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Comment by danbruc | Hacker News Reader

You do realize that there is a substantial fraction of the population that does not have any money to invest?

Substantial seems to be an understatement:

http://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/09/half-of-americans-avoid-the-s...

"More than half of Americans, 52 percent, are currently not investing in the stock market—either by buying individual stocks or mutual funds, or through a retirement account such as a 401(k) or IRA, according to a new Bankrate.com survey. Among the non-investors surveyed, 53 percent said they don't have the money to invest and 21 percent said they don't trust stock brokers or financial advisors."

That seems to suggest that 27% or roughly 1 in 4 Americans cite not having enough money to invest in the stock market. To be clear that is different from saving money or returning it to real estate investments or into a family business. I'd say that falls in line with expectations given unemployment rates and median wage vs cost of living statistics nationwide.

They could still be investing, just not in the stock market. Buying a larger house (with the goal of taking on renters), buying a rental property, or just a plain savings account, which is a proxy investment in Treasuries.

I wish I could buy a house just to live in. A rental property would be a dream. However, buying a house still requires an initial investment and good credit, which is tough to get when you make $10/hr. Then you have to be able to afford maintenance, disaster insurance, and an emergency fund if something happens to your job. You've got to get a house in an area with enough housing demand that you can rent it out, which is getting harder due to the fact that most new jobs are only being created in a handful of cities like SF, Houston, and NYC. This creates a lot of demand in those areas, which makes buying a house there out of reach for most normal people. And even if you manage to get a good house in a moderately okay area, the value of a house depreciates on a long enough timeframe. All this means that real estate investment is only truly available to those with preexisting capital.

While I don't mean it as a counter-point to your particular situation, on a broad scale US homeownership rate has been overall rising, in some areas more than another https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/owne...

Robinhood being free of commission and having no minimum is a good start for the larger pool of people without much to put up. Personally I started with $500 from student loans and a scottrade account. I wish Robinhood was around when I was starting. You could start investing/trading in theory with just $1.00 but there is the problem that many S1 stocks are not too great. However a good $45 stock that goes up and down by $3 over a 2-4 week period is accessible. Even if not, $45 to $48, then back down to another stock at $45 in the range can lead to similar results. However one must not get into the trap of only wanting that particular price point, it's just an example. With Robinhood I would have been able push out to higher amounts sooner due to the lack of commission fees.

To me, a $45 start anyone working can figure out. Part of the problem if you ask me is the normalization of the notion of "you can't", etc. I've been reading Mass Flourishing and The Complacency Class this past week; the "you can't" notion, the loss of risk aversion seems to be the key driver. However I think it's also where we put of value regarding information. Instead of watching a sports game or the Bachelor, read a few books about investing and trading which you can get at a library; worldcat.org can help one find such libraries that hold those collections. However many would scuff if they were told to make that trade off.

> To me, a $45 start anyone working can figure out

this is the problem, some people are working and can't really spare a single dollar, much less 45 of them.

I'm going to contest that. Its absolutely ridiculous to claim that someone who makes any amount of money per month cant spare $45 of that. Maybe they use the $45 they COULD spare to buy slightly better food, which is a valid way to spend 45 bucks. But its ridiculous to believe that a person can't downgrade SOMETHING and save $45 a month. I know a guy who lived off of kraft prepared meals and milk for 2 months to get out of some debt and launch a business at the same time. He spent a dollar a day on "nutrition". Maybe not the healthiest 2 months of his life, but don't tell me that you cant sacrifice to save 45 bucks.

Its like saying you can absolutely not sleep an hour a day less to do something productive youd really love to do.

This. Also it's not like you need to develop that $45 with one paycheck. Put $5 or whatever a side for 9 weeks.

To me the whole 'it can't be done with some people' is just an excuse to be risk averse.

That's the problem. Science fiction told us we would have robots doing all the work for us but most left out the part about 1% owning all the robots. That's not sustainable.

It is actually the very definition of sustainability because cheaper robots drive down the price of future robots. What were you trying to say?

He was trying to say that the cheaper robots better have weapons ;)

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