Posted on 04/26/2014 10:45:41 AM PDT by Innovative
Avarice: Many people, it seems, can't get over how well investors are doing these days — as if they shouldn't be able to do OK if others aren't. Instead of taking offense, maybe the others ought to be taking notes.
Let's see if we have this right: Some people work to exhaustion, earning money for their security and that of their families. And instead of spending it on stuff they don't need, they set it aside.
The latest idea — coming from a French economist — is that eight of every 10 of their dollars should be taken away and given to people who do not — or will not — work, save and invest.
Wouldn't the big thinkers' time be better spent educating the "have-nots" about how the "haves" do it, so they too will know what's it's like to have others lust after their good fortune?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Kinda hard to stop whining and start working when the former has been strongly encouraged for the past few decades. You won’t believe how many people I’ve talked to who actually scoff at the idea that they should have to work for their livelihood.
Working 80 hours a week is not a nice lifestyle. I hope you are joking.
I didn’t say it was enjoyable, but it does give me options that I wouldn’t have if I didn’t work those long hours. If I were married, I could probably drop down to 60 hours and have a similar lifestyle.
As I said, that used to be the norm for the poor to do that, because their kids would have their foundation set of being able to build upon that.
Your situation is a symptom of how much less prosperous of a country America is today than it was a generation or two ago.
When you say poor people used to work 80 hours a week, that was before WWI. It’s totally unacceptable to go back to those conditions.
BTW, minimum wage today is about half of what it was for most of the post-war period.
The top 1% pay 30% of all the U.S. taxes.
The top 20% pay 95% of all the U.S. taxes.
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, not because they have to, but because they buy into consumerism and refuse to save and invest.
If you invest 15% of what you earn for 30 years, and live off of 70%, you will be able to live off of your investments, and any socialist insecurity will be gravy.
“So everyone should stop working. Everyone should stop making real stuff. Everyone should stop making sure that the roads are maintained, the dams are checked, etc.
Everyone should stop what he/she is doing and become an investor.”
These statements do not make any sense. If people stop working, where are they going to get the money to invest with? Everyone should be an investor. Anyone who buys a house is an investor. Anyone who has a 401K is an investor. Being an investor does not mean that a person stops working. You actually have to work a little smarter.
“Now which rich are we all supposed to work like?
“Folks who got rich by founding a company based on a great idea, nursing it through the precarious start-up phase, building market share (or creating a market for something genuinely new) until profits started rolling in?”
You might be surprised to learn that the above is by far the largest percentage of those who are considered rich.
Most people who inherit wealth do not pass it on to the next generation. It very rarely lasts for three or four generations.
Rush was quoting the statistics last week. 12 percent of people will be in the top 1% for at least a year in their lifetimes. I forget the exact number, but something like 36% will be in the top 10% for at least a year.
We are a very mobile society.
“The headline advises us to stop complaining about the 1% and work like them. I assume this advice means get elected to public office or get a Civil Service job.”
It does not mean just working hard, though most very well off people do work hard. It means working smart, saving, and investing what you save. That is the formula that most “rich” people use to get rich.
The “Millionaire Next Door” series explains it very well. Most “rich” people got their by working hard, being frugal, saving money, and investing it over a lifetime.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb points out in Fooled by Randomness that The Millionaire Next Door suffers from the flaw of survivor bias.
There is no doubt some of that. If you do not survive, it is hard to accumulate wealth.
It is not so easy to overcome the difficulties with collecting data to see what works.
I see that most frugal people who invest doing well... is it because I tend to associate with those people? There is no question that most people who live paycheck to paycheck spend most of their money (in the U.S.) on relatively frivolous things, such as new leased cars, expensive cable TV, large houses, and eating out several time a week, if not two or three times a day.
Only a generation ago, people that are now considered middle class would have been “rich”. Almost no one had a pool. Houses were small. Only one car per family. One bathroom per house. No cable TV, maybe no TV.
It is not as if not having these things makes for a deprived life. Live can be very good without them. Added up they come to several hundred if not a thousand or two dollars a month. In 10 years you are looking at a modest fortune, in 30, a significant one.
Electronic toys, including cell phones and computers, are pretty expensive. They were unheard of two generations ago but today are considered necessities.
The Internet/global communications has succeeded in making many want things they didn't know they needed but are still beyond their means. This creates frustration and "the lust of the eyes" the Apostle warned us about.
Poverty used to be a motivator, now it’s a way of life.
There’s no poverty in this country.
Now Haiti, THAT’S poverty.
Yeah; the people in the middle class (and those who aspire to be) need to make themselves happen.
“When they started out on their path to success, people like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs probably didn’t care if they ended up worth $5 million, $500 million or $50 billion.”
Bill Gates was a trust fund baby from a very wealthy Seattle family. He had his first million the day that he was born.
The success of Microsoft was due the initial contract it received from IBM. And Microsoft came to the attention of IBM through his mother’s social contacts as chairwoman of United Way International.
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