Why do the rich keep telling others to live modestly? (wage, unemployment)
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This is the kind of commentary that p*sses off the self made rich (who are, by the way, the majority of rich people). It's pretty insulting to tell the people who made the sacrifices and took the risks that they're liars and they really didn't accomplish anything worthwhile. Yes, I get it. Not all well off folks fall into that category of hard working and self sacrificing, but many more do than you'll ever admit. By the same token, some poor people really do eat and drink too much, and some really are lazy and greedy.
Really? I don't happen to know many "self made" rich people. My father would love to tell you that he is a self made man. I don't buy it. Yes, he came from a family that did not have much money because his father was not a very good business person. However, his father, my grandfather; came from money and had an Ivy League education.
Yes. My father paid his way through college. However, if he did not come from a family that had money somewhere back there, I doubt the very idea of college would have occurred to him. Or to his sister. Both of whom did very well in life, and obtained masters degrees.
I think it's insulting to perpetuate the myth of economic and social mobility when in reality, true "self made" people are few and far between. Dig a little bit deeper into most "self made men" - there is usually money, power, education and connections to be found somewhere in the family tree.
Research "self made men" such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Marc Zuckerberg. None of these people made it on his own. They were groomed for greatness by parents who gave them everything.
It's time to get real and retire the "Horatio Alger" myth.
Going with Haiti again, if Bill Gates had been that country's sole computer hacker, and had actually written BASIC for Haiti's only working Altair, he would STILL have nobody to sell it to. The environment for wealth creation needs to be in place for someone like Bill to make 10 figures on ones and zeros.
Bill le'Gates, Haiti's most innovative entrepreneur would likely be in a stall somewhere in Port au Prince, selling fruit because that's all his customers could afford.
In order to be Bill Gates, he needed to live in a market where many people could afford to purchase and assemble a kit computer sold via magazine advertisements. I'm not suggesting that what he did was anything short of amazing. But without the educated consumer base with a little disposable income, Altair BASIC or MS-DOS languishes on a shelf next to a Port au Prince fruit stall.
And if we were to round up all of Haiti's poor and toss them into the Gulf of Gonave, it wouldn't improve a thing because there would STILL be nobody to purchase the products offered by the few well-to-do Haitians.
This is why austerity doesn't work -- despite demands by German bankers that it does.
Increasing liabilities (pension promises, etc.) beyond what a country can afford and bankrupting the country isn't a viable alternative unless you expect the EU or Russia to rescue you. Greece has taken no responsibility to right it's economy. They are getting what they deserve so far...actually far more than they deserve so far.
Really? I don't happen to know many "self made" rich people. My father would love to tell you that he is a self made man. I don't buy it. Yes, he came from a family that did not have much money because his father was not a very good business person. However, his father, my grandfather; came from money and had an Ivy League education.
Yes. My father paid his way through college. However, if he did not come from a family that had money somewhere back there, I doubt the very idea of college would have occurred to him. Or to his sister. Both of whom did very well in life, and obtained masters degrees.
I think it's insulting to perpetuate the myth of economic and social mobility when in reality, true "self made" people are few and far between. Dig a little bit deeper into most "self made men" - there is usually money, power, education and connections to be found somewhere in the family tree.
Research "self made men" such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Marc Zuckerberg. None of these people made it on his own. They were groomed for greatness by parents who gave them everything.
It's time to get real and retire the "Horatio Alger" myth.
Again, totally false. The majority of rich people didn't come from money. You don't like the stats on that so I won't post it again. You can believe what you want, but I'll keep refuting your falsehoods. Maybe you should keep your pessimistic, fatalistic views private.
Ok, we'll go with that for the moment - so someone or many must be poorer for his being rich. Who precisely?
At who's expense did Billy boy get his billions? Not mine - since I profited by purchasing his products (pretend for the moment that I do not instantly wipe a windows hard drive and install linux - I could do the same business using windows systems). So who exactly did he extract all that finite wealth from?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScoopLV
Going with Haiti again, if Bill Gates had been that country's sole computer hacker, and had actually written BASIC for Haiti's only working Altair, he would STILL have nobody to sell it to. The environment for wealth creation needs to be in place for someone like Bill to make 10 figures on ones and zeros.
Bill le'Gates, Haiti's most innovative entrepreneur would likely be in a stall somewhere in Port au Prince, selling fruit because that's all his customers could afford.
In order to be Bill Gates, he needed to live in a market where many people could afford to purchase and assemble a kit computer sold via magazine advertisements. I'm not suggesting that what he did was anything short of amazing. But without the educated consumer base with a little disposable income, Altair BASIC or MS-DOS languishes on a shelf next to a Port au Prince fruit stall.
And if we were to round up all of Haiti's poor and toss them into the Gulf of Gonave, it wouldn't improve a thing because there would STILL be nobody to purchase the products offered by the few well-to-do Haitians.
This is why austerity doesn't work -- despite demands by German bankers that it does.
No one is saying austerity as practiced by governments works. Living within one's means does work rather well. As I told the other poster, living within one's means will not make them rich. It will make them better off than if they had not done so.
I'll leave the Haiti thing to one side, you're making even less sense there than in the previous post. No one has attempted to argue that a person could make money where there is no market for their products.
The majority of rich in this country are currently first generation, meaning they made their money.
Correct.
Quote:
Originally Posted by LordSquidworth
I think the biggest drag on the image of the rich these days is CEO pay, for which I cannot blame people. It's one thing if the CEO is the founder of the company. For the rest, their pay these days is outrageous. Even as a shareholder of several of these companies, I greatly question why these individuals deserve so much (hint: they don't).
Also, correct. The market for CEOs doesn't resemble a true free market. It's a rigged market that is antithetical to true free market capitalism.
But here's the thing so many people are missing: You don't have to be a high level executive to get rich. You can get rich with a fairly ordinary job, living a modest lifestyle, and investing the difference in fairly boring vehicles such as mutual funds and ETFs. CEOs, celebrities, and sports stars make up only a very small slice of the rich. It doesn't look as glamorous on the surface, but your whole life doesn't revolve around work like it does for CEOs, either. Few people would actually want to life the lifestyle that these folks have to live (for any amount of money) to get such jobs.
People like Mr. Money Mustache, Jason at Dividend Mantra, and Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme are proving this all the time.
Those billionaires usually had at least SOME advantage or break along the way. Bill Gates' father had an upper middle class background that served his son well. Billionaires who started a business in their garage HAD a garage to work in; they were not burger flippers renting a single room.
And the good news is you don't need to attain billionaire status, or anything close to it, in order to achieve freedom from the workaday grind.
That post ignored the fact that the rich don't ask you to spend less. They want you to spend more to purchase their products. And what happens? So many people do exactly what the rich told them to do. They are precisely the greedy little whores that can't resist the downgraded level of indulgence, just as the rich expected. When the rich give them new products, they immediately take it. Whining about the rich is all fake. When the real thing is presented, people fall for it with low self esteem.
They hoard in oversized shopping carts. They pepper spray one another. Who exactly is greedy? Take a look at the longing eyes in Walmart for totally useless things. People want stuff. They hate those who make the stuff but they want stuff. They have not shown me reasons to respect them.
I agree completely. People hate on the rich because they don't want to look in the mirror at their own shortcomings; their own addictions to food, drugs, alcohol, tattoos, and various "stuff" they think will make them happy but really doesn't.
Now, I'm not denying the fact that there is a super rich global elite that is concentrating wealth & power in fewer & fewer hands. But we make their job soooooo easy for them. All they have to do is encourage us to indulge in our worst tendencies (to be lazy & short sighted). We buy into it hook, line and sinker every time. We're really more mad at ourselves than anyone else.
Most rich people didn't get that way by being frugal.
They either:
1.) Have rare business acumen
2.) Came up with a great idea
3.) Have a unique talent (sports, music etc.)
4.) Got lucky (lottery)
5.) Were born into it
Most wealthy people are #5. Perhaps they inherited $5 million and turned it into $50 million.
This is simply WRONG. At least 80% of the rich are self made and did not inherit millions of dollars. The research on this has been proven over and over again in books such as The Millionaire Next Door (1996) and The Difference (2008).
The biggest advantage most rich people had is most came from nurturing, married 2 parent families.
But, of course, when you tell people that divorce & having kids out of wedlock is a bad idea, they get p*ssed off at you.
I'll just add this. The biggest luxury anyone can have is a pile of money in savings in order to smooth out all the bumps that come along in life. Forget about competing with your family and friends as it's childish. Buy what you need and will really enjoy. If you like to watch TV then get yourself a nice big flat screen. If you like a nice car and spend all your time cruising around buy that and skip the flat screen because you won't be watching it. Once and a while you will make a bad purchase, something that you thought was a great idea at the time but is now a big lemon. Admit to yourself that it was a bad idea, get rid of it and LEARN FROM IT. This is all common sense stuff. The less useless stuff you have, the less you need to maintain.
I never will understand this cell phone addiction. People are walking the streets staring into a 2 inch screen. WHY??? Get out and live life while saving the $50-100 a month. You've got 1 pair of feet so you don't need 250 pair of shoes, 20-25 pair at most will due. And so on and so on.
If you have a decent income and you live this way you are not living as a pauper as you have everything you need and really want. You will go to sleep every night happy in the knowledge that you don't owe a dime to a soul.
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