Anyone who ends up as a corporate tax lawyer could have “made better life choices” as defined in Rand’s worldview. If Rand is something like a fourth-year associate who gets his yearly bonus at a firm paying market rates, he pulls in around $100/hr. before taxes. Most of his clients, on the other hand, rake in many many times that amount. Some of them are probably younger than Rand. Many 27-year-old I-bankers are still making more than that in this economy. Being a corporate lawyer is not a path to unfathomable riches. Even if he becomes a partner some day, he’s making at best around a million a year. People who are a decade into running a successful business can make twice what he makes in half the time with all the same intellectual challenges.
So it would be silly to conclude that Rand couldn’t have made “better life choices” as he defines it–which I’m pretty sure even he would concede.
My question would be why he decided to be a tax lawyer and not a billionaire software magnate, or even a millionaire small business owner.
Hold on a minute – bankers make a lot of money? I was a teller for four years, and they were very lean years indeed. Sure, I saw tens of thousands every single day, but it’s not like I got to take that money home with me.
Probably for much the same reasons that White Supremacists are not especially impressive examples of Caucasians. Self-image has little or no connection to actual value as a person, skill or ability.
No, if there’s any lesson to be learned from Rand’s teachings, it’s that even the most simple and fundamentally true idea can be made ridiculous by stretching it far enough.
Partners at my firm make well over $2 M per year on average.
I’m not that entrepeneurial. I’d rather advise people on deals than take the risk myself. I’m also more analytical and less practical. Therefore, I’m more suited to being a lawyer.
Business people can make more money but they can also go broke. It’s hard for a lawyer to go broke (if I get fired here I can work elsewhere). I’d rather make a steady decent living than risk going broke for the chance of getting filthy rich. Therefore, for me, the spread of possible outcomes is much better as a lawyer than a banker or business owner.
This in absolutely no way conflicts with my worldview that people are responsible for their choices. I acknowledge that it’s possible I could be richer if I had made different choices but that’s not a chance I was willing to take.
I don’t care much about Rand Rover one way or the other. I just de-lurked to say that this made me laugh. A fine use of a Matrix quote. Thank you for the laugh.
Hey, Rand Rover, what would you do if a significant number of people decided to try their hand at your job? Imagine that you’re an employer. You can employ Rand Rover, who has a degree, qualifications, and plenty of experience, at £X per hour; or you can employ Y who has none of these, but says he knows his stuff and is willing to work for £8 / hour. Which do you employ? In my industry, 9/10 employers will take Y on contract.
That’s not what you will make. Let’s assume you’re at Wachtell (though I’m pretty sure you’re not). They have the highest PPP avg. for partners of any firm with a significant tax practice. On a really good year, their PPP is around $3.5 M. But of course, that is the average–and that is in good times. It includes the firm’s founders. A new partner like yourself would not be making that much for a long time. So the point stands, which is that many professionals will be making more by that stage in their career.
That’s post hoc justification. You’re telling me Bill Gates is not analytical? That a lawyer is the highest-making risk-averse profession? Hardly. My friend who works for Google makes more than you, does similar work in terms of advice and analysis, and if he lost his job he could go work for one of a dozen firms.
But even if we counter-factually assume it’s lower risk highest-making job, it would be your fault if you failed in a better job. Why would you choose to fail instead of preparing yourself not to fail? Or do you acknowledge that there are circumstances beyond your control that might cause you to fail?
Not saying it does. I am genuinely wondering why you choose to make less money than many of your peers. Your answer that they take more risks is just empirically false. An I-banker that gets fired can find a new job just like you can find a new job if you get fired.
Don’t be embarrassed for me. Any normal person would prefer a soft, warm, cozy bed to whatever it is you do for a living. I love my job and I think I’ve made the right choices in life, even though I’m not fantastically wealthy, but I’d rather not be working, generally. That’s not embarrassing, that’s just different from you, something I’m glad to be.
Also, something lacking in your overall repertoire of vast superiority is a sense of humor. You think you’re funny because you’re mocking other people, but that’s about at a 7th grade level of humor, which take it from me, ain’t too advanced. You sure can’t take a ribbing at all, son.
What do you think you are proving with this line of questioning? i already acknowledged that I have made choices that result in me making less money than I could have made. If you ever see a post of mine whining that I don’t make as much money as bankers, then you can rub my philosophy in my face. Until then, you don’t have much of a point.
I find it exceedingly unlikely that being a corporate tax lawyer is your optimal station in life. It seems far more likely that your being a corporate tax lawyer is a consequence of a combination of the choices you’ve made, your natural abilities, and factors outside your control. But since you don’t believe that to be the case, I’m curious to probe just what it is you do believe.
I was ONCE out of work. It sucked. It was a case of being unqualified for this and overqualified for that, too middle class for “assistance”. I eventually found another job, for better pay, but anything can happen to anyone at any time. Skills, education, qualifications, and contacts have nothing to do with it.
Rand, let me say (for what it’s worth) that I think you are a smug, self serving, self centered, arrogant, egotistical, in love with yourself, legend in his own mind, ASSHOLE. You shit on a thread just because you could and then had some “need” to defend it just because you didn’t have enough backbone to admit you were deliberately shitting on it.
There. If the banhammer drops for name calling, so be it. I don’t give a damn.
Not that I’d wish the misery of unemployment on anyone, but these days lawyers are having a pretty hard time of it. You’re a lawyer. You presumably read the legal news. Haven’t you noticed the layoffs happening at just about every major firm around these days? A law degree and a couple of bucks will get you a cup of coffee and not much else.
I genuinely hope your own words don’t come around and bite you in the ass. But if they do, well, it couldn’t happen to a nicer person.
I gave him about 7 links about this and how weird it is to be self-congratulatory about being a lawyer right now and he waved it off with a “we tax lawyers aren’t getting fired” assertion (completely unsupported). He also didn’t understand the point that there are scores of newly graduated attorneys competing for a limited number of jobs, so the whole “if only you were as educated as I am, you wouldn’t be competing against 2000 other people” line is just REALLY REALLY REALLY stupid coming from a lawyer.
But here’s the deal, people at work are mean to him and question his opinions, which is why he needs to tell everyone on an anonymous messageboard how rich and well-educated he is. That this board is full of practicing attorneys who refrain from gloating about their employment status and income in threads about unemployment seems to be lost on him. Hell, maybe I’m just nicer because no one questions my memos and they are usually passed along to become official Washington policy or maybe it’s because my emotional development wasn’t arrested at the age of 13. :dubious:
