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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Even if the odds are against them, people like having the possibility of getting rich.

The odds aren't even that bad, if you read up on how to do it, develop a plan, and stick to it.

Why take that away from people?

They tend to vote against their own interest because ‘one day’ they’ll have more money and what they’re voting for will benefit them ‘then’.

I'm not so sure it's against their self interest. Crushing taxes on the wealthy makes a country poor, and that hurts everyone via slow, stagnant economies.

Care to cite that second half? I know raising taxes to an extreme may cause some issues but I thought we currently have some of the lowest taxes on the richest people?

The US has maybe twice the average annual growth rate than Europe, if you compare the S&P500 with EU stock indices.

Sure, but can that be attributed to the lax taxing on the rich? Or are there a slew of other things that could be causing this?

Let me put it another way. If people weren't allowed to accumulate large amounts of wealth, would there still be SpaceX? Why is SpaceX in the US rather than Europe?

Europe is a very fragmented collection of independent countries with massive bureaucracy, lack of intercompatability, and historic division.

Pick a country that has a better long term economy than the US.

Pick a country that has similar geo-historical background... it's hard, US is pretty unique. Closest would be something like Australia but they have too few people.

Looks like neither of us know of any countries whose long term economics outperform the US.

I think what the user above you is trying to say is that there are many factors that go into economic performance. Tax on the wealthy is not the only factor and to say that is the reason for the economic advantage would be a bit of a stretch. Every country is very different in almost too many ways to get a real, true comparison.

> They tend to vote against their own interest

It's interesting how so many people seem to believe voters get a ballot with multiple line items on them, one of them being "Raise taxes on the rich". Or if that's not the root belief behind "people voting against their interest", that economics is the prime motivator for all voters.

Some other theories:

https://mediahub.unl.edu/media/8546

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-...

Because the more people do this the more the economy tanks. The only reason why capital accumulation works is because most people don't do it.

Or more simply, if the economy grows at 2% any investment that grows faster than that will crash.

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