I think the main difference: rich people have access to other people’s money. That means that they can start a company, restaurant, service, and not risk their own capital. If the business fails, they just move on-the loss is the shareholders, not theirs. Meanwhile, they can employ an army of tax lawyers to keep their own fortunes intact. That is why shysters like Joseph Kennedy was able to set his family up for life-while his investors got reamed.
A poor guy who scrimps and saves for years to start a small business has no such luck-his business goes under, and he loses everything.
So people with more means are better able to live within them? How utterly fucking profound.
There’s a larger problem with this claim. Rich people don’t think selfishness is a virtue. They may claim that selfishness is a virtue and society benefits when everyone is looking out for themselves and trying to get the most they can for themselves.
But what happens when that principle is actually applies? What happens when non-rich people try to look out for themselves and get the most they can for themselves by joining a union, for example? Don’t hold it against them - these guys are just looking out for their own self-interests. You own the company and the union hurts your business? Hey, it’s your responsibility to look out for your interests not theirs.
Does that ever happen? No. When somebody who isn’t rich tries to use the selfishness principle against a rich guy, the principle gets thrown out the window. Suddenly, selfishness becomes a terrible thing and why don’t you think about other people?
Here’s the real rule: Average people think selfishness is a vice. Rich people think average people being selfish is a vice also but think it’s okay when rich people are selfish.
Then you get a job and take out some student loans.
If someone offers you a job for more money, would you take it?
Sure, because banks are just falling all over themselves to loan money to people with no jobs and fifteen dollars in assets.
How about a more realistic suggestion like catching a leprechaun and stealing his pot of gold?
Sure. But that has nothing to do with what I said.
Why is it that when union members get a raise, we’re told they’re greedy bastards who are ruining the company with their demands for more money. But when a CEO gets a raise, we’re told it’s good for the company and he wouldn’t have gotten that money unless he deserved it.
Both the union member and the CEO are doing the same thing - they’re acting in their self-interest and making more money if they can. But we hear the CEO is doing a good thing by asking for more money - “selfishness is a virtue” - and the union member is doing a bad thing by asking for more money.
To be fair, there are federal student loan programs that don’t qualify you based on job status or current assets. Basically, anyone who wants to go to school can get a student loan.
A journey of a million miles has to start somewhere? I mean your hypothetical guy with fifteen bucks has pretty much two options for getting rich.
1.Play the lottery, chance of success somewhere around one in sixteen million(state lottery I was familiar with*)
2.Chase every chance and opportunity at success in life, chance of success…well greater than playing the lottery I think.
I mean if someone is telling poor people just keep trying and one day you will become rich, well thats just stupid. On the other hand it isn’t impossible either.
You’ve never heard the phrase “nickled and dimed to death”? You get a little bit from a whole bunch of poor people. That gets you rich.
That’s my point. The odds aren’t better. I said the lottery is a 100,000,000-1 longshot - but I still maintain the odds of making an equivalent amount of money with only a fifteen dollar investment fund are worse than 100,000,000-1. Especially if your plan is “chase every chance and opportunity at success”. You really think fifteen dollars will cover that?
As I said, that was my point. It’s both fatuous and disingenuous for people to go around saying anyone can be rich if they try hard enough when the odds against some people becoming rich are literally in the billion to one neighbourhood.
Speaking of which, Robert Kiyosaki lost a major lawsuit to the Learning Annex and one of his companies is going bankrupt. (Apparently not him personally.)
Never taking financial advice from someone involved in bankruptcy seems like a reasonable criteria. And yet there’s Donald Trump.
And you can pay them much less due to their desperation; the fact that you pay them so little is a major reason why they are poor in the first place.
My father advised me to find something I loved doing and then figure out how to make a living doing it. I took his advice and, while I’m not rich, I ain’t poor either, and I wake up every morning anxious to get back to work.
It’s fifteen dollars over time. Set aside $15 every month until you have enough to buy (as a random example) some Shea butter soap base, some color and some fragrances. Spend the next month making some soap while you save the $15 for a craft fair table, and then sell the soap for $4.00 an ounce. Rinse and repeat, learn the craft and the business and become a Big Deal.
A lot of people made a lot of money by saving their $15 and making a plan. I think a lot of what causes the resentment is a misunderstanding that rich people get that way through hard work and good decision making, not because someone just decided they should get a fat paycheck. Most of the big earners never get a paycheck from anyone else - they make their paycheck. And it’s hard and discouraging and makes you want to stab everyone sometimes, but it pays off.
But it’s not their hard work that paid off. It’s luck. Sure, they make a plan, and when the plan works, they assume it was their planning that caused it to work. But, in actuality, most people selling cheap things like this don’t make a lot of money. I know a lot of people who do this sort of thing. They make some money on the side, but it’s definitely not more than they’d get for unskilled labor.
It’s the fact that your hard work may wind up not being rewarded that makes people not want to do that sort of thing. At least there’s no real wasted work in buying a lottery ticket, even if your chances for winning are less favorable.
Some people are so greedy that any amount of work needed to get money is acceptable, and, yes, they are disproportionately represented in people who actually get money. But that doesn’t mean their philosophy of life is a good one. Honestly, I’d prefer to live in a system that didn’t reward such behavior, as all it does is make these people think they were right, as they lack any experience of it being detrimental. It’s the same reason why some people will go ahead and drive drunk.
The actual good way of thinking is to sit down and figure out how much work is acceptable for how much money. Thing is, when you do so, you may find that you’re better off not having very much money. I know that my calculations take me to about $25,000 - $30,000 a year. And maybe purchasing the occasional lottery ticket due to its low-risk high-reward nature.
What do most people on this board consider the threshold to be considered rich? Defining that will help better frame this discussion.
You’re showing how you and a rich person view their bank accounts differently:
"Rich people see 150,000 dollars in their bank accounts. Poor people see 150 dollars. " 
Can’t agree with this. Perhaps it is the fact that they sell themselves so cheaply that causes their poverty. the fact that they are paid so little indicates, to me, that they have jobs.