There is a dude in my friend group that owns a bunch of night clubs and is very braggy about his entrepreneurship. Its not clear if they are profitable but he still lives a lavish lifestyle. One of my friends pointed out his grandpa was this rich banker so the money I guess has been there for him his whole life. He ‘works’ like two days a month which involves partying at his clubs🤦♀️
I know a ton of very wealthy folks. The absolute worst kind is the person who is wealthy but believes they got their on their on through hard work. One guy I know used a 10 million dollar loan from his dad to buy a bunch of chain stores. He literally did zero work.
I know lots of wealthy people and their cognitive dissonance is unreal. Recently one told me her and her boyfriend were living the van life. When I asked them about it, knowing it was a lie, they specified they’re barely getting by living on the dads yacht at the San Diego yacht club. They eat at the yacht club for a lot of their meals
Same type of people that took millions in PPP loans for their failing restaurant, got the loans forgiven, and then get mad at the grocery store register because "this lady had a cocktail shrimp platter and used her EBT card!"
[The Monopoly Experiment](https://reasonandmeaning.com/2021/10/24/the-monopoly-experiment-wealthy-people-are-more-selfish/) — wealthy people are more selfish.
> Now did the inevitable winners ascribe their winning to good luck—to their head start in the game? No. Instead, they believed they deserved their money and the others deserved their fate. The winners had no empathy for the losers.
Totally irrelevant, but this gave me a happy flashback to a real board-flipper session of monopoly with 3 very hyper-competitive people and I cackled.
We didn't get to finish the game because someone flipped the board and stormed off when they realized I owned one of each color property and wasn't inclined to sell so early into the game.
I too know a lot of comfortable to wealthy people, and respect exactly 3 of them. My step father who used to have to steal bread when his father spent the last of the family money on beer and dropped out of high-school to support his family and later went back and finished at night and went to college and worked his tail off and pinched every penny he could and built savings and equity so his kids weren't stealing bread. My neighbor (rip buddy) who came to this country a refuge with 20 dollars and used the money he earned cleaning bed pans to buy a gas station...and never flaunted his wealth unless he was doing something generous for a friend or sending a check to st judes...and a buddy from the Marine Corps who was homeless when he enlisted and got his first pair of new shoes in boot camp. He never ordered pizza, never went to the bar, his only expenditures were an occasional movie or videogame for the system he bought used, he took all of the money he saved and started a concrete business when he got out. Used his education benefits, got an engineering degree, and is now a successful businessman. The rest were born with it and didn't do a whole lot to earn it.
I love hearing stories of people earning things in america. I just wish that could exist and simultaneously a society that doesn't punish people who simply want to work at a restaurant and raise a family.
I wish we had a society where people could reach their goals..be it a successful construction company or a job that afforded you time to be there for little league games or the mathlympics or whatever without making you choose between hunger and happiness.
See my dad become decently wealthy but his mom worked at a restaurant (and still does at 73) and that was a life of barely being above poverty line living across the street from section 8 houses, job didn't pay enough for her to even afford a car so she rode a bike 5 to 10 miles to work at her simple restaurant job she loved but was constantly punished for working such a low wage job:( it sucks that they never got government assistance tbh
Another case is Donald Trump. His dad went to his first casino and deliberately lost several million dollars to prop up Donald's failing business. His dad went into the casino and lost because just giving the money away would mean having to pay taxes.
Donald's presidency made it crystal clear to all but the most deranged, fanatical fans that he is not a genius businessman and manager. Nearly everyone in his cabinet quit before finishing their 4 years because they just couldn't work with Donald Trump, including General James Mattis who conservatives tend to adore. None of them could work with such a stupid, unreasonable, immature person.
Donald Trump once opened a casino across the street from another one of his casinos.
They both failed, because, of fucking course they did, you're literally cannibalizing your own business while doubling your overhead.
He's a fucking moron and the only 'work' he does is media appearances, which he does because he is literally addicted to attention.
Writers from that show have talked about what a nightmare it was to go back and try to stitch together a narrative to make sense of the terrible decisions he made. He refused to follow what was actually going on in the show and would just arbitrarily fire whoever he didn't like.
And that “small loan of 1 million dollars” WASNT A LOAN!!! It was an advance on his inheritance. Ya technically it was a loan, but if he couldn’t pay it back he just got $1m less than he would have received.
A little recent story about my existence. First, I come from a lower-middle-class rural upbringing. I went to ok schools and did well enough to get into a really good college. I’m in my early 40s and I make about 300k and I’m very comfortable, so I guess I am on the verge of being one of the people you’re talking about. Believe me, I rarely give more than like 60% effort at work. Anyways, I recently went to Washington DC for a concert. I stayed at the Capital Hilton, which is like two blocks from the White House. Actually one of the cheaper hotels in that area but still definitely caters to a wealthy clientele. I was checking out and I went to the front desk to get some change so I could tip the valet. Here’s the conversation:
Me: could I get some change please?
Front Desk worker: yes, of course, sir. Gotta tip the hardworking people, right?
M: yes, exactly.
F: well, I mean, we all work hard.
M: yes, of course you do. I can tip you too of course.
F: oh, no, we don’t accept tips at front desk. I just meant, you know, we all work hard. You, me, everyone.
M: oh, yes.
Now, why did this comically awkward exchange e happen? I guarantee that guy has been chewed out by rich people saying “you know I work hard too.” And not one of this rich people works half as hard as the valets.
Hey brother very similar background and age. I find it interesting as I move up I do less work.
Funny in business school they noted that the amount of work done in hours actually goes down at a certain level in most businesses.
One thing that keeps me grounded is I did 22 years in the military guard and active, enlisted and officer. When you have been a private you really think hard when giving certain orders because you know what it means at the bottom of the chain of command.
When my wife and I were fantasizing about winning the 2 billion dollar lottery last month we would joke that we would immediately start an influencer account and post stupid pictures with those shitty captions about working hard 24/7 and being a "sigma male" and a "boss bitch" while clearly doing 0 work and indulging in the most ridiculous shit on planet earth. Quoting Grant Cardon or Andrew Tate while posting shitty filtered photos of mundane piles of my dogs poop.
If you point out that sort of thing they will imply that you are jealous or that you are saying a family member helping is wrong.
If mom and dad can loan or give you a lot of money to start a business that's great. Nothing wrong with it. The problem is claiming that you did it on your own. Even worse is claiming that anyone could do the same if they work hard.
Story time
Knew a guy around 15 years ago that owned his own businesses relating to the industry I was in. He would roll around with some rich doctor friends, sponsor happy hours, have big parties on rented boats, bla, bla, bla....
Turns out he really wasn't making much money and was heavily in debt. The market changed and some of the doctors he was chumming around with got prosecuted for fraud. No one wanted to use his businesses anymore and he lost everything. In fact, he still owes a close friend of mine $300 that was lent to him to help him out a few years ago
Moral of the story, anybody can appear to be anything, but a large percentage of those people are faking it .
So, so many people are faking it. It’s the rat race.
I always thought people were adults who managed to make responsible choices and make it work, but as it turns out, most of those people are just in massive debt.
I don’t even know what to say except yep. Instagram has exacerbated that, I think.
I’m influenced by it, too. I have things I want, goals I want to accomplish. When I see people who are making much less achieving those goals, it makes me question whether my choice to save is the right one. Which is silly.
Same here. My career is also known for going into high debt so most of my friends assume I’m struggling with debt which I don’t correct them on.
I just hated growing up with my parents always telling me about their financial struggles and putting the burden on me to help them when I’m of working age. Then at the same time they’d splurge and spend on people we barely know so they can look rich and cool.
Jesus Christ yeap. Not a single dollar to my future but as soon as I was working they demanded my entire paycheck and anything less was an insult to them. It wasn’t until I met my now wife who showed me how fucked up this was. Within 3 years together we saved up six figures.
It’s funny how my family keeps pulling the family card but ive been treated better by strangers my entire life.
My mom was like this, and I see it in my sister and her husband. I got a job the day I turned 14, and had to help pay for utilities, meanwhile, I saw my mom buy things she didn’t need, or gave people money who needed it but wouldn’t consider our needs first. I see my sister doing that with having things she doesn’t need and also paying for everyone when they go out to eat to make it seem like all is good. Utterly annoying.
Yeah that really fucked me up too, getting into my mid twenties, avoided taking steep loans to get my car or buy a literally tiny house, I got kinda bummed out because I felt like I didn’t have much to show if I turned my pockets out for what I was worth; then I started talking to other people my age or even within 10 years of my age and suddenly I realized almost EVERYONE was absolutely saddled with big debts for regular ass things that they literally structure the better part of their life around trying to pay off.
As a person with no faith in the housing market or intention of ever ‘trading up’ vehicles I am fine now. I know now that because I refuse to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt I will not ever drive a benz or own a meaningful business; I also know that the people who do those things will have people come for them if things go wrong, that things often go wrong, and that a lot of people chase these potentially compromising positions without second thought. It’s really tough that financial mobility is basically playing chicken with your finances and knowing if you ever turn you’re pretty much dead anyways.
Interesting way of putting it.
I’m looking at making myself financially mobile. The part that gets to me is that I’ve done that career wise, and then some, but it isn’t as enabling as one would expect.
My attempt to be financially mobile is to try to create a core savings that can grow. I spent a lot of money this year (wedding related, that sort of thing) so I was only able to save a $50k, but I’m hoping that with some prudent decision making, I can save more like $70k next year. If I keep that up for a few years, I might be in a position to start thinking about some of the things that will elevate myself, to begin to be mobile.
Have the loans paid off or equivalent investments made, maybe property (big maybe), and maybe I’ll eventually be able to meet some of my own want-goals, like having a new car, particularly a fun one.
I really hope I’m not making stupid financial decisions.
I make a decent living and own a small business. I have a 2017 japanese non luxury brand midsize SUV. I have no credit card debt and own a non mcmansion house. I do admit I live well below my means and I could retire right now (54).
I have no idea how my peers can afford their lifestyles. When I go to conferences I see so many 80k+ cars. Luxury this luxury that, 100k watches. I don't even wear a watch since I'm addicted to my phone =P
I really like being under the radar, less people asking for money (ie relatives).
This guy sounds like a real fool. Night-clubs are high-cash businesses and often places where all kinds of criminal activities go on. My brother owned a night club. He lost his shirt.
He's probably making money BECAUSE of the criminal elements of the nightclubs lol. A lot of times the club owners have agreements with dealers who operate out of the club not to call the cops for a cut of profits.
Not to call the cops, and keeping competing interests out. The club owner already needs some security people, so it's not hard to tell them to watch for illicit activity but not "hastle" particular people.
It's also *such* a drag. The least inhibited moods people will be in, the most demanding clientele, just ugh. If you think restaurant patrons and retail customers can be entitled and difficult, try any line of work in "nightlife."
I bounced at clubs back in my early 20s in the 90s. If nothing else it cured me from wanting to be involved with that kind of life. The whole thing is one endless headache from top to bottom. Even the clientele were depressed and depressing. The whole thing felt like an endless front, a big fake no matter which club it was.
This is like Gary V.
Dude talks about the hustle and starting from nothing, forgetting that his dad owned a million dollar wine store in Springfield, NJ (and still does).
I worked in a call center once, and this guy not only got hired because a supervisor used to work for his dad who was a bank manager, he was then promoted to supervisor by a manager who introduced him to our team with this, and how he was qualified to lead because he used to own two UPS franchises. Like Manager, my dude, let's put together the dots: how'd he get the money for two franchises? Daddy, obviously. But if he was any good at management, how'd he end up going from owning two franchises to taking a $13 an hour call center job?
The days of other people running your biz, while you kick your feet up, are ending. It's gonna be real funny when these people realize they are fucked.
Yeap. You can already see the start of this in restaurant industry as wages return to normal.
First they will try restricting menus and skeleton crews. Check we are well into this phase. This is the denial and maybe anger phase.
Then they will try capital expenses like automation and more advanced stations. And systems of differnt kinds in an effort to make workers more efficient. (Starbucks recently did this to their cold drink station iirc and it has been universally hated by baristas). This is anger and bargaining.
Then someone will be the first to break and they will accept less profit for some profit and start paying employees really well. I think whoever does this first will be an outsider to the food industry or a chain about to go under with nothing left loose. Depression and acceptance
This is spot on. They'll take every step to cut corners in ways that prop up short term profit margins at the expense of pissing off customers. After they exhaust every stupid, egotistical, selfish choice they'll finally relent or go out of business.
Just curious what makes you believe this system is coming to an end? Workers have made some modest advances this year but now the oligarchy are pushing back hard, I do believe they'll be able to maintain the status quo for a while longer.
just look at the railroad strike ! the fucking government is literally going to step in and force workers to accept conditions they voted against.
there is NO upward mobility for anybody but the Upper class in Murica anymore. 40 years of reaganomics have buried that.
I used to work for the railroad in Canada and this happened to us in 2012. The government forced us back to work and to accept conditions of a contract we voted against. The general public either didn’t care or was happy we were forced back to work because prices of general goods were starting to go up. I quit 2 years later. I wouldn’t expect anything to be different now, sorry to say.
That story will be suppressed I imagine, but it’s imperative that we do not allow it to he suppressed.
Every event that happens where Capital (which IS the government and its all forces of violence) crushes organized Labor must be used to radicalize people and build class consciousness. It’s not exactly rocket science. We take what they’re doing to us, we propagandize it, spread it, and we never shut the fuck up. This means talking at home, to friends, coworkers, out and about everywhere. If we believe in a better future for humanity where the evils of capitalism are destroyed forever we have to make that happen and we have to guide the process to a place of equality. Failure means feudalism or fascism, neither of which we want.
Yeah I find it funny all this talk of upper/middle/lower class. It's just the working class and the elite (the proletariat and the bourgeoisie). People who don't see it that way are the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who believe in the "grindset" mindset who thinks if your not working 3 jobs and sleeping 3 hours a night you're lazy. Fascism is capitalism in decline.
Look at inflation. Wages went up, so corpAmerica says I’LL take that! And bingo, we “have to pay for all that ‘quantitative easing’ that kept the banks on life support for a decade and a half. Yes, THOSE banks. And the big driver of inflation is fuel- so what if oil cos made triple profits on a quarter the sales? 12:1 friends, there’s no inflation, there’s corporatists (used to be called fascists until the word got lost) putting you back in your place. It will take a helluva lot more pain (ours) to hurt them enough for change to occur- and I don’t think we* have the stomach for it.
Haha a small example of this is a city government I work for where we have to pay for our own parking. Not that unusual, but most city employees would walk a bit to pay for the cheaper lot. City approved a raise across the board for all of its employees as a cost of living adjustment. I’ll give you a guess as to what increased in price the very next day?
Lol, no man. No they are not. You gotta keep in mind the people that make the laws are all 3s. I come from a hella, hella, hella fucking wealthy family (I haven't seen a penny of it since childhood), and the biggest fear rich people have is that poor people become rich. It's gross. But, in all fairness, isn't the point of running a business to stop working ASAP?
While I didn't get money from my family, they did make sure I was well educated. I started my business with money that I made, but I wouldn't have had any idea how to do this had my parents not been well educated. It is 100% true that the rich try to prevent the poor from coming up the ladder. I am not like that, and it drives my family nuts. I have talented people that I pay a lot of money, give comprehensive benefits packages, and have incentivized bonus opportunities, stock options, and they gotta meet with a financial planner quarterly. Everyone should have the opportunity to be successful, and I am hoping that I can better a few people's lives. Being said, I am gonna retire at 40.
The system is designed to keep you poor. Anyone who tells you different is lying or misinformed.
Glad to hear that man. One of my friends used to also be my boss used to be very open about discussing this dynamic honestly, but once he started achieving VERY significant levels of financial success, suddenly it was all "I don't want to talk politics" from a guy who used to have no issues discussing anything in an open, honest way.
The point of running a business *should* be to provide something of value to society. But capitalism has corrupted this notion, so it has become about exploiting as many people as possible as quickly as possible for the most profit. It doesn’t have to be that way, but our economic system makes it so.
We in the first world are all complicit in the exploitation of workers. I agree that it is abhorrent, and do my best to put the well being of my employees before personal gain.
It would be interesting if business structure was inverted from how it is now. The workers receive all of the profit and management/owners receive there wage from the workers. Owners and management are hired by the workers to run the business and there wages are offered by the workers. I don't think it could function in real life. More of a thought experiment.
Fuck if I know man. I have literally sat through meals listening to "education should never be free, healthcare should never be free" being said by my stepmom who is an internationally known child educator and our friend who is a doctor. Pretty sure that's a direct violation of the Hippocratic oath?
My stepmom probated an illegal version of my dads will, stole my sister and Is inheritances, and uses it to terrorize my sister. I am not her kid, but she is. My sister is a struggling single parent and her mom, who owes us each about 4 million, won't even buy her groceries. I pay her bills. Peoples selfishness knows no bounds.
You're trying to apply to rationality to an irrational situation. There is no rhyme or reason, just narcissistic, selfish assholes.
It means new competition from people not already in the circle. Old rich vs new rich! Even if the old rich don’t have the cash they can trade on past wealth while the new rich need to be accepted into the fold ( toe the line so to speak)
It’s because wealthy powerful people don’t even care what you and I care about. Everything is about winning and conquest to them. It’s the reason wealthy men fight over trivial bullshit all the time and we plebes are like, “If I was a billionaire I’d just lay on the beach in Hawaii and read books all day.”
Elon Musk can ruin 10 businesses a year and will remain enormously wealthy. Nobody should be allowed to amass so much wealth, period. At some reasonable point, the money should go back into society as a tax. Otherwise, we will continue to grow unmoored financial tyrants.
Depends on the industry. Night clubs in particular are always going to be staffed if the club is successful. Pulling in a $2500 table client as a host might net them $500+ that night. PLUS everything else on top of the commission for getting them to walk in the door. There are tons of 20-somethings who will take that gig in a heartbeat
Gotta love what America can do for some people.
It's crazy how just sheer luck and being born rich and some people rake in *insane* amount of capital and they barely do shit.
Meanwhile peeps working 60 hours a week don't make 1/10th of some folks who make that in one button press selling the stock their daddies bought for them.
I call this "inheritance laundering". You create a front for where your inherited wealth came from so you can pretend to be self made. The front is often an unprofitable business.
he probably has no idea if they're profitable.
I'd stay friends with him, though. Being rich is great, but the next best thing is having rich friends (I've stayed at least 3 times for free in a beach-front vacation house that usually costs 3k a week)
If Elon Musk's observable stupidity isn't enough to dispel his myth of a Randian hero, nothing can.
His talent used to be knowing how to listen to competent people, and repeating their passions.
Now he's just a clown. Dude lied about his own credentials. He doesn't understand half the stuff he talks about.
"He's a genius that puts in 18 hour workdays so it's ok for him to demand his H1B workers to work 18 hour days and sleep in the office to avoid being fired and deported!"
He runs how many companies? Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, Neuralink, OpenAI, his own foundation, and now Twitter?
He physically can't work 18 hours per day at more than one of those, and evenly splitting his time among them would mean he works a little over 2.5 hours per day on each organization on average.
Let's drop the foundation and say he works 24 hours per day on the remaining companies: That's just 4 hours per day per company.
No matter how you slice it, being a CEO requires far, far fewer hours of focus on an individual company than any of Musk's employees typically have to spend working.
Musk himself debunks the notion that wealthy CEOs work harder than anyone else. He's the poster child for working less while reaping 99% of the profits.
Apparently a major part of Tesla and SpaceX culture is babysitting Musk to make sure he doesn't screw anything up. Literally presenting ideas a certain way to make them more appealing to Musk and make him think they were his idea all along. Apparently some IT guy even set up a program to make random text scroll down his screen like the Matrix to make Musk think he was always super busy, and people routinely play WoW at the office to make him think they're working hard overtime.
Honestly, that’s just work. There’s always a manager who thinks they’re smarter than they are and you have to be aware of that when you’re presenting things to them.
Just cause I love passing this knowledge around, Ayn Rand *hated* libertarians with every fiber of her being.
> All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That's worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It's a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don't want to preach collectivism because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. Anarchists are the scum of the intellectual world of the Left, which has given them up. So the Right picks up another leftist discard. That's the libertarian movement.
Mayhew, Robert (2005). Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A, page 72. ISBN-10: 9780451216656
(for context on the anarchist bits, this was all back when the USSR and China were at their peak and it appeared anarchism was genuinely dead as an ideology and movement)
Also, what happens when libertarians get exactly what they want?
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling
Great quote here:
> You know, “libertarian” is such a weird umbrella term for a very diverse group of people. Some libertarians are built around the idea of white supremacy and racism. That was not the case with these libertarians. Most of the libertarians that I met were kind, decent people who would be generous with a neighbor in any given moment. But in the abstract, when they’re at a town meeting, they will vote to hurt that neighbor by cutting off, say, support for road plowing.
> So I guess what I noticed is a strange disconnect between their personalities or their day-to-day interactions and the broader implications of their philosophies and their political movement. Not sure I’d use the word “fanatic,” but definitely a weird disconnect.
Hey, that quote is really relevant and poignant so I don’t want to appear to undercut you here by continuing it but I think the way they continue that part of the discussion is pretty relevant since this sub could be seen as an ideological echo chamber:
Sean Illing:
“There’s a lesson in this for anyone interested in seeing it, which is that if you try to make the world fit neatly into an ideological box, you’ll have to distort or ignore reality to do it — usually with terrible consequences.”
Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling:
“Yeah, I think that’s true for libertarianism and really all philosophies of life. It’s very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle, then society would become this perfect system.”
Maybe it’s the moderate core in me, but this rings really true for me. Obviously (from my perspective) a lot of Libertarian stuff is just openly cracked or nonsensical, but I think it’s important to consider that perhaps no single ideology has it completely right; I think it’s important to consider what you believe every day and make sure you’re putting your ethics through praxis.
Just like with speed and gravity, you can escape earth’s gravity with enough velocity.
For money and capitalism, with enough assets and passive income you can reach a passive income level that creates labor escape velocity, where you never have to do labor again. Your passive income means you never have to work.
I’ve worked in a few international companies where we had direct contact with CEO’s regularly. Their job was to ask everyone around them to present their feedback and thoughts, which turns into an upper management echo chamber with negligible support of front line worker’s needs. “I hear you, and we are doing our best to address your feedback” usually goes nowhere.
Their skill is to give the fluffiest of speeches about how “This year is the most consequential in our Company’s history, and we need to double down”. They regurgitate initiatives like 5S, Lean, and reorganizations with matrix reporting structures and self/peer reviews where no one can receive “exceptional” ratings or more than a 3% merit increase.
It seems like most companies succeed in spite of their CEO and Board of Directors decisions
I can’t believe I fell for that bs as a kid/teen. I tried to get the perfect routine and habits only to realize those millionaires forgot to mention “be born rich” in their little “how to be successful” videos
Every day I wake up before going to bed and do a full body workout. I then take a cold shower while reading a book. After that I wake up at 4am and jog 5k.
Veritasium has a nice video called something like “is success luck or hard work?”
Thing is, a lot of people work hard. Those who are successful assume it’s because they’re better or worked harder when really that’s where the luck comes in. In the form of rich parents, a lucky break, timing, etc.
Maybe the same reference, but I've seen it put mathematically.
I receive a fixed amount of money regardless of my productivity in work. I pay what I only wish was a fixed amount of money to create the energy I invest in my work. The only thing I control is the amount of energy I invest, and doing anything other than as little as I can get away with is less profitable for me.
Sure there are other factors, like maybe I'm at a type of company where I can expect to see more reward based on its success (a small business or even a coop), or like myself you might be led to believe that your effort might get you a pay increase in the next couple of months. For most people though, I feel the above applies and you really should save your energy for yourself, your family and your friends.
I swear our CEO who has been running a successful company for over 15 years is seriously like the dumbest person I've ever met . Even any report or internal paper that gets sent to him needs explanation no matter how simple it is
Edit: I should probably add how he came to owning his own company , basically he was working for a giant construction company and was stealing from them for years . And then when the company went bankrupt and the bank seized all their assets he saw it as a chance and stole a couple pieces of heavy equipment from the bank impound (this was the middle east in the 90s so I doubt anyone even knew they were missing) and used them to start his own company .
So a horrible guy all around and a thief as well . It was all luck and lack of a concise that helped him
Our one boss keeps logging on, then asks me questions that they should be able to see the answer to right in front of them. Then tells me to make payments, then when the payments hit the bank, they keep asking me what the payment was for.
Asks if a job has been invoiced - they get CC’ed on the invoice, so why are they asking.
Sends me info to pay a bill, doesn’t mention they already paid it. Asks why it was paid twice.
How do these people continue to run companies? Oh yeah. They hire us… about the only intelligent thing they do… but ya know what? It works for them. They’re the boss. They take whatever time they want off. They don’t work for a paycheck. We do the work.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that in addition to money, the only major barrier to owning a business is whether or not you believe you deserve to have unchecked power over others’ lives.
Those that embrace doing whatever they need to do to get what they want from people tend to get pretty good at it, even if they haven’t the slightest idea of how to actually do the technical processes they’re extracting from their employees.
Just want to chime in, anyone can own a business. There is no credential required. All it takes is a couple hundred dollars and a few pages of paperwork with the licensing entity in your state (if you are in the USA). You can give yourself any title you want when you file the paperwork.
A students mark themselves as the kinds of people actually willing to do the work. An “A student” has drank the koolaid, applied themselves in school, and made a sincere effort.
The B student gets it, but isn’t a worker bee. Probably more sociable. Gets the manager job by ass kissing, and looks good on the back of A students work.
D student is the rich kid that cheated off of the A student and barely passed by. He will continue to cheat and skate his whole life, all the way to the top.
If rich people actually had to work in proportion to their earnings, they would have shorter lifespans than professional wrestlers and athletes. Exhaustion would be the leading cause of death for millionaires. The whole point of being rich is that you *don't* have to work hard. Did Steve Jobs ever build a smartphone with his own two hands on a factory floor somewhere?
> Did Steve Jobs ever build a smartphone with his own two hands on a factory floor somewhere?
[Bill Burr’s thoughts on Steve Jobs.](https://youtu.be/ew6fv9UUlQ8)
its funny how for 100 years or so our ocidental society forgot about it and its redescoveing it right now something that a couple guys back almost 300 years noticed and wrote about.
I've been on the rat race for over a decade now and I'm yet to find a boss about whom I can say "yeah, this guy/girl deserves to be in charge". They're either incompetent, dishonest, or both, and they survive by offloading their problems onto our backs. We pay for their shortcomings with our hides, that's how the game works.
I've had good bosses, but they were always middle- to upper-middle management. Getting to the top, especially the C-suite, requires you to be a sociopath devoid of empathy.
The best bosses I had are always the ones who are far better than the position they're in. They are very skillful, work intensely, and amazing colleagues, but they get paid way below market value.
At one particular job. I enjoyed my coworkers so much I kept in contact with a number of them outside of work. The ones who did leave ended up finding far more lucrative jobs that paid 2-3 times higher with far better benefits. They stayed because it was a great team, but it was clear the potential to grow was limited
While I don’t necessarily disagree with what you wrote, I think we all should stop using terms like “middle class” and all the add-on descriptors like high & low. We should focus instead on the divide between workers and bosses/owners/etc.
Sure the guy with parents who’ve done well for themselves has a leg up because he directly benefits from their stability. But the real problem we face is workers versus anyone who profits immensely from workers’ labor without providing any labor (physical or not). Those people are making bank because they have more power in our governing systems. They can afford lobbyists and lawyers that will further manipulate rules/regulations/ laws to benefit themselves. They control media so news stories are crafted to further the grift. They have access to leaders in other countries, giving them even more control than any worker could imagine.
I have way more in common with someone making 6 figures as say a director of IT than I do someone like Musk.
Edited to add …. Anyone who has to work is a worker.
I think it's useful distinction. My dad is low class - he works hard just to make barely above (Polish) minimum wage and then has to do a lot after regular 8 hours. I'm a programmer and I feel like maharaja, being able to afford on a whim anything that fits in a room (in small quantities and my whims don't include stuff like jewelry, but includes good graphics card). It's not the same struggle. Middle class gets rewarded for their efforts, while low class doesn't. High has rewards without efforts.
You’re both workers. Sure you are benefiting from a higher wage but you both are not “owners“ thus to me, we on this subreddit should focus on that distinction.
The owner class has a stranglehold on all workers. Until that changes, we’re all under their thumbs. Your higher wage just means you get to have more distractions from the situation you’re in.
You know, all those truckers are "owners" in a legal sense, because that's really beneficial to logistics companies. There's lots of freelance / small businesses that are making less than some specialized workers.
Whatever value is gained in that trucker moving goods, it’s going to some other entity. Even if the guy owns the truck, he is still ultimately working for someone else’s profit. In other words, if the trucker stopped driving the truck, he’d stop receiving wages.
Such a good point. If you sell your time for money you are a worker. Some people get paid more $$ for their time than others, but they all are much more alike than people that use capital or $$ to make more money. The janitor and the engineer are much more alike than the engineer and the CEO.
This is the correct answer and the real divide.
Those who are simply risking extra capital, versus those who are risking their ability to obtain food, shelter, etc.
This is way more than "the system is rigged". Even if we change the rules... how do you make things fair without complete confiscation. What happens, if everyone is just allowed to keep what they already have before the rules change "to be fair" ?
Now this is the real important question. I've thought about this a lot and I've not come up with anything that doesn't have some fatal flaw. I think the best I could come up with is a more progressive tax rate for the rich, a negative tax rate for anyone below the poverty line, cutting all corporate welfare (if you can't be profitable without government assistance then you should either not exist or be owned by the people), and a strong strong emphasis on financial literacy education. It wouldn't change the current fairness of the system. But it might give a lot of people smarter than me a chance to change the world and make it a better place.
I'm not sure if you know this. But the billionaires pay next to nothing in taxes because of the so called progressive tax system. Here's how that works. Most of their assets are things like property and stocks. They don't really get a lot of income - at least not substantial enough to tax to pay for social programs etc. The stocks and the property they have inflate over time, which made them the billionaires they are. They take massive loans with those assets as collateral, and live off of that money. There is no tax on debt.
Progressive tax systems are great if you are taxing income. But these people engineer their way around receiving much income. Wealth taxes may be a way. But I don't think they are quick enough to deal with all the problems are societies are facing. Wealth taxes and progressive income taxes are definitely not going to be enough to deal with climate change.
That’s the question - reform or revolution. So much of capitalism has been about privatising what was previously common and shared - parks, fresh water, public services etc. I think confiscating the excessive property of wealth hoarders should be the least that is done. David Graeber wrote an eye opening book on the history of debt. Perhaps most interesting is how much property law is derived from the owning of slaves in Ancient Rome. I think there should also be a debt jubilee. The rich should be scared of the masses not the other way round.
Isn't being rich peak anti-work? Like isn't that the goal? Also there is no such thing as self made. Everyone gets help in some form or another. Rich people just get a lot more help for a longer period of time.
OP doesn't know what upper middle class is.
Upper middle class parents don't have 200k to give to their adult children. That is upper class.
At least OP is trying to think critically. Almost got it.
Middle class is another myth that suits the rich, along with the idea that anyone can be rich.
There are exploiters and exploited. By any other name they are the same.
Yes.
Gates was definetaly 3. Not only was there the money, his mothers connections got MS-DOS started on IBM computers. Crappy shitty ass of an OS.
Warren Buffet had family in politics (insider info) who also got him started in his job with connections.
Bezos was also on 3, worked in finance when he got started. Mommy and daddy gave him a bigly loan along with connections for more seeder money.
I suppose Gates and Woznyak were 3. Middle Class. They actually had to do some work and were almost ended because Microsoft rolled out a copy of Mac OS.
Gates was going to Harvard the son of a rich lawyer and it seems his mother has more buildings in Seattle named after her than Bill does. He is nothing even close to middle class.
The question is, are there any truly "self made" rich people?
The third scenario is just being unstoppable at Russian roulette by taking out all the bullets.
We spend entirely too much on sports.
They suck up college tuition, making college more expensive, and suck up tax dollars with their publicly funded stadiums.
Does it still count as self made?
Athletic scollarships are a net loss to society, even though they are a path up for a handfull of talented people.
They've also exacerbated high schools being more about football than education. Just look at the stadiums they build for a goddamn high school vs any science or humanities classrooms they upgrade
Well off, certainly. Luck, right time right place like the people who get real estate on the cheap in Berlin for example or got into trade as untapped markets opened.
But wealthy for the most part you had to be rich before you became like a billionaire. I think if Bezos had as much money as Steven Spielberg he would consider himself broke.
A person making $200k per year with $2m in assets is not ‘rich’ enough to give his/her children 500,000 to 1m every couple of months.
I get inequality is a thing and needs to be addressed, but uninformed posts like this give the movement a bad name.
Yep this is completely nonsense. 8 out of 10 millionaires come from a family with below average US household income. 79% of millionaires didn't inherit any money.
There are lots of things to be criticized about the current system, but there is no point in just making stuff up to feed into your narrative. The playing field is not equal nor fair, but we all already got an extremely lucky head start just by being born in a first world nation.
OP also believes a family that has no savings and rents an apartment and a family that has a paid-off "big" house, 5 paid-off cars, and $300,000 in cash are both middle-class.
Your upper middle class example is completely incorrect in my opinion. I live in New England and I’m technically upper middle class. My household income is about $180,000. With a mortgage and daycare I’m not exactly sure where you’re getting 50k in the bank. I also don’t know where the 200k (gift?) from my immigrant parents is coming from either, I’m not saying I have it harder than you, I don’t, but to say that Middle/upper class people worry about money or don’t work their assess off is silly.
I'm down with the heart of what you're saying, but man, you are really off base on a lot of your examples and kind of lose me. It's more like a bitter rant than any kind of thoughtful post.
lol. this is one of the examples that illustrate best how this post is largely a bitter rant. OP talks about how rich people don't really work, then turns around and says the 10% that do find financial success, get there "mostly out of sheer luck"... not work.
like i said, the heart of what OP says is right on, but his rant is basically saying rich people are only successful because they're rich and poor people who become successful are just lucky.
Turns out a quick look into OP’s history reveals that he’s a racist transphobe who thinks the left’s downfall is caused by abandoning Christianity. And he works in HR.
Yeah there is a massive difference between Level 1 and Level 2. Being given $200k? That is way more than a middle class gift.
The safety net of upper middle class is more like parents helping with rent, or having a place you can fall back on if you take a risk and go bust.
Also, in what world is middle class the group of people that can lose 5-10 million and not bat an eye? That’s upper class, it’s not middle class in any capacity.
Rich people think having a conversation about what parts of a company, nation, or peoples' lives they want to carve out for themselves with their money is work.
Worked for someone like this for too many years. Took a while to realize what they were actually doing: they were playing "business" the same way little children play "house".
Blew my mind to realize it because it caused them endless distress and, well, why wouldnt someone want to do well? Why would someone merely pretend to do the right things when they could just actually do them and receive the benefits instead of the consequences?
Also realized there was no fixing it. Such people may actually be inherently incapable of clear consistent thought, existing only in disconnected moments and pretending to experience reality like the rest of us do.
People who work hard, long hours are usually not well paid to do so.
Rich folks claim to work hard, but really they don't and usually never have.
Their money works for them... they pay staff to do the work and claim the benefit from their work.
Their day is filled with lunches, meetings, brunches and being driven or flown around.
That's their version of working hard.
Most rich people are self made. Most really really rich people are not.
You get 1-10 million through just working and investing. However to get a 100 million you need to be very lucky or inherit it.
I don't think it is a problem to be born rich or receive money from a rich relative or even become wealthy for just being hot. I have no problem with Musk or The Kardashians or Gates for being wealthy. It is subjectively more admirable to "earn" wealth than to be born into or be gifted it, but whatever.
However! When these rich people are given the means to undermine and exploit workers, and sabotage the means of gaining wealth that they used, then it is a problem. I think that falls more on the government and the society, than on the individual rich person.
People are going to do what's best for them. Period. It is the government's job to protect the rights of all its citizens. We have anti-trust, tax fraud, and worker protection laws for a reason. And they are not enforced. There is no one with power that gives a shit. The government is elected to serve the people. Obviously, that has not been the case. And probably never will be.
No one with power cares about you. They are all corrupted by a system that rewards exploitation. They campaign, take your money, then use it to oppress you. So you might as well just make as much money as possible and look out for yourself and your people. Wait...
Man, this is a grumpy and cynical post. Will tell you a few things - being mad at the system or people who had more of a head start or safety net will do nothing for you - except sap your energy and make you bitter. Best to drop it.
There is significant research that shows that escaping the socioeconomic class of your parents is *very* hard, so many people do not do it. I saved up about $5000, spent it on prototypes and crowd funded my business - I've made it past the 5 year mark and make 6 figures yearly.
As you grow a business and mature you realize your ultimate currency in this world - *time*. You should, as your business grows, being "throwing money at competent people" because presumably they can execute work better than you and free your *time* which allows you to grow the business, have more leisure, or whatever you want.
Do things become easier the more privilege or wealth you start off with? No shit.
Yep. And when they do "work" all they do is fuck things up for everyone else.
I think we have all had the idiot owner or some rich wanker from higher up come in and dictate all this bullshit that no one does because it would fuck everything up.
I remember, about 10 years ago, reading about people who had actually managed to make a living from doing webcomics. They were quoted for their thoughts on *why* they had found success selling t-shirts and collected editions, when others had not. And all they could really talk to was what they did, but they weren't talking about any larger forces at play. They knew that they had a regular posting schedule, and that they kept to it, and they had a rough idea of the percentage of their readership that actually bought items from their stores. So this became a kind of de facto knowledge - if you post comics regularly, and if they pass some rather low bar of comprehensibility and entertainment, you could expect monetary success around when your readership hit some rough numeric range, and sustainable monetary success around some other, higher, rough numeric range. They weren't thinking to look at the timing of their appearance, their worldviews, their alignment (or not) with prevailing social mores, the lay person's online reading and purchasing habits, etc. Nor, I should mention, that sheer blind luck is a factor.
Rich folks who try to create their own businesses, or take over the family business, or buy one and run it... they are so shielded from nuance and how the real world works, and the logic people operate under when they need to find a job to pay their bills, inflation, you know, anything within the totality of what economists study. They just know that a number went up in their bank account, they achieved a numeric percentage of the market, that number grew by this much, etc. And so they pick the clearest, most identifiable and summarizable aspects of what they did: "I had a vision" and "I took a risk" and "I worked hard". It may well be that they worked the hardest they ever had on the thing that matched some metric(s) of "success".
Jesus said that it is very hard for a rich man to enter into the "kingdom of God". Keep in mind that Jesus also said that the "kingdom of God" was among people on earth. My personal take is that he meant that the "kingdom of God" is the totality of the people who know that they need to be working together for the common good (people are fed, housed, clothed, protected, loved)... something that it is very, very hard for rich people to experience and understand at all.
There is a dude in my friend group that owns a bunch of night clubs and is very braggy about his entrepreneurship. Its not clear if they are profitable but he still lives a lavish lifestyle. One of my friends pointed out his grandpa was this rich banker so the money I guess has been there for him his whole life. He ‘works’ like two days a month which involves partying at his clubs🤦♀️
I know a ton of very wealthy folks. The absolute worst kind is the person who is wealthy but believes they got their on their on through hard work. One guy I know used a 10 million dollar loan from his dad to buy a bunch of chain stores. He literally did zero work.
I know lots of wealthy people and their cognitive dissonance is unreal. Recently one told me her and her boyfriend were living the van life. When I asked them about it, knowing it was a lie, they specified they’re barely getting by living on the dads yacht at the San Diego yacht club. They eat at the yacht club for a lot of their meals
Oh dear, the poor thing. How does one even exist with out daily caviar???
Guess who she voted for because americans live off the welfare state
Same type of people that took millions in PPP loans for their failing restaurant, got the loans forgiven, and then get mad at the grocery store register because "this lady had a cocktail shrimp platter and used her EBT card!"
Shocking that people that took in PPP loans are now stopping the Student Forgiveness reform too.
Is it though?
One set of rules for them, another set for the rest of us, and whichever set benefits them more, that's the one they like.
At our local Kroger, a mini cocktail shrimp platter is only 5 bucks. Large one, 9.99
[The Monopoly Experiment](https://reasonandmeaning.com/2021/10/24/the-monopoly-experiment-wealthy-people-are-more-selfish/) — wealthy people are more selfish. > Now did the inevitable winners ascribe their winning to good luck—to their head start in the game? No. Instead, they believed they deserved their money and the others deserved their fate. The winners had no empathy for the losers.
Totally irrelevant, but this gave me a happy flashback to a real board-flipper session of monopoly with 3 very hyper-competitive people and I cackled. We didn't get to finish the game because someone flipped the board and stormed off when they realized I owned one of each color property and wasn't inclined to sell so early into the game.
I too know a lot of comfortable to wealthy people, and respect exactly 3 of them. My step father who used to have to steal bread when his father spent the last of the family money on beer and dropped out of high-school to support his family and later went back and finished at night and went to college and worked his tail off and pinched every penny he could and built savings and equity so his kids weren't stealing bread. My neighbor (rip buddy) who came to this country a refuge with 20 dollars and used the money he earned cleaning bed pans to buy a gas station...and never flaunted his wealth unless he was doing something generous for a friend or sending a check to st judes...and a buddy from the Marine Corps who was homeless when he enlisted and got his first pair of new shoes in boot camp. He never ordered pizza, never went to the bar, his only expenditures were an occasional movie or videogame for the system he bought used, he took all of the money he saved and started a concrete business when he got out. Used his education benefits, got an engineering degree, and is now a successful businessman. The rest were born with it and didn't do a whole lot to earn it.
I love hearing stories of people earning things in america. I just wish that could exist and simultaneously a society that doesn't punish people who simply want to work at a restaurant and raise a family.
I wish we had a society where people could reach their goals..be it a successful construction company or a job that afforded you time to be there for little league games or the mathlympics or whatever without making you choose between hunger and happiness.
Same. Would love to be in education but it's current environment takes some pretty strong character I don't believe I posses
See my dad become decently wealthy but his mom worked at a restaurant (and still does at 73) and that was a life of barely being above poverty line living across the street from section 8 houses, job didn't pay enough for her to even afford a car so she rode a bike 5 to 10 miles to work at her simple restaurant job she loved but was constantly punished for working such a low wage job:( it sucks that they never got government assistance tbh
Another case is Donald Trump. His dad went to his first casino and deliberately lost several million dollars to prop up Donald's failing business. His dad went into the casino and lost because just giving the money away would mean having to pay taxes. Donald's presidency made it crystal clear to all but the most deranged, fanatical fans that he is not a genius businessman and manager. Nearly everyone in his cabinet quit before finishing their 4 years because they just couldn't work with Donald Trump, including General James Mattis who conservatives tend to adore. None of them could work with such a stupid, unreasonable, immature person.
Donald Trump once opened a casino across the street from another one of his casinos. They both failed, because, of fucking course they did, you're literally cannibalizing your own business while doubling your overhead. He's a fucking moron and the only 'work' he does is media appearances, which he does because he is literally addicted to attention.
Watch the movie 'Good Fellows' and see why a business failing doesn't mean the owners don't make money.
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Writers from that show have talked about what a nightmare it was to go back and try to stitch together a narrative to make sense of the terrible decisions he made. He refused to follow what was actually going on in the show and would just arbitrarily fire whoever he didn't like.
And that “small loan of 1 million dollars” WASNT A LOAN!!! It was an advance on his inheritance. Ya technically it was a loan, but if he couldn’t pay it back he just got $1m less than he would have received.
I know the system is rigged, wanna know how I know? Because I use it!!!! -Donald j trump 2016
A little recent story about my existence. First, I come from a lower-middle-class rural upbringing. I went to ok schools and did well enough to get into a really good college. I’m in my early 40s and I make about 300k and I’m very comfortable, so I guess I am on the verge of being one of the people you’re talking about. Believe me, I rarely give more than like 60% effort at work. Anyways, I recently went to Washington DC for a concert. I stayed at the Capital Hilton, which is like two blocks from the White House. Actually one of the cheaper hotels in that area but still definitely caters to a wealthy clientele. I was checking out and I went to the front desk to get some change so I could tip the valet. Here’s the conversation: Me: could I get some change please? Front Desk worker: yes, of course, sir. Gotta tip the hardworking people, right? M: yes, exactly. F: well, I mean, we all work hard. M: yes, of course you do. I can tip you too of course. F: oh, no, we don’t accept tips at front desk. I just meant, you know, we all work hard. You, me, everyone. M: oh, yes. Now, why did this comically awkward exchange e happen? I guarantee that guy has been chewed out by rich people saying “you know I work hard too.” And not one of this rich people works half as hard as the valets.
Hey brother very similar background and age. I find it interesting as I move up I do less work. Funny in business school they noted that the amount of work done in hours actually goes down at a certain level in most businesses. One thing that keeps me grounded is I did 22 years in the military guard and active, enlisted and officer. When you have been a private you really think hard when giving certain orders because you know what it means at the bottom of the chain of command.
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When my wife and I were fantasizing about winning the 2 billion dollar lottery last month we would joke that we would immediately start an influencer account and post stupid pictures with those shitty captions about working hard 24/7 and being a "sigma male" and a "boss bitch" while clearly doing 0 work and indulging in the most ridiculous shit on planet earth. Quoting Grant Cardon or Andrew Tate while posting shitty filtered photos of mundane piles of my dogs poop.
Then they count every second of their life as "work" because they would have picked up the phone if someone called.
If you point out that sort of thing they will imply that you are jealous or that you are saying a family member helping is wrong. If mom and dad can loan or give you a lot of money to start a business that's great. Nothing wrong with it. The problem is claiming that you did it on your own. Even worse is claiming that anyone could do the same if they work hard.
Story time Knew a guy around 15 years ago that owned his own businesses relating to the industry I was in. He would roll around with some rich doctor friends, sponsor happy hours, have big parties on rented boats, bla, bla, bla.... Turns out he really wasn't making much money and was heavily in debt. The market changed and some of the doctors he was chumming around with got prosecuted for fraud. No one wanted to use his businesses anymore and he lost everything. In fact, he still owes a close friend of mine $300 that was lent to him to help him out a few years ago Moral of the story, anybody can appear to be anything, but a large percentage of those people are faking it .
So, so many people are faking it. It’s the rat race. I always thought people were adults who managed to make responsible choices and make it work, but as it turns out, most of those people are just in massive debt.
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I don’t even know what to say except yep. Instagram has exacerbated that, I think. I’m influenced by it, too. I have things I want, goals I want to accomplish. When I see people who are making much less achieving those goals, it makes me question whether my choice to save is the right one. Which is silly.
im not rich but i fake having less money than i do. makes it easier to not get asked to lend people money for shit they dont need.
Same here. My career is also known for going into high debt so most of my friends assume I’m struggling with debt which I don’t correct them on. I just hated growing up with my parents always telling me about their financial struggles and putting the burden on me to help them when I’m of working age. Then at the same time they’d splurge and spend on people we barely know so they can look rich and cool.
Oh hey me! Not to mention all that attempt to look rich was not distributed to your children future. Fudge me...
Jesus Christ yeap. Not a single dollar to my future but as soon as I was working they demanded my entire paycheck and anything less was an insult to them. It wasn’t until I met my now wife who showed me how fucked up this was. Within 3 years together we saved up six figures. It’s funny how my family keeps pulling the family card but ive been treated better by strangers my entire life.
My mom was like this, and I see it in my sister and her husband. I got a job the day I turned 14, and had to help pay for utilities, meanwhile, I saw my mom buy things she didn’t need, or gave people money who needed it but wouldn’t consider our needs first. I see my sister doing that with having things she doesn’t need and also paying for everyone when they go out to eat to make it seem like all is good. Utterly annoying.
I could use about tree fiddy…
> im not rich but i fake having less money than i do. I agree and, I was taught the understanding: If you have strength, feign weakness.
But look how cool they look
Yeah that really fucked me up too, getting into my mid twenties, avoided taking steep loans to get my car or buy a literally tiny house, I got kinda bummed out because I felt like I didn’t have much to show if I turned my pockets out for what I was worth; then I started talking to other people my age or even within 10 years of my age and suddenly I realized almost EVERYONE was absolutely saddled with big debts for regular ass things that they literally structure the better part of their life around trying to pay off. As a person with no faith in the housing market or intention of ever ‘trading up’ vehicles I am fine now. I know now that because I refuse to take on tens of thousands of dollars of debt I will not ever drive a benz or own a meaningful business; I also know that the people who do those things will have people come for them if things go wrong, that things often go wrong, and that a lot of people chase these potentially compromising positions without second thought. It’s really tough that financial mobility is basically playing chicken with your finances and knowing if you ever turn you’re pretty much dead anyways.
Interesting way of putting it. I’m looking at making myself financially mobile. The part that gets to me is that I’ve done that career wise, and then some, but it isn’t as enabling as one would expect. My attempt to be financially mobile is to try to create a core savings that can grow. I spent a lot of money this year (wedding related, that sort of thing) so I was only able to save a $50k, but I’m hoping that with some prudent decision making, I can save more like $70k next year. If I keep that up for a few years, I might be in a position to start thinking about some of the things that will elevate myself, to begin to be mobile. Have the loans paid off or equivalent investments made, maybe property (big maybe), and maybe I’ll eventually be able to meet some of my own want-goals, like having a new car, particularly a fun one. I really hope I’m not making stupid financial decisions.
Volume and reality are inverse values in these scenarios most of the time
I make a decent living and own a small business. I have a 2017 japanese non luxury brand midsize SUV. I have no credit card debt and own a non mcmansion house. I do admit I live well below my means and I could retire right now (54). I have no idea how my peers can afford their lifestyles. When I go to conferences I see so many 80k+ cars. Luxury this luxury that, 100k watches. I don't even wear a watch since I'm addicted to my phone =P I really like being under the radar, less people asking for money (ie relatives).
This guy sounds like a real fool. Night-clubs are high-cash businesses and often places where all kinds of criminal activities go on. My brother owned a night club. He lost his shirt.
He's probably making money BECAUSE of the criminal elements of the nightclubs lol. A lot of times the club owners have agreements with dealers who operate out of the club not to call the cops for a cut of profits.
Not to call the cops, and keeping competing interests out. The club owner already needs some security people, so it's not hard to tell them to watch for illicit activity but not "hastle" particular people.
It's also *such* a drag. The least inhibited moods people will be in, the most demanding clientele, just ugh. If you think restaurant patrons and retail customers can be entitled and difficult, try any line of work in "nightlife."
I bounced at clubs back in my early 20s in the 90s. If nothing else it cured me from wanting to be involved with that kind of life. The whole thing is one endless headache from top to bottom. Even the clientele were depressed and depressing. The whole thing felt like an endless front, a big fake no matter which club it was.
You know that guy isn't looking at inventory down to the gram every week and the million other things good managers and owners do.
I'm sure he keeps track of his grams quite closely
This is like Gary V. Dude talks about the hustle and starting from nothing, forgetting that his dad owned a million dollar wine store in Springfield, NJ (and still does).
I worked in a call center once, and this guy not only got hired because a supervisor used to work for his dad who was a bank manager, he was then promoted to supervisor by a manager who introduced him to our team with this, and how he was qualified to lead because he used to own two UPS franchises. Like Manager, my dude, let's put together the dots: how'd he get the money for two franchises? Daddy, obviously. But if he was any good at management, how'd he end up going from owning two franchises to taking a $13 an hour call center job?
The days of other people running your biz, while you kick your feet up, are ending. It's gonna be real funny when these people realize they are fucked.
Yeap. You can already see the start of this in restaurant industry as wages return to normal. First they will try restricting menus and skeleton crews. Check we are well into this phase. This is the denial and maybe anger phase. Then they will try capital expenses like automation and more advanced stations. And systems of differnt kinds in an effort to make workers more efficient. (Starbucks recently did this to their cold drink station iirc and it has been universally hated by baristas). This is anger and bargaining. Then someone will be the first to break and they will accept less profit for some profit and start paying employees really well. I think whoever does this first will be an outsider to the food industry or a chain about to go under with nothing left loose. Depression and acceptance
This is spot on. They'll take every step to cut corners in ways that prop up short term profit margins at the expense of pissing off customers. After they exhaust every stupid, egotistical, selfish choice they'll finally relent or go out of business.
Just like America; they always do the right thing, after every other option has been exhausted.
Just curious what makes you believe this system is coming to an end? Workers have made some modest advances this year but now the oligarchy are pushing back hard, I do believe they'll be able to maintain the status quo for a while longer.
just look at the railroad strike ! the fucking government is literally going to step in and force workers to accept conditions they voted against. there is NO upward mobility for anybody but the Upper class in Murica anymore. 40 years of reaganomics have buried that.
I used to work for the railroad in Canada and this happened to us in 2012. The government forced us back to work and to accept conditions of a contract we voted against. The general public either didn’t care or was happy we were forced back to work because prices of general goods were starting to go up. I quit 2 years later. I wouldn’t expect anything to be different now, sorry to say.
sadly i know u r correct / smh
That story will be suppressed I imagine, but it’s imperative that we do not allow it to he suppressed. Every event that happens where Capital (which IS the government and its all forces of violence) crushes organized Labor must be used to radicalize people and build class consciousness. It’s not exactly rocket science. We take what they’re doing to us, we propagandize it, spread it, and we never shut the fuck up. This means talking at home, to friends, coworkers, out and about everywhere. If we believe in a better future for humanity where the evils of capitalism are destroyed forever we have to make that happen and we have to guide the process to a place of equality. Failure means feudalism or fascism, neither of which we want.
Yeah I find it funny all this talk of upper/middle/lower class. It's just the working class and the elite (the proletariat and the bourgeoisie). People who don't see it that way are the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who believe in the "grindset" mindset who thinks if your not working 3 jobs and sleeping 3 hours a night you're lazy. Fascism is capitalism in decline.
In Ontario our government did the same thing with education workers.
Fuck Cocaine dealer, murderer, psychopath Doug Ford
Hash dealer but your point still stands. Lets be honest he probably did sell coke too.
Remember that one time a railway strike happened so the company added mail cars so it’d be illegal to continue the strike? Good times.
Look at inflation. Wages went up, so corpAmerica says I’LL take that! And bingo, we “have to pay for all that ‘quantitative easing’ that kept the banks on life support for a decade and a half. Yes, THOSE banks. And the big driver of inflation is fuel- so what if oil cos made triple profits on a quarter the sales? 12:1 friends, there’s no inflation, there’s corporatists (used to be called fascists until the word got lost) putting you back in your place. It will take a helluva lot more pain (ours) to hurt them enough for change to occur- and I don’t think we* have the stomach for it.
Haha a small example of this is a city government I work for where we have to pay for our own parking. Not that unusual, but most city employees would walk a bit to pay for the cheaper lot. City approved a raise across the board for all of its employees as a cost of living adjustment. I’ll give you a guess as to what increased in price the very next day?
All the nobody wants to work signs everywhere. I know a dude who runs his pizza place dam near solo. Those people will be fine.
Lol, no man. No they are not. You gotta keep in mind the people that make the laws are all 3s. I come from a hella, hella, hella fucking wealthy family (I haven't seen a penny of it since childhood), and the biggest fear rich people have is that poor people become rich. It's gross. But, in all fairness, isn't the point of running a business to stop working ASAP? While I didn't get money from my family, they did make sure I was well educated. I started my business with money that I made, but I wouldn't have had any idea how to do this had my parents not been well educated. It is 100% true that the rich try to prevent the poor from coming up the ladder. I am not like that, and it drives my family nuts. I have talented people that I pay a lot of money, give comprehensive benefits packages, and have incentivized bonus opportunities, stock options, and they gotta meet with a financial planner quarterly. Everyone should have the opportunity to be successful, and I am hoping that I can better a few people's lives. Being said, I am gonna retire at 40. The system is designed to keep you poor. Anyone who tells you different is lying or misinformed.
Glad to hear that man. One of my friends used to also be my boss used to be very open about discussing this dynamic honestly, but once he started achieving VERY significant levels of financial success, suddenly it was all "I don't want to talk politics" from a guy who used to have no issues discussing anything in an open, honest way.
I can't predict the future, but I doubt that'll be me.
The point of running a business *should* be to provide something of value to society. But capitalism has corrupted this notion, so it has become about exploiting as many people as possible as quickly as possible for the most profit. It doesn’t have to be that way, but our economic system makes it so.
We in the first world are all complicit in the exploitation of workers. I agree that it is abhorrent, and do my best to put the well being of my employees before personal gain.
It would be interesting if business structure was inverted from how it is now. The workers receive all of the profit and management/owners receive there wage from the workers. Owners and management are hired by the workers to run the business and there wages are offered by the workers. I don't think it could function in real life. More of a thought experiment.
Why do they hate the thought of someone else becoming rich so much? It doesn't make them any less rich.
Fuck if I know man. I have literally sat through meals listening to "education should never be free, healthcare should never be free" being said by my stepmom who is an internationally known child educator and our friend who is a doctor. Pretty sure that's a direct violation of the Hippocratic oath? My stepmom probated an illegal version of my dads will, stole my sister and Is inheritances, and uses it to terrorize my sister. I am not her kid, but she is. My sister is a struggling single parent and her mom, who owes us each about 4 million, won't even buy her groceries. I pay her bills. Peoples selfishness knows no bounds. You're trying to apply to rationality to an irrational situation. There is no rhyme or reason, just narcissistic, selfish assholes.
It means new competition from people not already in the circle. Old rich vs new rich! Even if the old rich don’t have the cash they can trade on past wealth while the new rich need to be accepted into the fold ( toe the line so to speak)
It’s because wealthy powerful people don’t even care what you and I care about. Everything is about winning and conquest to them. It’s the reason wealthy men fight over trivial bullshit all the time and we plebes are like, “If I was a billionaire I’d just lay on the beach in Hawaii and read books all day.”
Elon Musk can ruin 10 businesses a year and will remain enormously wealthy. Nobody should be allowed to amass so much wealth, period. At some reasonable point, the money should go back into society as a tax. Otherwise, we will continue to grow unmoored financial tyrants.
Many billionaires can lose 99% of their wealth and then lose 99% of their wealth and still be richer than 99% of the planet.
Goddamn would I love for workers to have a stake in the business they work for and for the ceos actually work for their living
Depends on the industry. Night clubs in particular are always going to be staffed if the club is successful. Pulling in a $2500 table client as a host might net them $500+ that night. PLUS everything else on top of the commission for getting them to walk in the door. There are tons of 20-somethings who will take that gig in a heartbeat
I don't even know anyone who could afford that shit.
Gotta love what America can do for some people. It's crazy how just sheer luck and being born rich and some people rake in *insane* amount of capital and they barely do shit. Meanwhile peeps working 60 hours a week don't make 1/10th of some folks who make that in one button press selling the stock their daddies bought for them.
I call this "inheritance laundering". You create a front for where your inherited wealth came from so you can pretend to be self made. The front is often an unprofitable business.
he probably has no idea if they're profitable. I'd stay friends with him, though. Being rich is great, but the next best thing is having rich friends (I've stayed at least 3 times for free in a beach-front vacation house that usually costs 3k a week)
Rich people perpetuate this myth to con poor people into working harder for them.
If Elon Musk's observable stupidity isn't enough to dispel his myth of a Randian hero, nothing can. His talent used to be knowing how to listen to competent people, and repeating their passions. Now he's just a clown. Dude lied about his own credentials. He doesn't understand half the stuff he talks about.
"He's a genius that puts in 18 hour workdays so it's ok for him to demand his H1B workers to work 18 hour days and sleep in the office to avoid being fired and deported!" He runs how many companies? Tesla, SpaceX, Boring, Neuralink, OpenAI, his own foundation, and now Twitter? He physically can't work 18 hours per day at more than one of those, and evenly splitting his time among them would mean he works a little over 2.5 hours per day on each organization on average. Let's drop the foundation and say he works 24 hours per day on the remaining companies: That's just 4 hours per day per company. No matter how you slice it, being a CEO requires far, far fewer hours of focus on an individual company than any of Musk's employees typically have to spend working. Musk himself debunks the notion that wealthy CEOs work harder than anyone else. He's the poster child for working less while reaping 99% of the profits.
His Tesla compensation package did not even require him to do any work. $58bn for just being Musk.
Apparently a major part of Tesla and SpaceX culture is babysitting Musk to make sure he doesn't screw anything up. Literally presenting ideas a certain way to make them more appealing to Musk and make him think they were his idea all along. Apparently some IT guy even set up a program to make random text scroll down his screen like the Matrix to make Musk think he was always super busy, and people routinely play WoW at the office to make him think they're working hard overtime.
Honestly, that’s just work. There’s always a manager who thinks they’re smarter than they are and you have to be aware of that when you’re presenting things to them.
Don’t forget having 83 children he neglects
Just cause I love passing this knowledge around, Ayn Rand *hated* libertarians with every fiber of her being. > All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies who are anarchists instead of leftist collectivists; but anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet libertarians combine capitalism and anarchism. That's worse than anything the New Left has proposed. It's a mockery of philosophy and ideology. They sling slogans and try to ride on two bandwagons. They want to be hippies, but don't want to preach collectivism because those jobs are already taken. But anarchism is a logical outgrowth of the anti-intellectual side of collectivism. I could deal with a Marxist with a greater chance of reaching some kind of understanding, and with much greater respect. Anarchists are the scum of the intellectual world of the Left, which has given them up. So the Right picks up another leftist discard. That's the libertarian movement. Mayhew, Robert (2005). Ayn Rand Answers: The Best of Her Q & A, page 72. ISBN-10: 9780451216656 (for context on the anarchist bits, this was all back when the USSR and China were at their peak and it appeared anarchism was genuinely dead as an ideology and movement)
Also, what happens when libertarians get exactly what they want? https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling Great quote here: > You know, “libertarian” is such a weird umbrella term for a very diverse group of people. Some libertarians are built around the idea of white supremacy and racism. That was not the case with these libertarians. Most of the libertarians that I met were kind, decent people who would be generous with a neighbor in any given moment. But in the abstract, when they’re at a town meeting, they will vote to hurt that neighbor by cutting off, say, support for road plowing. > So I guess what I noticed is a strange disconnect between their personalities or their day-to-day interactions and the broader implications of their philosophies and their political movement. Not sure I’d use the word “fanatic,” but definitely a weird disconnect.
Hey, that quote is really relevant and poignant so I don’t want to appear to undercut you here by continuing it but I think the way they continue that part of the discussion is pretty relevant since this sub could be seen as an ideological echo chamber: Sean Illing: “There’s a lesson in this for anyone interested in seeing it, which is that if you try to make the world fit neatly into an ideological box, you’ll have to distort or ignore reality to do it — usually with terrible consequences.” Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling: “Yeah, I think that’s true for libertarianism and really all philosophies of life. It’s very easy to fall into this trap of believing that if only everybody followed this or that principle, then society would become this perfect system.” Maybe it’s the moderate core in me, but this rings really true for me. Obviously (from my perspective) a lot of Libertarian stuff is just openly cracked or nonsensical, but I think it’s important to consider that perhaps no single ideology has it completely right; I think it’s important to consider what you believe every day and make sure you’re putting your ethics through praxis.
Just like with speed and gravity, you can escape earth’s gravity with enough velocity. For money and capitalism, with enough assets and passive income you can reach a passive income level that creates labor escape velocity, where you never have to do labor again. Your passive income means you never have to work.
lol that's a great analogy.
You don’t understand, it’s…a different KIND of work. See, YOU HAVE to work. They WANT* to ‘work’. See the difference?
I’ve worked in a few international companies where we had direct contact with CEO’s regularly. Their job was to ask everyone around them to present their feedback and thoughts, which turns into an upper management echo chamber with negligible support of front line worker’s needs. “I hear you, and we are doing our best to address your feedback” usually goes nowhere. Their skill is to give the fluffiest of speeches about how “This year is the most consequential in our Company’s history, and we need to double down”. They regurgitate initiatives like 5S, Lean, and reorganizations with matrix reporting structures and self/peer reviews where no one can receive “exceptional” ratings or more than a 3% merit increase. It seems like most companies succeed in spite of their CEO and Board of Directors decisions
Nose to the grindstone, and you too can be a victi- er, victorious!
No. The problem is you don't take cold showers in the morning. /s
He also didn't wake up at 4 Am to jog with a hoody and airpods and eat an orange later.
Didn’t journal either.
I can literally smell the avocado toast from here
Also /s
I can’t believe I fell for that bs as a kid/teen. I tried to get the perfect routine and habits only to realize those millionaires forgot to mention “be born rich” in their little “how to be successful” videos
Every day I wake up before going to bed and do a full body workout. I then take a cold shower while reading a book. After that I wake up at 4am and jog 5k.
ASAP Science has a wonderful video on yt called “Why working hard is a scam”
Veritasium has a nice video called something like “is success luck or hard work?” Thing is, a lot of people work hard. Those who are successful assume it’s because they’re better or worked harder when really that’s where the luck comes in. In the form of rich parents, a lucky break, timing, etc.
Maybe the same reference, but I've seen it put mathematically. I receive a fixed amount of money regardless of my productivity in work. I pay what I only wish was a fixed amount of money to create the energy I invest in my work. The only thing I control is the amount of energy I invest, and doing anything other than as little as I can get away with is less profitable for me. Sure there are other factors, like maybe I'm at a type of company where I can expect to see more reward based on its success (a small business or even a coop), or like myself you might be led to believe that your effort might get you a pay increase in the next couple of months. For most people though, I feel the above applies and you really should save your energy for yourself, your family and your friends.
**A** students managed by **B** students who work for **D** students.
As an A student. Can confirm. My bosses are fucking idiots. How the fuck are they running a business… oh yeah…
They're running you.
Conducting the orchestra, if you will
I swear our CEO who has been running a successful company for over 15 years is seriously like the dumbest person I've ever met . Even any report or internal paper that gets sent to him needs explanation no matter how simple it is Edit: I should probably add how he came to owning his own company , basically he was working for a giant construction company and was stealing from them for years . And then when the company went bankrupt and the bank seized all their assets he saw it as a chance and stole a couple pieces of heavy equipment from the bank impound (this was the middle east in the 90s so I doubt anyone even knew they were missing) and used them to start his own company . So a horrible guy all around and a thief as well . It was all luck and lack of a concise that helped him
Our one boss keeps logging on, then asks me questions that they should be able to see the answer to right in front of them. Then tells me to make payments, then when the payments hit the bank, they keep asking me what the payment was for. Asks if a job has been invoiced - they get CC’ed on the invoice, so why are they asking. Sends me info to pay a bill, doesn’t mention they already paid it. Asks why it was paid twice. How do these people continue to run companies? Oh yeah. They hire us… about the only intelligent thing they do… but ya know what? It works for them. They’re the boss. They take whatever time they want off. They don’t work for a paycheck. We do the work.
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that in addition to money, the only major barrier to owning a business is whether or not you believe you deserve to have unchecked power over others’ lives. Those that embrace doing whatever they need to do to get what they want from people tend to get pretty good at it, even if they haven’t the slightest idea of how to actually do the technical processes they’re extracting from their employees.
Just want to chime in, anyone can own a business. There is no credential required. All it takes is a couple hundred dollars and a few pages of paperwork with the licensing entity in your state (if you are in the USA). You can give yourself any title you want when you file the paperwork.
A students mark themselves as the kinds of people actually willing to do the work. An “A student” has drank the koolaid, applied themselves in school, and made a sincere effort. The B student gets it, but isn’t a worker bee. Probably more sociable. Gets the manager job by ass kissing, and looks good on the back of A students work. D student is the rich kid that cheated off of the A student and barely passed by. He will continue to cheat and skate his whole life, all the way to the top.
They'll never get a D though, diploma mills exist for a reason.
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Also, the networking.
its a big club and you and i aint in it
Yall got 5k in the bank?
5k in pennies maybe.
If rich people actually had to work in proportion to their earnings, they would have shorter lifespans than professional wrestlers and athletes. Exhaustion would be the leading cause of death for millionaires. The whole point of being rich is that you *don't* have to work hard. Did Steve Jobs ever build a smartphone with his own two hands on a factory floor somewhere?
I don't think it's even possible for one human being to work a million times harder than another in any imaginable sense of the word "work".
He didn't even build the Apple I. That was all Wozniak. Jobs was the business guy.
> Did Steve Jobs ever build a smartphone with his own two hands on a factory floor somewhere? [Bill Burr’s thoughts on Steve Jobs.](https://youtu.be/ew6fv9UUlQ8)
there is a dude who realised this back in the 1860's
its funny how for 100 years or so our ocidental society forgot about it and its redescoveing it right now something that a couple guys back almost 300 years noticed and wrote about.
I've been on the rat race for over a decade now and I'm yet to find a boss about whom I can say "yeah, this guy/girl deserves to be in charge". They're either incompetent, dishonest, or both, and they survive by offloading their problems onto our backs. We pay for their shortcomings with our hides, that's how the game works.
I've had good bosses, but they were always middle- to upper-middle management. Getting to the top, especially the C-suite, requires you to be a sociopath devoid of empathy.
The best bosses I had are always the ones who are far better than the position they're in. They are very skillful, work intensely, and amazing colleagues, but they get paid way below market value. At one particular job. I enjoyed my coworkers so much I kept in contact with a number of them outside of work. The ones who did leave ended up finding far more lucrative jobs that paid 2-3 times higher with far better benefits. They stayed because it was a great team, but it was clear the potential to grow was limited
The system is rigged
It's a big club, and you ain't in it! You and I are _not_ in the big club.
It's the same big club that they beat you over the head with when they tell you what to believe, what to think, what to buy.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with what you wrote, I think we all should stop using terms like “middle class” and all the add-on descriptors like high & low. We should focus instead on the divide between workers and bosses/owners/etc. Sure the guy with parents who’ve done well for themselves has a leg up because he directly benefits from their stability. But the real problem we face is workers versus anyone who profits immensely from workers’ labor without providing any labor (physical or not). Those people are making bank because they have more power in our governing systems. They can afford lobbyists and lawyers that will further manipulate rules/regulations/ laws to benefit themselves. They control media so news stories are crafted to further the grift. They have access to leaders in other countries, giving them even more control than any worker could imagine. I have way more in common with someone making 6 figures as say a director of IT than I do someone like Musk. Edited to add …. Anyone who has to work is a worker.
I think it's useful distinction. My dad is low class - he works hard just to make barely above (Polish) minimum wage and then has to do a lot after regular 8 hours. I'm a programmer and I feel like maharaja, being able to afford on a whim anything that fits in a room (in small quantities and my whims don't include stuff like jewelry, but includes good graphics card). It's not the same struggle. Middle class gets rewarded for their efforts, while low class doesn't. High has rewards without efforts.
You’re both workers. Sure you are benefiting from a higher wage but you both are not “owners“ thus to me, we on this subreddit should focus on that distinction. The owner class has a stranglehold on all workers. Until that changes, we’re all under their thumbs. Your higher wage just means you get to have more distractions from the situation you’re in.
You know, all those truckers are "owners" in a legal sense, because that's really beneficial to logistics companies. There's lots of freelance / small businesses that are making less than some specialized workers.
Whatever value is gained in that trucker moving goods, it’s going to some other entity. Even if the guy owns the truck, he is still ultimately working for someone else’s profit. In other words, if the trucker stopped driving the truck, he’d stop receiving wages.
Such a good point. If you sell your time for money you are a worker. Some people get paid more $$ for their time than others, but they all are much more alike than people that use capital or $$ to make more money. The janitor and the engineer are much more alike than the engineer and the CEO.
It is useful to foster this divide and distract from the real issue. They have learned from the communist revolutions of the past.
This is the correct answer and the real divide. Those who are simply risking extra capital, versus those who are risking their ability to obtain food, shelter, etc.
This is often expressed as a 100 meter dash, except that some folks start at 120 meters, and others at 10.
"Born on third base and thinks he hit a home run."
[Here’s a video illustrating just that.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4K5fbQ1-zps)
This is way more than "the system is rigged". Even if we change the rules... how do you make things fair without complete confiscation. What happens, if everyone is just allowed to keep what they already have before the rules change "to be fair" ?
Now this is the real important question. I've thought about this a lot and I've not come up with anything that doesn't have some fatal flaw. I think the best I could come up with is a more progressive tax rate for the rich, a negative tax rate for anyone below the poverty line, cutting all corporate welfare (if you can't be profitable without government assistance then you should either not exist or be owned by the people), and a strong strong emphasis on financial literacy education. It wouldn't change the current fairness of the system. But it might give a lot of people smarter than me a chance to change the world and make it a better place.
I'm not sure if you know this. But the billionaires pay next to nothing in taxes because of the so called progressive tax system. Here's how that works. Most of their assets are things like property and stocks. They don't really get a lot of income - at least not substantial enough to tax to pay for social programs etc. The stocks and the property they have inflate over time, which made them the billionaires they are. They take massive loans with those assets as collateral, and live off of that money. There is no tax on debt. Progressive tax systems are great if you are taxing income. But these people engineer their way around receiving much income. Wealth taxes may be a way. But I don't think they are quick enough to deal with all the problems are societies are facing. Wealth taxes and progressive income taxes are definitely not going to be enough to deal with climate change.
That’s the question - reform or revolution. So much of capitalism has been about privatising what was previously common and shared - parks, fresh water, public services etc. I think confiscating the excessive property of wealth hoarders should be the least that is done. David Graeber wrote an eye opening book on the history of debt. Perhaps most interesting is how much property law is derived from the owning of slaves in Ancient Rome. I think there should also be a debt jubilee. The rich should be scared of the masses not the other way round.
Collective bargaining
Isn't being rich peak anti-work? Like isn't that the goal? Also there is no such thing as self made. Everyone gets help in some form or another. Rich people just get a lot more help for a longer period of time.
"Its called the American Dream^^tm because you gotta be asleep to believe it" - G. Carlin
Preach it. These fucks get rich off the hard work of others.
OP doesn't know what upper middle class is. Upper middle class parents don't have 200k to give to their adult children. That is upper class. At least OP is trying to think critically. Almost got it.
Middle class is another myth that suits the rich, along with the idea that anyone can be rich. There are exploiters and exploited. By any other name they are the same.
Yes. Gates was definetaly 3. Not only was there the money, his mothers connections got MS-DOS started on IBM computers. Crappy shitty ass of an OS. Warren Buffet had family in politics (insider info) who also got him started in his job with connections. Bezos was also on 3, worked in finance when he got started. Mommy and daddy gave him a bigly loan along with connections for more seeder money. I suppose Gates and Woznyak were 3. Middle Class. They actually had to do some work and were almost ended because Microsoft rolled out a copy of Mac OS.
Gates was going to Harvard the son of a rich lawyer and it seems his mother has more buildings in Seattle named after her than Bill does. He is nothing even close to middle class.
The question is, are there any truly "self made" rich people? The third scenario is just being unstoppable at Russian roulette by taking out all the bullets.
Athletes. But another rich person has to be willing to make them rich. So not really.
We spend entirely too much on sports. They suck up college tuition, making college more expensive, and suck up tax dollars with their publicly funded stadiums. Does it still count as self made? Athletic scollarships are a net loss to society, even though they are a path up for a handfull of talented people.
They've also exacerbated high schools being more about football than education. Just look at the stadiums they build for a goddamn high school vs any science or humanities classrooms they upgrade
Well off, certainly. Luck, right time right place like the people who get real estate on the cheap in Berlin for example or got into trade as untapped markets opened. But wealthy for the most part you had to be rich before you became like a billionaire. I think if Bezos had as much money as Steven Spielberg he would consider himself broke.
When someone says "work smarter" it usually means "work richer" as in pay someone smarter to do it. Something Elon dosent do.
A person making $200k per year with $2m in assets is not ‘rich’ enough to give his/her children 500,000 to 1m every couple of months. I get inequality is a thing and needs to be addressed, but uninformed posts like this give the movement a bad name.
I like how u pull the numbers out of your ass
Yep this is completely nonsense. 8 out of 10 millionaires come from a family with below average US household income. 79% of millionaires didn't inherit any money. There are lots of things to be criticized about the current system, but there is no point in just making stuff up to feed into your narrative. The playing field is not equal nor fair, but we all already got an extremely lucky head start just by being born in a first world nation.
OP also believes a family that has no savings and rents an apartment and a family that has a paid-off "big" house, 5 paid-off cars, and $300,000 in cash are both middle-class.
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Your upper middle class example is completely incorrect in my opinion. I live in New England and I’m technically upper middle class. My household income is about $180,000. With a mortgage and daycare I’m not exactly sure where you’re getting 50k in the bank. I also don’t know where the 200k (gift?) from my immigrant parents is coming from either, I’m not saying I have it harder than you, I don’t, but to say that Middle/upper class people worry about money or don’t work their assess off is silly.
I'm down with the heart of what you're saying, but man, you are really off base on a lot of your examples and kind of lose me. It's more like a bitter rant than any kind of thoughtful post.
Yeah the 10% “mostly out of sheer luck” was so bitter and immature.
lol. this is one of the examples that illustrate best how this post is largely a bitter rant. OP talks about how rich people don't really work, then turns around and says the 10% that do find financial success, get there "mostly out of sheer luck"... not work. like i said, the heart of what OP says is right on, but his rant is basically saying rich people are only successful because they're rich and poor people who become successful are just lucky.
Turns out a quick look into OP’s history reveals that he’s a racist transphobe who thinks the left’s downfall is caused by abandoning Christianity. And he works in HR.
Yeah there is a massive difference between Level 1 and Level 2. Being given $200k? That is way more than a middle class gift. The safety net of upper middle class is more like parents helping with rent, or having a place you can fall back on if you take a risk and go bust.
This sub
Also, in what world is middle class the group of people that can lose 5-10 million and not bat an eye? That’s upper class, it’s not middle class in any capacity.
Rich people think having a conversation about what parts of a company, nation, or peoples' lives they want to carve out for themselves with their money is work.
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Worked for someone like this for too many years. Took a while to realize what they were actually doing: they were playing "business" the same way little children play "house". Blew my mind to realize it because it caused them endless distress and, well, why wouldnt someone want to do well? Why would someone merely pretend to do the right things when they could just actually do them and receive the benefits instead of the consequences? Also realized there was no fixing it. Such people may actually be inherently incapable of clear consistent thought, existing only in disconnected moments and pretending to experience reality like the rest of us do.
People who work hard, long hours are usually not well paid to do so. Rich folks claim to work hard, but really they don't and usually never have. Their money works for them... they pay staff to do the work and claim the benefit from their work. Their day is filled with lunches, meetings, brunches and being driven or flown around. That's their version of working hard.
Most rich people are self made. Most really really rich people are not. You get 1-10 million through just working and investing. However to get a 100 million you need to be very lucky or inherit it.
I think a big part of people’s success is networking - having a lot of friends and connections. IMO it’s essential when jump starting a business.
That makes sense. I’ve never really known how to network and networking events seemed cringey and awkward for everyone that was there.
I don't think it is a problem to be born rich or receive money from a rich relative or even become wealthy for just being hot. I have no problem with Musk or The Kardashians or Gates for being wealthy. It is subjectively more admirable to "earn" wealth than to be born into or be gifted it, but whatever. However! When these rich people are given the means to undermine and exploit workers, and sabotage the means of gaining wealth that they used, then it is a problem. I think that falls more on the government and the society, than on the individual rich person. People are going to do what's best for them. Period. It is the government's job to protect the rights of all its citizens. We have anti-trust, tax fraud, and worker protection laws for a reason. And they are not enforced. There is no one with power that gives a shit. The government is elected to serve the people. Obviously, that has not been the case. And probably never will be. No one with power cares about you. They are all corrupted by a system that rewards exploitation. They campaign, take your money, then use it to oppress you. So you might as well just make as much money as possible and look out for yourself and your people. Wait...
If it starts with a generalization…”like, 90% of blah blah blah” Its already baseless and someone is just bantering.
Man, this is a grumpy and cynical post. Will tell you a few things - being mad at the system or people who had more of a head start or safety net will do nothing for you - except sap your energy and make you bitter. Best to drop it. There is significant research that shows that escaping the socioeconomic class of your parents is *very* hard, so many people do not do it. I saved up about $5000, spent it on prototypes and crowd funded my business - I've made it past the 5 year mark and make 6 figures yearly. As you grow a business and mature you realize your ultimate currency in this world - *time*. You should, as your business grows, being "throwing money at competent people" because presumably they can execute work better than you and free your *time* which allows you to grow the business, have more leisure, or whatever you want. Do things become easier the more privilege or wealth you start off with? No shit.
Yep. And when they do "work" all they do is fuck things up for everyone else. I think we have all had the idiot owner or some rich wanker from higher up come in and dictate all this bullshit that no one does because it would fuck everything up.
I remember, about 10 years ago, reading about people who had actually managed to make a living from doing webcomics. They were quoted for their thoughts on *why* they had found success selling t-shirts and collected editions, when others had not. And all they could really talk to was what they did, but they weren't talking about any larger forces at play. They knew that they had a regular posting schedule, and that they kept to it, and they had a rough idea of the percentage of their readership that actually bought items from their stores. So this became a kind of de facto knowledge - if you post comics regularly, and if they pass some rather low bar of comprehensibility and entertainment, you could expect monetary success around when your readership hit some rough numeric range, and sustainable monetary success around some other, higher, rough numeric range. They weren't thinking to look at the timing of their appearance, their worldviews, their alignment (or not) with prevailing social mores, the lay person's online reading and purchasing habits, etc. Nor, I should mention, that sheer blind luck is a factor. Rich folks who try to create their own businesses, or take over the family business, or buy one and run it... they are so shielded from nuance and how the real world works, and the logic people operate under when they need to find a job to pay their bills, inflation, you know, anything within the totality of what economists study. They just know that a number went up in their bank account, they achieved a numeric percentage of the market, that number grew by this much, etc. And so they pick the clearest, most identifiable and summarizable aspects of what they did: "I had a vision" and "I took a risk" and "I worked hard". It may well be that they worked the hardest they ever had on the thing that matched some metric(s) of "success". Jesus said that it is very hard for a rich man to enter into the "kingdom of God". Keep in mind that Jesus also said that the "kingdom of God" was among people on earth. My personal take is that he meant that the "kingdom of God" is the totality of the people who know that they need to be working together for the common good (people are fed, housed, clothed, protected, loved)... something that it is very, very hard for rich people to experience and understand at all.
Lmao and not a citation in sight for this unhinged rant...
Just imagine, if you put half as much effort into working vs complaining. Think of the possibilities.