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I admire rich people and the freedom of choice that they have.
Yep. Kevin “mr. Wonderful” O’Leary has told the story of how he was fired from his first job for refusing to scrap the floor. He never wanted to be told to have to do anything again. The power of being rich is the options it provides you. As he said, he can open up his calendar for the week and simply say I’m not doing that. I’m not going to that meeting or flying to that city. That’s financial freedom.
Yep. Kevin “mr. Wonderful” O’Leary has told the story of how he was fired from his first job for refusing to scrap the floor. He never wanted to be told to have to do anything again. The power of being rich is the options it provides you. As he said, he can open up his calendar for the week and simply say I’m not doing that. I’m not going to that meeting or flying to that city. That’s financial freedom.
It’s also not exactly true.
I’m not a billionaire by any means but I do have my own business and have achieved a level of financial freedom so to speak because of the fruits of my labor in that business. I could easily say I’m not going to that meeting or I’m not flying there or issue any number of arbitrary decrees and nothing would force me to do anything else,
However... if I don’t go to that meeting or fly to that city I could miss a opportunity to develop my business further so in a sense I am compelled to always follow a disciplined prudent pathway that seeks to promote positive outcomes for my business interests and employees.
Am I any less of a slave ? It seems like I have a choice but in reality I don’t. For example last year I was unwell and skipped a meeting with a broker who was wanting to show me a retail property that I considered to be not something I would entertain for our portfolio however if I had of attended I would have found out about the upcoming sale of several grocery properties that were exactly what we do best one of which I’d had my eye on for some time and I would have had a pre-market opportunity that might have saved me considerably. Opportunity presents itself at random moments and you have to be present and prepared to take advantage of it.
In business there is no such thing as a day off ...
America has poor weak laws when it comes to making jobs for the poor and middle class , were taxes should be lowered of investments that make jobs ..... See many investments don't make jobs like investments in Gold are dead for jobs and profits should be taxed more here.. Robots don't make jobs and the socialist Marxist has got a voice in politics today
I don't agree, but it isn't money itself. There are plenty of societies with money like the Sumerians that did not function solely off of greed.
But due to free market capitalism, making money through wages, and consuming as much as possible is needed to keep the economy stable.
Having a communal society for sharing like the animal kingdom does and our current system aren't the only choices. People for hundreds of years have grown crash crops and participated in subsistence living/ community sharing as my grandfather did in northern Iran without needing consumption and wages to increase in order to maintain stability.
Even cities before the 1700s were there was lots of trade and commerce weren't simply venues to concentrate wealth (capitalism is a fairly new invention).
My paternal grandparents lived a subsistence lifestyle until my grandfather got a wage earning job in the oil fields. They then lived a better life, and gave their kids a better life. Subsistence living sucks, it's an awful way to live. My grandfather was very happy to get a job that paid him for the work he did, rather than having to depend on the vagaries of the weather to ensure they had food on the table.
We're falling out of love with our billionaires because there haven't been any really neat or likeable ones lately.
Mark Zuckerberg is constantly wearing a suit defending himself in Congress.
Elon Musk is getting slammed for some of his shady tweets about valuations of Tesla
Bezos is similarly not enjoying record popularity
The fact is that I think that we, as a society, turn them into pop culture icons. We take the neat illustrations on Google's homepage or Mark Zuckerbergs hooded sweatshirts or Steve Job's black turtlenecked persona and make them out to be more than what they are; which is brilliant businessmen focused on maximizing the profits and success (be it short or long term) of their respective enterprises.
I'm pretty sure that people who invested in Facebook and Amazon early on love those guys. Musk, not so much.
CNBC had a feature this morning on the Warren tax strategy. 12 countries in Europe tried a wealth tax since 1990, only 4 still remain in force. What happened? They learned wealth is mobile, people simply moved their wealth to avoid paying the tax. In most instances the "countries" lost regular taxable income, wealth tax and all of the spending in that country......trifecta of income loss!
Not sure how Warren thinks this won't happen here........Maybe she should consider taxing her "Indian" relatives first, after all they pay nothing!
What's to love about billionaires? Trying to be the richest corpses in the cemetery?
When our - and billionaire's - lives end, it won't matter how much money we've accumulated. All that will matter is what we did with our lives. And that requires no money.
All of life in existence around us in nature and universe has inherent value independent of money. Only foolish man has a need to create inventions to create personal worth and value.
CNBC had a feature this morning on the Warren tax strategy. 12 countries in Europe tried a wealth tax since 1990, only 4 still remain in force. What happened? They learned wealth is mobile, people simply moved their wealth to avoid paying the tax. In most instances the "countries" lost regular taxable income, wealth tax and all of the spending in that country......trifecta of income loss!
Not sure how Warren thinks this won't happen here........Maybe she should consider taxing her "Indian" relatives first, after all they pay nothing!
We don't even have to look at Europe. Just look at New York which is experiencing much lower tax revenues after wealth flight.
What's to love about billionaires? Trying to be the richest corpses in the cemetery?
When our - and billionaire's - lives end, it won't matter how much money we've accumulated. All that will matter is what we did with our lives. And that requires no money.
All of life in existence around us in nature and universe has inherent value independent of money. Only foolish man has a need to create inventions to create personal worth and value.
That's kind of a wrongheaded way to look at it. First, wealth is not a matter liquid assets. It's mostly things such as share price and other holdings that are not easily converted into cash.
Let's say I founded a company selling widgets, and these were revolutionary widgets that utterly changed the nature of business. I offer stock to expand and, over time, the total of those shares wound up being worth a trillion dollars. Let's further assume, for the sake of sheer simplicity, that I kept 25% of that stock for myself.
Now, on paper, I'm worth $250 billion. But if I tried to sell it, what would happen? And if you built a company, wouldn't you want it to continue growing for the sake of your employees and shareholders?
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