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Comment by friedman23 | Hacker News Reader

> It also disregards the type of lottery game that is a part of wealth accumulation.

It's not a lottery game, it's a poker game (and in reality, it's much easier than poker because the economy is positive sum and poker is zero sum). If you only consider "wealthy" to be people who have made billions or hundreds of millions then it's a lottery. But someone that consistently makes decisions that maximize expected monetary gain can consistently become a "rich" person if our definition of rich is have more than $10million.

(Poker is negative sum if you are playing in a raked game)

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Fun fact: The average American perceives “wealthy” as having just over $2.2million in net worth.

https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/605075/are-you-ri...

This is very achievable to most HN types. Maybe not in our 30’s, but easily by retirement. Just maxing out your 401k for an entire tech career will get you there.

Interesting. 2.2 million seems to be around the top 10% in the US, and around 20x the median (Federal Reserve data from 2016). It also places one in the global top 1%.

Sounds right. Around 2.2 million, your money starts to generate more income than your labor can, unless you have an exceptionally high paying job.

So maybe people with a net worth above 2.2 million should be paying a wealth tax instead of an income tax.

Well they do have to pay taxes on dividends and capital gains, so its not like its totally tax free.

Even if they're 70 after working a lifetime?

At that age there’s the estate tax … plus you’re paying taxes on withdrawals since mist retirement savings are tax deferred. There’s also capital gains taxes that hit you I think.

That's called inflation.

Maybe by then (one's retirement) the average American will perceive "wealthy" as having $4million in net worth.

If I understand right, this is the perception right now, not in the future. Probably then it will be higher.

That sounds likely. Inflation and all that.

Would also be interesting to know if people in general even count 401k as “wealth”. I feel like it occupies a different bracket in many people’s minds.

> his is very achievable to most HN types. Maybe not in our 30’s, but easily by retirement.

Should be pretty easy to reach 2.2m for many people in 40 years, inflation corrected that's something like 500k.

No, the game is Monopoly. And those who entered the game late are out of luck.

Ah yeah, you should have told that to my immigrant parents who came here with nothing.

The game features a set of dice, so anecdotes such as this one are not impossible, it's just that you need to be extremely lucky.

No, if it was actually like monopoly there is 0 chance of succeeding once people have established themselves.

You have a finite number of bets you can make in your life, if you waste them by partying, gambling and being high on drugs then yeah, I can see how it can feel like it's impossible to succeed.

And life is a lot easier than these board games, there isn't one winner in life.

I think it's interesting that partying and drug use make 2 out of 3 slots in your list of useless bets that are sure to make you fail. Aren't there whole classes of extremely wealthy people who are known for drugs use and constant partying? The real central point here is wasting time. If your partying and drug use is using money for no return, your time is not paying off and you're heading down. But parties and drugs can absolutely be tools of social connection and creative exploration, which can be rewarded very highly depending on who your socializing with and what you create.

>Aren't there whole classes of extremely wealthy people who are known for drugs use and constant partying?

Yes, and they deplete their family's centuries-old hoards of wealth within 2 generations.

This seems unlikely to me, do you have any stats to back it up.

Also immigrants usually don't come to literak nothing. While its certainly difficult for them, usually there are cultural or religious groups that help them out or they have family that immigrated before them to help them get on their feet.

My parents came with literally nothing because the government they escaped took everything from them. Both of my grandfathers had their education but they could not practice their craft because their accreditation did not matter in the US, my father could not speak english, neither could my mother. My mother knew so little english that she couldn't even ask to go to the bathroom in her first week of school so she peed her pants.

From what I've seen, unsuccessful immigrants are the exception rather than the norm.

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