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Taxes are a barrier to buying a home (and thereby building wealth) for many people - that plus an unfree housing market which prohibits the sale of homes these people can afford to buy.
If the barrier to home ownership is represented by a real physical barrier, then individual behavior (lack of saving, instant gratification, buying on credit, etc) would be the foundation, the bricks stacked 100 feet high and 20 feet thick, the mortar between all those bricks, and the barbed wire a the top, while taxes would represent the guard patrolling the top of that barrier.
Here's a story about how this works, using two former enlisted men - me, and a buddy of mine.
Me - spent 10 years in the military, got out as an E-6. In that time, I managed to save ~$6k and get my associates degree.
Buddy - served 6 years, got out as an E5. Managed to save (no joke here) $59,000.
Difference? When I was at a bar drinking my savings away, he was in his barracks room drinking water, playing SNES, and SAVING MONEY. He made less income for fewer years and saved enough to put a proper 20% down payment on a $300,000 home. Knew a few guys like that actually, but I knew a LOT more who were with me at the bar.
It isn't evil corporations nor the government driving our lack of saving and creating wealth, it's ourselves. Sure, income stagnation and taxes don't help, but the reason I don't save the $20k per year that I could EASILY, is because my wife and I do not like saying no to ourselves. Period.
Yes, I think most forms of taxation are tyranny. Yes, I think the government does make it tougher. But my lack of a savings account is mostly my fault, not anyone else's. Anyone intellectually honest will arrive at the same conclusion. People dedicated to remaining slaves to their own gluttony will blame everyone else.
All you need to do is get a student job in the computer labs and you get special access.
I did that in college so I could have extra time, email and a host of other opportunities.
20 hrs a week and I was allowed to do my studying and homework when not needed.
Lots of compsci students go for those types of jobs.
That's certainly today, but not yet common in my or Gate's day. Late '60's and early '70's.
(edschultz on) HOOOLLLDDD it right there... (edschultz off)
Obvious question: Where did Bill Gates get the $50k?
He was already in business for 5 years before IBM approached them.
He formed his first business at 17 writing traffic counting software for local governments.
I actually worked in the lab and was the one the students came to with computer problems.
20 hours a week. In junior year when I picked my major I went to the lab and asked if they had any jobs right before the semester started. I stayed there for junior and senior year.
Working in the lab they gave me an account separate from my student account.
Ah, when I was a student we did not yet have staffed labs - but I served pretty much the same function, since comp sci students had to come to their teaching assistants for help. Heck, we still used mainframes and keyed our code onto - gasp - punch cards. At the time I took my first comp sci course, students literally had to hand their punched cards to a lab employee (full-time non-student) who would run your stack through the card reader. Fortunately, by the time I became a TA students were allowed to themselves run their cards through the reader.
That's certainly today, but not yet common in my or Gate's day. Late '60's and early '70's.
Gates graduated HS in 1973.
Actually it would have been more common because of printers and printouts.
There were no PCs then..mainframes where you had to submit a job.
None of those little printers either.
(edschultz on) HOOOLLLDDD it right there... (edschultz off)
Obvious question: Where did Bill Gates get the $50k?
As already answered, Gates was already in business, and he both SAVED MONEY and got folks to invest based on being a really cagey salesman. His first deal with MITS started as a lie to see if they'd be interested in an idea he had. His deal with IBM started the same way. he said he had MS-DOS and he didn't, but wanted to see if IBM would be interested. But Gates was scheming and plotting to make money when he was a teenager and got busted for hacking code to get free computing on a mainframe.
If the barrier to home ownership is represented by a real physical barrier, then individual behavior (lack of saving, instant gratification, buying on credit, etc) would be the foundation, the bricks stacked 100 feet high and 20 feet thick, the mortar between all those bricks, and the barbed wire a the top, while taxes would represent the guard patrolling the top of that barrier.
Here's a story about how this works, using two former enlisted men - me, and a buddy of mine.
Me - spent 10 years in the military, got out as an E-6. In that time, I managed to save ~$6k and get my associates degree.
Buddy - served 6 years, got out as an E5. Managed to save (no joke here) $59,000.
Difference? When I was at a bar drinking my savings away, he was in his barracks room drinking water, playing SNES, and SAVING MONEY. He made less income for fewer years and saved enough to put a proper 20% down payment on a $300,000 home. Knew a few guys like that actually, but I knew a LOT more who were with me at the bar.
It isn't evil corporations nor the government driving our lack of saving and creating wealth, it's ourselves. Sure, income stagnation and taxes don't help, but the reason I don't save the $20k per year that I could EASILY, is because my wife and I do not like saying no to ourselves. Period.
Yes, I think most forms of taxation are tyranny. Yes, I think the government does make it tougher. But my lack of a savings account is mostly my fault, not anyone else's. Anyone intellectually honest will arrive at the same conclusion. People dedicated to remaining slaves to their own gluttony will blame everyone else.
I think most childless adults earning, say, $8/hr find income a greater barrier than spending to buying a home. You can live frugally, but earning $8/hr, you're generally not going to be well situated for buying a home.
I think most childless adults earning, say, $8/hr find income a greater barrier than spending to buying a home. You can live frugally, but earning $8/hr, you're generally not going to be well situated for buying a home.
Someone earning $8 an hour is either a teenager at their first job or an adult who has probably never once said no to themselves on anything. And someone making $8 an hour is not SUPPOSED TO BE a homeowner. Everyone has the right to be ABLE to own those things they either create or trade that which they own for. But nobody simply has the right to have house. Put simply - if a house costs X dollars and you have X dollars, you have the right to trade X dollars for the house. That doesn't mean you're bron with the right to X dollars. X dollars must be earned.
If you make substantially less than what X can afford, then you cannot afford X. This doesn't mean you never can, just that your current earning potential is not realized enough to afford things that other, more self-actualized folks can afford. But me being able to afford a thing doesn't confer a right to anyone else to afford it as well.
??? Bill Gates was a subsidy kid, geez, did he ever pay one dollar in housing rent in his life? And even I spent hundreds of hours in computer labs.
He spend hundreds of hours MORE than his peers in computer labs. How many hours more than average have you spent in labs?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Volobjectitarian
Bill Gates got to where he is because Gary Kildall spent hundreds and hundreds of hours in computer labs writing the CP/M operating system, which Tim Paterson essentially plagiarized (but made different enough to make QDOS considered a separate product and not CP/M v2.0), which Gates then bought for $50k and renamed MS-DOS, and then convinced IBM to let Microsoft retain the rights to on their PCs
The lesson to be learned from Gates is that if you have $50k saved, and are willing to risk your savings and your ethics (since he knew he was robbing Paterson by dealing with IBM behind his back), and are willing to talk one of the biggest corporations in the world into a retarded error of licensing/copyright, you can become a billionaire. But you gotta have the capital up front....
No, Gates got to where he was because he utilized one of the first shared processing computers, allowing him to learn programming without having to rely on punch card processing, and allowing him to build experience that others didn't have.
The lesson you learn from Gates is that you capitalized on growing markets to become successful.
Jobs were sent overseas by the left and the right. That's right not only Romney and friends had a part in the but Obama and his buddies as well.
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Fortunately, by the time I became a TA students were allowed to themselves run their cards through the reader.
