What the Rich Won't Tell You | Hacker News Reader

What the Rich Won't Tell You

nytimes.com

52 pointsALee108 comments

I don't have anything against the wealthy, but it kind of irks me when people with inherited wealth try to maintain some illusion that they're financial geniuses.

Personally, I grew up thinking my grandfather was a great businessman but eventually realized he inherited everything from my grandmother's family.

> Personally, I grew up thinking my grandfather was a great businessman but eventually realized he inherited everything from my grandmother's family.

Don't sell your grandpa so short. I'm sure it took at least some genius to charm your grandma.

I have an uncle who inherited everything, and is best known for pontificating about what sort of character you have to have, to have what he has.

And even if you did, how much of that is luck? Is an "investor" thousands of times more valuable to society than a janitor?

One could argue that an investor’s job is distributing capital. Capital that provides the resources to employ tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people.

All a janitor does is keep a few offices clean. A task generally done by janitors because the people working in those offices implicitly consider cleaning to not be worth their time.

So ... yeah?

I for one would not have a day job and most of my sidehustle market without investors.

I think cleaners are extremely valuable to society. It's always puzzled me that we don't pay toilet-cleaners and binmen in proportion to how disgusting their job is. Nobody wants to do that kind of work, yet we all greatly value the cleanliness they provide us.

By contrast, and investor's job could be done by an algorithm.

Sanitary workers do get paid decently for unskilled workers.

People don't and shouldn't get paid based on some nebulous "how valuable their job is to society". That ignores supply and demand. The fact is we have more people that WANT to work as janitors than their are actual janitorial jobs, and so the wage gets driven. Whereas there are tons of people that need investors and can't find them (as anyone who gets even a modest windfall will quickly find out.)

Or in other words, remove a random janitor from the world and the job will quickly be filled and life will go on. Remove a random investor and entire businesses will disappear/not be founded and the world will be noticeably worse off.

If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved.

Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature, and they do so according to the weather of their emotions.

>If sanitary work stopped today, society would quickly disintegrate, whereas if investors stopped working today the world would be improved.

Society wouldn't disintegrate without sanitary workers. It would get grosser, with people forced to do their own plumbing and dump their own trash. And even if all sanitary workers united and went on permanent strike, they could be quickly replaced within a few months. As I said, there's no shortage of people able and willing to do that job.

If investors all quit we'd be fucked. Maybe not overnight, but eventually. No new investments. No new businesses. No new jobs. The economy stops growing. People can't buy cars or homes because there is no one to lend them money. Businesses can't get loans to invest in new more efficient processes, or new factories, or whatever. And no one can just come in and replace them, because it requires a lot of money and risk tolerance among other things.

>Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous ? It's humans who place values on goods and services, not some law of nature

Not some law of nature, but economics. The prices of things are not arbitrary, they are set based on how strongly people value that thing divided by the supply. If you have a huge supply of people who can do a job, then the wage isn't going to be very high.

And this is a good thing. It creates incentives for people to take the jobs that are most demanded. There is a big demand for programmers and a short supply. If a sanitary worker can switch to programming, the economy would be a bit more efficient. At the moment we need slightly more programmers and slightly fewer sanitary workers. If everyone did this it would eventually equalize and they would pay the same.

While I agree with your generally well-written reply, one point of contention I have is that of prices being set by markets. We don't live in a laissez-faire market society. We live in a society with many government enforced monopolies that limit supply arbitrarily and which routinely changes rules that limit consumer rights without any real recourse due to the massive power imbalance of the wealthy versus those not wealthy. Taken as a whole our current economic system is little more than a way to protect those who already have the most protection in the system.

Second thought is in relation to economics. Economics is not some hard science where there can truly be said to be any kind of actual laws discovered. Supply and demand pricing isn't even a firm reality as marketing can vastly dictate market results. We really and truly are in the infancy of understanding economics as it ties so heavily into human psychology and unpredictable events.

Supply-and-demand describes the value that humans place on goods and services that by their very nature are not infinite. In that, it is a description of human behavior, and because it is based on human action in aggregate, acts as a law of nature just as surely as if there were some "nebulous" unseen force determining the economic outcomes of a society.

To change the law of supply and demand would require changing human nature itself, and human nature as it relates to the supply of goods and services, has been constant for all of recorded history.

The hidden-hand is a myth. Humans lie and cheat and use psychology to manipulate groups (negating your assumption that "in aggregate" there's such a thing as wisdom of crowds - there's isn't).

Certainly they do. That is why societies make laws. I am not a Randian.

people lie and manipulate without getting caught - the law is always behind the cheaters. Add to that the irrationality of humans and the idea that the market optimizes the values of goods & services is a myth: prices are arbitrary. (and I am not a communist)

> Isn't supply-and-demand nebulous?

Supply and demand are concepts we invented to help us better understand how markets work. They are purely descriptive (as opposed to prescriptive).

They are quite effective at describing important aspects of market dynamics, which is why they are used so much.

Of course, they are far from capturing all of the complexities of human commerce, but they are still incredibly useful.

But those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves.

They spread said wealth. Do you not want it? They don’t have to, you know.

Ha! It's not like they do it out of altruism. If the wealthy are trying to spread their wealth around, they are failing miserably.

> If the wealthy are trying to spread their wealth around, they are failing miserably.

Are they? Most of the tech industry would stop existing without wealthy people investing in VC funds which in turn invest in the services we use all day.

I wouldn't be surprised if most of every industry would up and vanish without investors.

The wealthy used to hoard their wealth and not spread it around. You know what that was called? Feudalism and/or mercantilism, depending on which part of the system you look at. It has largely been agreed that this was a bad system because people generally do not enjoy being peasants.

Investors don't actually have to own the wealth to invest the wealth. Hence investment firms. So if Jack built a company from the ground up, and Jill inherits money from Jack, who then has Sam invest that money in the markets, Jill is suddenly being a productive member of society? Except for the ownership bit, it was Jack and Sam actually doing the value adding. Jill is just a rentier

And yet without Jill, Sam would have nothing to play with and all of Jack's wealth would be wasted as far as society is concerned.

Yes, some of it would have been used to fuel Jill's lifestyle and that is useful for everyone who profits from that. But the more of Jack's wealth that Jill uses, the more society benefits from Jack's wealth.

My point is, money hiding under the mattress benefits no-one. As much as you and I both resent Jill for having access to the kind of wealth that we do not, her most biggest possible contribution to society is in fact to decide to spread that wealth.

Heaven forbid she decide to get a real job and keep the wealth stashed away. Then she's contributing no more than the rest of us even though she could.

The subthread started by the statement "those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves."

It is being argued that she is doing something. She is spreading here wealth around.

My counter argument is that she is not infact spreading it around, her investment firm is. She adds no value. Her money does.

Nowhere in the thread does it appear the idea that money should not be circulated.

> And yet without Jill, Sam would have nothing to play with

And yet in the current system, without Jill's collaboration, Sam would have nothing to play with. Ftfy. This indicates a flaw in the system, if someone who isn't a productive member of society in any sense holds the nuts and reaps the lion's share of the profits.

You seem to be under the impression that for one person to receive wealth, another has to lose it. That's not actually how any of this works and is an incredibly dangerous way of thinking.

Nothing about my comment assumes that the "size of the pie" can't grow. It can, and it does. But if the wealthy take all of the increase in the pie for themselves (plus more!), then the poor and middle class still get screwed over, and that is exactly what is happening in the U.S.

For particularly shameful evidence that wealth in the U.S. is not being adequately spread around, see this article: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/05/hookworm-low...

This isn't a sarcastic reply, please define "wealth" as you mean it and prove that it isn't finite on a planet with finite resources, time, and manpower. How is wealth created and not then transferred from one person to another? If the wealthy get wealthier through either extracting resources from their workers or rent seeking behavior, where does the extra wealth come from? In fiat currencies, while dollars may increase, that doesn't mean wealth increases and in fact, inflationary pressures can mean someone is continually losing wealth if they aren't moving their money. So I understand the argument of wealth expanding, but I don't understand how it gets around the laws of physics.

Its generally the case that those people made more harm to their capital than good, and in that case, anyone with spite to the "wealthy class" should be pretty happy.

I once read that if Trump had invested his entire inheritance in an index fund, he would be much richer today.

Only if he had invested everything at left it in there... Our course he would have to find another source of income and most likely live "poor" since then.

Discussion two days ago; 43 comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15199197

If you feel embarrassed that your maid will know you buy $6 bread, buy $3 bread and give your maid $3.

Instead, they peel the sticker off.

There's nothing wrong with buying $6 bread or having many cars or whatever. You don't need to flagellate yourself just because you have money. It's just life.

Even if we tear everything down and rebuilt from first principles, some would have more and others less. By six orders of magnitude. It's just inescapable. Even communist countries were like that.

The rich person hate is pretty dopey. There's a subreddit /r/LateStageCapitalism that actively breeds hate against rich people the same way /r/coontown bred hate against blacks. It's just somehow more socially acceptable to post online about killing rich people than minorities. There was literally a comment that was talking over the merits of stabbing Musk just for being a wealthy capitalist.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this comment other than to say it's a very strange time we live in. The whole "us vs them" mentality isn't healthy. There's no reason they should feel bad about buying $6 bread just because they can.

Did my statement say there was something wrong with being rich?

This is about people who feel embarrassed. I doubt they are feeling embarrassed because they feel that there is nothing wrong with their extravagance....and their solution to this embarrassment is to hide their extravagant spending, not by altering their spending or generosity.

But I also empathize. I've done the same when I walk past the homeless, or past fieldworkers...and me a poor post-doc.

Hating the rich...Well now there are multiple types of rich, aren't there. There are rich that were born to their money, treat investments of that money as "risks", look at the rabble and sneer because she/he is so obviously better, because look at all that risk that payed out...that type is easy to hate. But money makes money and I find the rentiers worthless. Then there are those that worked hard, and got lucky, and still remember what it is like to wonder how the hell you are going to fix the brakes on the car, how to lose weight while working two part-time jobs with hours that change weekly.

In any case, hate of the rich is not driven by envy or driven by the fact that they are rich at all. The hate is driven by the excessive inequality, not just the exaggerated inequality in pay, but exaggerated inequality in opportunity, in legal representation both in the courtroom but also in the making of law. They are angry because the fix is in, and they know it in their bones.

Do you really think being rich is the same as being born black?

Inequality has a lot of messed up effects, such as rich individuals being able to destroy the planet's ability to sustain life in pursuit of profit, in a way the only through the magnification of capitalism is such short sightedness possible. A community would never vote to destroy itself, but in the pursuit of profit, it is nothing for the wealthy to pollute and destroy a land that is not their home.

Secondly, the drive of technologly (drives all change and overthrown feudalism with capitalism) will make the exchange of labor for money pretty much obsolete for increasing portions of humanity. The question is, do we waste the human wealth generated by education and innovation because we can't find a way to make a few bucks in sweatshops anymore? This again, is where inequality is facing drawbacks.

Don't be so comfortable, tomorrow is coming soon.

There is wrong. Read the article. Most of the people interviewed are said to have inherited wealth, in the millions of dollars. More wealth fell into their lap than the maid will ever earn in several lifetimes. This is deeply unfair. The economic system that promotes this is deeply unfair. Wealthy people benefit from a system that perpetuates their wealth. They actively influence decision making to favour themselves. They can buy power, influence, to a point 99% of the earth's population can. Notwithstanding your opinions on socialism (dirty word I know), Marxist class theory is real: the "owners" and the "workers" are as clear-cut social classes as the peasantry and nobility of yore.

Also, about that subreddit, I have never seen any post calling for "killing rich people" or any nonsense like that. It's just a place to post examples of capitalism gone awry. Perhaps it just touched a nerve?

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20...

Boy I wish I could dig up that comment about killing Musk. It was under a thread titled "We won't take kindly to defending your tech bros here" or some nonsense. It was about how if you come in there to say anything good about Musk, expect to get banned. The subthread devolved into talking about stabbing capitalists.

It doesn't even matter whether someone posted that: You can always find a post on the internet from someone posting a threat against someone else.

Yes, but /r/coontown was banned for similar behavior. I think that ban was justified. People have been calling for The_Donald to be banned for a long time. /r/physicalremoval was just banned for inciting violence.

It does matter whether people are saying this, and how frequently they're saying it.

If you want to use a historical metaphor, r/coontown backs Nazi Germany, and r/latestagecapitalism backs the French Revolution and the Bolsheviks.

I hope you can recognize the difference. One is irrational hatred, the other is justified.

So I guess the solution is we redistribute the wealth, right? I mean it's worked really well in the past hasn't it? Just looks at this list of successful Commun... oh wait never mind the list is empty.

In the US at least, we can start with healthy tax reforms that actually redistribute wealth downwards, not up. Not everything has to reduce to the USSR straw man.

You do realize that the concept of fairness is subjective and multidimensional, correct?

Who are you to decide what is or is not fair? Is it fair for me to build an empire and be barred from passing on what I've worked for to my children?

As long as your empire needs laws that everybody needs to agree with to exist (or to be passed on) then yes - it is fair to limit what you can do with it.

you must've picked the worst possible example.

You built an empire and you deserve recognition for that achievement, but what precisely did your child achieve?

Did you earn the right to determine ex nihilo who should benefit from your talent? Or did yoir chils by virtue of winning the fallopian race become the optimal manager for the fruit of your labour?

So what is the limit of what is acceptable to pass down to a child? Who decides?

Local jury of peers, taking into account community needs and individual factors?

Like if we want to go full hippy and consider the global situation on this, the reasonable argument here is that children are owed f-all after education and insertion into society. That's fair, right?

Rentier economies are economies that are not efficient and lead to social instability.

That is an assertion, but I bet it is true.

I once worked with a guy who ran a small consultancy. He made himself out to be a self-made millionaire and was pretty showy about it. One Christmas he told all of his full-time employees that the business had a bad year and there would be no bonuses. The week after that announcement he drove up to the office in a brand new, fully loaded Mercedes S550. It was disgusting, as he could have just skipped an upgrade or two on the amenities and given at least a $500 bonus to his workers. He only had 4 employees who weren't his family. (His family members got bonuses though).

I later learned he didn't build his business himself and was given $250k by his father as seed funding. I lost all respect for him. He got his comeuppance when every one of his non-family employees quit within six months of each other. They were the ones doing all the work. His business suffered severely, his wife divorced him because her social status fell, and he had to sell most of his assets to stay afloat. I felt no pity for him because he was such a garbage person.

I've met a few people like him in my life. I really despise these types, because they pretend like they didn't win a sort of lottery at birth. And you're right, a system that perpetuates this type of situation is very much a part of the problem with inequality in general.

Why is it deeply unfair to inherit wealth? It is the main reason why people work so hard to achieve the American dream: to pass their wealth and opportunity on to the next generation.

Your premise is also incorrect, but not uncommon. Many people look at wealth as if it is a fixed state of affairs; i.e. one is 'wealthy' or 'poor' as a matter of class dictate or caste. And the fact is, unlike the peasantry and nobility of yore, wealth can be lost or gained from generation to generation (and even within one generation). Inherited wealth is a stalwart against poverty, not an impediment to it. Every person who inherits some degree of wealth, whether it's a family heirloom necklace or an apartment building, is that much less likely to be a ward to society, taking money out of the economy rather than being more productive and contributing to an ever growing pie.

In fact, wealthy people of the ilk you are talking about tend to piss their money away, which is good for the economy. The yacht industry alone employs 50k+ people as crew. These are not super wealthy people, these are the '99%' who depend on that livelihood, and are using to build their own nest egg for their own families. Do you think they would be better off being taken out of a fair labor market, with opportunities for advancement and creating new products and services, in favor of being given government handouts instead?

A peasant could ascend to the ranks of nobility, and climb the ladder, at least across generations. Likewise a nobleman could fall from grace and be stripped of status. But that doesn't make that class system any less real or oppressive.

Similarly, a Bangladeshi child sewing pants in a factory could, in the most hypothetical of senses, become a wealthy CEO, and it is possible the owner of said factory, earning in a month what the girl makes in 500 years, may lose everything he has. But it's very, very unlikely.

I know many wealthy people. And it's true that they can lose their wealth through bad decisions and unfortunate circumstances. However, nearly every wealthy person I've seen this happen to has regained most of their wealth. Why? Because once you're wealthy you have connections to other wealthy people. Their friends will build them up again. Reaching the status of "wealthy" is a sticky bit. As long as you don't alienate your other wealthy friends, you'll retain your wealthy status.

That maxim you hear is true: the first million is the hardest. After that you're set.

/r/LateStageCapitalism is not about breeding hate against the rich? I just went there and not a single post on any page I went to had a hateful post towards the rich. Maybe there's one or two posts occasionally but there's 180,000 subscribers.... It's actually a really good subreddit about legit problems we're facing in ....Late Stage Capitalism.

https://i.imgur.com/OdUWQrE.jpg

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20...

Godda deport 'em! Kick those rich people out! They're destroying America. Get rid of those scumbags before they destroy you!

Come on now. That's exactly what they're doing.

https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20...

"You spelled "confiscate their property, send them to gulag, and allow them to work their way back into society" wrong. Deporting the Bourgeoisie only inflicts them on another country."

You posted three links link to the same post on a subreddit of 180,000 people...

Why not just say the entire site of reddit hates rich people because of that one post?

Or the entire internet?

You're literally demonizing an interesting sub-reddit that discusses legit issues regarding late stage capitalism over one post that you read.

The country is becoming more and more controlled by the rich. Which is a legit problem for a free society when a politician can be influenced by big money. It leads to oligarchy, which destroys the country. So their complaints against the rich are extremely valid.

Or become the politicians a la some Facebook founder

If my words are inaccurate, point out that they're wrong. I don't feel bad at all for highlighting their behavior. The mods actively breed discontent and sow discord -- that is the purpose of the subreddit. They, from the top-down, encourage people to feel this way.

My examples aren't cherry-picked. It was ten seconds of effort after sorting by "top of the last month." I could post many more if you'd like.

Proof by counterexample [1] (to the claim that this is a hate group)

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6z0z21...

Yeah but it's a subreddit of 180,000 people...that's like saying the internet is bad because there's several examples of child porn sites...

Eh, there's some truth to that. And I'd prefer not banning subreddits at all. But on the other hand, people have been calling for The_Donald to be banned for years for similar behavior, and they have far more subscribers.

Suffice to say, all I was doing was mentioning that LateStageCapitalism exists and pointing out some of their behavior. I don't actually want them to be banned. Like all subs, there is some good content mixed in with the extremism.

Your comparison of people revolting against the rich is more apt to the French Revolution and American Revolution than to communism.

Both revolutions actually overthrew the rich aristocrats and created a democratic republic...

Unchecked free market capitalism leads to silo-ing of wealth and power amongst a select few and that's the point the people on that subreddit are trying to make. They don't hate rich people...they hate the oligoloplies and big monied interests that are have more influence than the average citizen on the direction of the country.

Trump is the perfect example of this.

The American Revolution was a regional separatist movement led by the local rich aristocrats, it did not overthrow the rich aristocrats.

And the French Revolution did not, in fact, establish a democratic republic, it established an unstable regime nominally dedicated to democratic values but ruled by a succession of different regimes (of which, only the four years of the Directory even superficially resembles a democratic republic) before transitioning into the First Empire.

Just because it was led by such does not mean that the soldier was not fighting for their liberated futures.

> Just because it was led by such does not mean that the soldier was not fighting for their liberated futures.

The claim being addressed is “Both revolutions actually overthrew the rich aristocrats and created a democratic republic...”

This is a claim about actual outcomes, not motivations.

The actual outcomes are two of the greatest long lasting Democratic Republics in the history of the HUMAN RACE....

Also, compared to the aristocrats, lords, and king and queen of 1700' British empire, George Washington and company were absolute low rent scrubs.

Sure there were varied classes of people who revolted but the ultimate outcome was to rip the power and wealth from the rich few and give it to the many....

We the fucking people.

> The actual outcomes are two of the greatest long lasting Democratic Republics in the history of the HUMAN RACE....

The French Revolution didn't produce a democratic republic. It produced a series of short lived regimes imposed from the top down, culminating in the First Empire. France is a democratic republic now, but only continuously since 155 years after the Revolution (if you pretend the Vichy regime didn't happen, it's been a democratic republic since the fall of the Second Empire, “only” 80 years after the revolution.)

Note all of those 'short lived top down, regimes' ended in minor revolutions as well with the people taking the power back from the top, the outcome eventually establishing a Democratic Republic.

The French Revolution was the key and laid the groundwork to the eventual Democratic Republic by establishing the Rights of Man, the first French Constitution, and destroying aristocratic society from top to bottom, along with its structure of dependencies and privileges.

We can nitpick all we want about the various intermediary forms of govt but the ultimate outcome from the French Revolution was the French Democratic Republic, which laid the groundwork militarily, philosophically, and culturally.

You're seriously this upset about (i) use of irony and (ii) commenters on an online forum?

Let me localize that statement for you:

You spelled "confiscate their property, put them in chain gangs, and allow them to work their way back into freedom" wrong. Deporting the niggers only inflicts them on another country.

Yeah, I think hate is upsetting no matter what outgroup you pick.

Here's what I almost tacked onto the end of my original comment:

"In before someone defends them by saying it's sarcasm. Oh? So the people in /r/coontown who were being sarcastic about killing blacks is reprehensible, but this is somehow ok?"

I didn't want to construct a strawman argument, but there you go.

Dismissing online forums seems silly. Both HN and reddit have had a huge impact.

The title "deport them" is satirising the classical conservative discourse of blaming the immigrants and the minorities, suggesting that those really to blame by the average Joe's woes are the rich 0.1%, thereby making use of irony to subvert the term "minorities" to mean those 0.1% of the population. Clearer?

It's ironic you're explaining irony to me when I already got the joke.

It's in the context of "screw these rich people." That joke wouldn't be okay if it was "screw these black people." So are we applying equal standards? Why not?

Personally, I think all jokes should be fine. The more scathing criticism and wit, the better. But we live in a climate where that's not really realistic. (Well, it is, but the joke had better be pretty funny to get away with it. This one was a lowball.)

So again: Why is it ok to aim this hatred towards rich people, but not minorities?

Minorities don't hoard wealth to the detriment of others. Minorities don't encourage and profit from a reckless, agressive, all-consuming consumer capitalist economy that's wrecking the planet. Minorities don't manipulate your mind with endless propaganda and advertising. Minorities don't lobby government to write laws that favour them. Minorities don't dodge taxes. In short, I have no valid reason to be angry at minorities, I have plenty to be mad at the privileged few in the current system. Honestly? If I have to spell this out to you I don't think this conversation is ever going anywhere.

I think there's something wrong with having many cars that you don't actually use. The externalities of manufacturing are quite out of proportion with the enjoyment of the car collector. It's not wrong per se to have more money than others, but it does morally obligate you to spend it on things that are net positive for society.

We are under no moral obligation to spend our money in any way. Where does this sense of entitlement come from?

Do you believe that your morals are truely absolute?

An[d] society is under no obligation to let your money continue to have power over them. See it can go both ways, and people have to give both ways.

Our agreement is based on the fact that there will always be someone more interested in your wallet than your life. It is dangerous to suggest that after x dollars it is acceptable to take money from someone. Excluding taxes, which are a different subject.

It's nothing to do with morality. It's to do with self-preservation. Eventually, the have nots get tired of looking in on those that live lives that their children will not be able to obtain and revolt, often violently. This is especially true when those who have inherited wealth assume to know how those who don't have wealth should live and apply flippant responses to real world issues.

I subscribe to moral relativism, so any statements about morality I make are just my opinion, nothing more.

You did make a moral statement and presented it as fact, so you are under some obligation to defend it, I think.

Sure, that is the point of moral relativism, because morality is shaped by culture. For instance, capital punishment is variously moral/immoral in different parts of the world.

It seems that no small part of most people's social nature is aversion to perceived unfairness, from within or without.

As if 6 dollar loaves of bread even come with a sticker. For that price I'm getting an artisan boule that is tossed into a paper bag.

That 6 dollars is going to the bread maker who can then feed their family and the family of their employees while being proud of the work. Not sure why the nanny should get free money instead while the bread maker is left to dry.

I think the point is that if you, as an individual, feel bad about your spending habits then perhaps a change is in order? If the root of the problem is that your embarrassed by the inequality you might be showing to others than perhaps working towards ending the inequality might be a more productive use of your capital. I'm not the original poster but that's how I read it.

The baker is still getting paid.

3 dollar bread = corporate conglomerate fake stuff.

6 dollar bread = local baker artisan

Nanny = give me more money for free because i deserve it by virtue of existing

I think people do these kinds of things all the time. People walk out of a starbucks with 4 dollar bagels everyday and pass homeless people.

And people everyday choose to have something for themselves even though there is much more value to another individual if you donated it to them.

The rich are vilified, and hence no-one wants to identify himself publicly to be a villain, as simple as that.

Not sure I get your example. I've never seen anyone stepping out of a Starbucks, passing a homeless person while hiding their coffee so it can't be seen. Or they were hiding it so well I also didn't see it ;)

The shame for having more than others is shared by a large portion of society. Hiding a label is just one manifestation.

The funny thing about worrying over the $6 dollar bread: what it really shows is that they have no idea how much anything costs at all for normal people. $6 is not a crazy price for a loaf of bread, which is a lot of food, and a loaf of plain, off-brand white bread costs $3 in NYC.

My dad is retired, I'm 20 years old, he's 49. I just say he's an investor. I used to explain to people how it was possible for him to be retired, without being a movie star or lottery winner with index funds, but they looked at me like I was selling a Ponzi scheme. I guess me making a throwaway for this says something.

Not a scheme at all. My parents lived comfortably off their investments after retirement. They had accumulated close to $2M. Combined income never topped $75,000 in their best years. How? They lived modestly, spent money judiciously, and always saved for tomorrow.

I was 49 when I sold my company and retired. Yes, building a business is an investment.

One thing that many wealthy have that I hope technology will allow more not-quite-wealthy people to have is someone to clean and cook meals on a daily basis.

I think that this may even be possible before we have truly general AIs. My own view is that the main thing holding this back is combining the latest advances in neural networks with some AGI concepts and then more biomimetic and performant artificial muscles and limbs. For one thing maybe activating like real muscles, a bit away from the joints, to provide more leverage versus motors in the joints. I don't know exactly but I think going more close to biologically inspired mobility for robots can reduce the gap between robots and animals in terms of dexterity and power-to-weight ratio etc which seems to really be lacking.

Cleaning and cooking builds character and allows time for reflection, in my opinion.

This is true for programmers and the like. But: Cleaning and cooking after cleaning and cooking at the Denny's all day? Not so much.

Cleaning and cooking builds character and allows time for reflection, in my opinion.

Paying someone else to do my cleaning and cooking and other day to day drudgery work buys me time, and allows me the choice of when and how I want to "build character" and do some reflecting.

This kinda reminds me of how my mother used to insist that we cleaned our rooms before the maid came because "What would she think of us?!".

i mean we had to do that too. (not maid but housekeeper) I always assumed it's because their job is vacuuming and cleaning surfaces, not cleaning up the kids mess off the floor

Exactly. How are they supposed to even know where all your stuff goes?

I wonder if we'd prefer a system where the majority of wealth after death goes back into a national trust and is immediately re-dispersed back and divided among all citizens...the national inheritance if you will.

Of course there would be implementation issues.

so families would be thrown out of their house when the primary caregiver dies?

Most rich people are rich because they are frugal, save money, and invest. The person this is about is the exception not the rule.

One: the article is about several people. Two: that's demonstrably a load of sh*t. Case in point, any study about social mobility.

source on that?

http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.htm...

This article is about people with more than $1 million in assets (sample median of $1.6 million).

"About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent."

" On average, we invest nearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year."

" Our household's total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000"

BULL.

Every child deserves start up money.

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