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Comment by jasonkester | Hacker News Reader

This article seems to by trying to make us angry. As though those mean rich people came in and grabbed all the wealth before the rest of us got our share. It doesn't make much sense to worry about that.

I don't personally have any less wealth than I would have if those meanies hadn't made their money. It's kinda cool, in my mind, that crazy rich people exist, since that means that being crazy rich is the sort of thing that can happen to people. I'm people, so if I work at it, maybe I'll be one of those terrible folk one o' these days, with too much of the pie.

But nobody else seems to think that way. We just keep getting this same article written about how there's only so much wealth to be had, and this little group keep taking it all.

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“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”

― Ronald Wright

I often heard it attributed to Steinbeck, though I've also read he never said this verbatim.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck#Disputed

I think it's a problem that too many people think this way. It seems like there's more not-ultra-rich people hoping for tax cuts for the ultra-rich than there are ultra-rich people. People are often holding political positions that would further benefit them if they were in the (already crazy wealthy) position they hoped to be in, rather than holding political positions that would provide protections for them where they are now. And then it's practically unbelievable to not think this type of thinking must be strongly encouraged by rich political groups.

I thought this comic was a neat satire by illustrating an extreme case: https://www.thenation.com/article/one-rich-guy-who-owns-ever...

Not sure how you got to "hoping for tax cuts" from what I wrote. I'm personally in favor of cutting taxes to zero for anybody earning less than, say, $30k/year, and taxing the rest of us a flat rate to balance the budget. Two tax brackets: first $30k: 0%, the rest of your income: 30%. QED.

I got a little windfall that I didn't want this year, and would much prefer to have had the same amount added to my tax bill so that people who could actually appreciate a few thousand extra dollars got it instead.

But that doesn't have anything to do with this article, with its silly pie fallacy emotional appeal.

Sorry, I probably went too far if I implied I thought you were guilty of the things mentioned in my post. I just meant that the reasoning in your post (glad rich class does exist, let's not punish them / make them not exist, maybe I can be there one day) is the foundation that I think many others use to make bad political decisions. I don't entirely disagree with those points, but I think they get too much weight relative to others in modern politics.

Actually, if wealth were distributed more evenly, you would have more money.

As to being one of those folk: no. It’s a closed club, members only. Every newly minted billionaire you see made it there not through hard work, but connections - if you can point me at anyone who, in the last decade, has become a billionaire without an “in”, i’ll be happy to tell you where their “in” was. These are dynasties - nepotistic, closed circle, dynasties.

As for you, unless you are already a billionaire, you will never be one. Sorry. It’s like a peasant farmer thinking one day maybe he’ll be duke, even though it’s a hereditary position, so the beatings are worth tolerating.

I don't know that I believe this. I'm a newly minted... well, not billionaire, but a "living comfortably"-onaire, with wealth created by a little software-as-a-service business that I built from scratch.

I had no connections, unless you count posting to this forum and the old Business Of Software one at joelonsoftware.com. I just read stuff online, taught myself the business part, and spent the seven dollars on the domain name.

I feel like the bit you wrote is what people tell themselves so that they can safely not try. It's not possible. Best not bother.

I'd recommend otherwise, personally.

Oh, it’s certainly possible to become comfortably well off - I’ve managed to bootstrap myself to millionaire - but the top table is very much a closed affair. Rather, my point is to aspire to being realistically wealthy - but to aspire to the level of wealth enjoyed by only a few hundred individuals on earth is sheer folly.

Musk? Bezos? Brin, Page, Zuckerberg, Parker.

I don't think any of those had particularly wealthy head starts.

For a more recent example look at Jan Koum and Brian Acton.

I can't speak to your finances, but the average worker absolutely has less as a direct result of the wealth flow shifting ever more to the rich. Wages have been stagnant for decades, despite steadily increasing productivity.

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