealth in addition to capital gains though. You could just raise the former instead.

I think you need to revisit your assumption about wealth inequality in The Netherlands. It’s on par with that of most of Europe, significantly lower than in the US [1].

[1] https://www.indexmundi.com/facts/indicators/SI.POV.GINI/rank...

Re: Just Be Rich

#607

Post by wonderwonder » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

McScroogy wrote: post #535

donnythecroc wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is all down to the basic human need of a home. In the 70s and 80s even 90s someone on a teacher's salary could own their own home in a major world city - say London. Now, literally zero chance. Because homes have become an asset class and the rich can outbid regular people so they are pushed out. That's the problem. I couldn't care less how many billionaires there are if regular people can afford a decent…

The rich outbidding poor people is not what is causing a housing shortage. There are only so many houses a rich person can occupy. Even if you assume that every rich person keeps a number of spare houses, there are not enough rich people to cause a housing shortage.

They are not buying the homes to live in, they are buying them to rent out as investments.

Re: Just Be Rich

#608

Post by csomar » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

Bootvis wrote: post #571

timwaagh wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands we already have wealth tax (capital gains tax, but doesn't care whether you gained or not). It's nothing particularly disruptive. We still have the most wealth inequality in all the world. It might be a bit pointless to tax wealth in addition to capital gains though. You could just raise the former instead.

The Netherlands really has most? I honestly don’t believe that without any supporting evidence.

A bit surprising, huh? According to this Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_wealth_eq... The Netherland, indeed, is the worst. It's close to having a minority own everything while everybody else has 0 (a 1.0 coefficient).

Re: Just Be Rich

#609

Post by varispeed » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

distances wrote: post #449

varispeed wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good example is UK. As a specialist you would be in area of 40% effective tax rate, but going over 50% is not uncommon (after IR35 changes some workers have to pay employer's NI) plus there are other taxes like council tax or high VAT.

I would think a specialist paying 40% in taxes has already escaped poverty? That's my confusion here, poverty suggests such a low income that progressive taxation shouldn't really affect yet.

The thing is that the costs of living are so high in cities that offer such pay, you can hardly save anything and if you started with 0, it will take decades to have some security. Sure you make a lot of money, but you are still essentially living paycheck to paycheck. My definition of poor is someone who doesn't have their own home or flat, savings that let them withstand at least a year of unemployment without having to use state benefits and so on.

Re: Just Be Rich

#610

Post by rexreed » Tue, Apr 13, 2021, 1:19 PM UTC

The profound irony of the PG piece and the growing wealth gap is that it just happens that 1982 was the point where the wealth gap was at its narrowest point (or very close to it). It has only widened since then, underlining the point in the posted article:

https://daraalbrightmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/His...