Wealth Inequality Chart (1 Viewer)

What it comes down to is education, idea and drive. As Ken-bob stated some will never have the opportunity. For the most part you either have it or you don't. But you can learn it. It's not that difficult. The person working 60 hrs a week to provide for the family comes in too many different forms to state a cut and dry approach. For instance a fisherman. If that's all he knows, and hasn't ventured into many other fields, his pay will not get him there. He has to resort to idea and education. He's got the drive just not the know how. Granted not everyone can become successful. It's what differentiates us all. Thing is we need to stop allowing greed to supersede the distribution of wealth amongst its ppl. I'm not saying a CEO should get the same wages as below, but why can't these company CEOs that invest their millions take the working class ppls money and invest it as well to give then a return? I believe payouts should be in order at the top 20%. Nothing substantial but def a paycut. I firmly believe you can have anything you want in life aside from a person. Though that could be debatable, ill talk about materialistic. I've had ppl say they wanted something, say a car. They'd love to own one. Now could they afford it? Yes! Did they really want it? No! They were not willing to change their lifestyle in order to obtain it. No sacrificing. Did they really want it is the question? Also you can think as big as you want but your goals have to be within reason. Once you obtain a goal is when you can reach a little higher.

My parents told me I could never make 1000 a week. This was about 17 yrs ago. I didn't see any reason why I couldn't do that. In their eyes it was too far out of reach. In my eyes i wasn't asking for much. I eventually made that. Then I said tax free, then I decided I wanted to make a million. Needless to say, the amount of sacrifice was too great for the approach I wanted to take. However I'm trying to figure out other ways to get there. If I don't get there. I'm fine. I have things to love for other than just making money. Because in the end? You made it for what? Your kids? Grand kids? You can't take it with you. So no use dying over trying. I'm still trying to find balance. I've gone several routes with my thoughts in life. When funds started stacking my brain started rolling. I've entered into the stock market. Now I'm not doing bad, but I'm not doing well. I'm learning. I have time to learn. I've thought about inventions. I'm just not at the brink of development with an idea yet. But my mind keeps churning.

Here's free advice to make millions. Invent or recreate something for a baby or a woman. Either one is an extremely lucrative business. Women go ape crap over baby crap and things for themselves. ;)
 
And everyone has ready access to that first 180k, right?

This is just another example of how some people truly don't understand what it means to be in the lower 80% of Americans today. Not only do the people who are in that strata not have that kind of money available, they spend 60-80 hours a week just trying to put food on the table for their families. The concept of "taking a business" risk for them is tantamount to saying "work another 40 hours a week and risk putting your family on the street - and if it doesn't work for you the first time, it should by the 10th or 12th time."

At some point in the plight of the poorest Americans, the only risk left is the risk of jail so you can steal enough from the local convenience store to feed your kids. It's amazing to me how few people truly get that.

With good credit, most banks will lend 180k on Commercial real estate of this type no issues. Especially with 75% of the spaces already rented for an amount that would cover the note. My issue was the credit side, needed to apply prior to buying a fish store not after lol..Good way to wreck credit now days is become a small business owner. The reptile store I was next to for 4 years got a sweetheart deal on a property. Owner was retiring and carried the note for him. Direct payments to him and not a bank. Bottom line if you are motivated you will eventually find something that works. If you keep saying its not possible cause I was born poor, poor is where you will stay.

P.S. not everyone will make it thats capitalism, if I fail to make myself rich then I will try to setup my kids to do it and learn from my mistakes.
 
I don't think some people understand the video, or at least I hope so. The point is that fewer and fewer people control more and more wealth in this country. It has little to do with how smart they are, or how hard they work. There is a fundamental inefficiency in the current way wealth is accumulated.

I think most people agree that some people are going to be more successful than others, and that's the way it should be. However, I also think that most people think there should be some sort of logical scaling of that wealth. Instead we have a crazy logarithmic scaling of income and wealth.

Even taking out ideas such as fairness, this isn't an efficient way for money to be spent. It essentially limits capital from flowing to the best ideas -- believe me, the best ideas are not concentrated in the top 1%.

Thank you. I've noticed people all over the internet BADLY missing the point of the video. Everything degenerates into people screaming about socialism and "hard work" and bootstraps and other rote and overly simplistic talking points that have little to do with the actual information the video is conveying.
 
P.S. not everyone will make it thats capitalism, if I fail to make myself rich then I will try to setup my kids to do it and learn from my mistakes.

The reality is studies show that you are overwhelmingly likely to die in the social/economic class you're born into. So if you fail to strike it rich, the statistical likelyhood is so will your children. The number of people who start out with lower and middle class backgrounds and ultimately achieve wealth is actually quite small.
 
Most millionaires I met that are self made had several failing ventures prior to making it big. Just find the right one that works for you and spend day and night on it.

Near as I can tell commercial landlord is a good way to make some great cash flow and I would love to get into it. Hard to buy the first property, after that its gets easier I hear.

In the two lines of work that I have been in, I have dealt with several millionaires myself and I agree that it seems like most of them were risk takers and maybe took some bumps before success. But they also had something else in common, they actually had something to risk. A recent survey showed that 2 thirds of Americans live Paycheck to Paycheck. That is a lot of people and not just the ones you would expect it to be. There is nothing to risk you just have to struggle to get by. I don't live paycheck to paycheck but I am not more than a few months without work from being there and it would be a lot for me to prospect with the little cushion I have. I believe that I am just echoing what some others are stating but I am looking at it through my own point of view and I don't even have it as bad as most.
 
In the two lines of work that I have been in, I have dealt with several millionaires myself and I agree that it seems like most of them were risk takers and maybe took some bumps before success. But they also had something else in common, they actually had something to risk. A recent survey showed that 2 thirds of Americans live Paycheck to Paycheck. That is a lot of people and not just the ones you would expect it to be. There is nothing to risk you just have to struggle to get by. I don't live paycheck to paycheck but I am not more than a few months without work from being there and it would be a lot for me to prospect with the little cushion I have. I believe that I am just echoing what some others are stating but I am looking at it through my own point of view and I don't even have it as bad as most.

In those cases they had that particular thing in common when the truth is that anyone who puts it on the line risks everything. Having something to risk? Everyone has something to risk.

And while I agree that opportunities for success (read Malcom Gladwell's Outliers) are skewed I do not see it as government's responsibility to level the playing field. Any individual who wants to succeed levels his or her own playing field.
 
Any individual who wants to succeed levels his or her own playing field.

Oh, if only it were that simple. If only.

I get platitudes. They make for cheap, inspirational, talking points. People like them because it's easier to cling to simplistic ideas than deal with difficult truths. They're not the real world, though.
 
In those cases they had that particular thing in common when the truth is that anyone who puts it on the line risks everything. Having something to risk? Everyone has something to risk.

And while I agree that opportunities for success (read Malcom Gladwell's Outliers) are skewed I do not see it as government's responsibility to level the playing field. Any individual who wants to succeed levels his or her own playing field.

We agree, government should not level the playing field (and apparently we are not even playing the same game), but as people like Uncle Jim stated far better than me, that is not the point of the video. Set aside the who should do something for a moment, do you not think the amount of our total wealth that is in 1% of the population is not a little absurd?
 
edit: I had originally summed up the video in this post but deleted it because it really should be watched. But Bleu, this is not a suggestion that we go to socialism.

Problem is that this country set up government to where it is impossible to do anything about it and a mere fraction of the 1% guys wealth is more than enough to help ensure that it won't change. It trickles down but not beyond Washington.

side note: James, it would help if you give more than IDK in an original post. Some people won't bother clicking on just a link (I almost didn't).

Well, I really didn't want to steer the conversation one way or the other. I figured I let you guys watch it and see where it goes.
 
Building wealth from nothing is often a multi-generational effort and not instant.

There are a number of examples of extremely shrewd and well-timed individuals that have built an empire in a single lifetime, but this is rare.
 
Ken-Bob said:
And everyone has ready access to that first 180k, right?

This is just another example of how some people truly don't understand what it means to be in the lower 80% of Americans today. Not only do the people who are in that strata not have that kind of money available, they spend 60-80 hours a week just trying to put food on the table for their families. The concept of "taking a business" risk for them is tantamount to saying "work another 40 hours a week and risk putting your family on the street - and if it doesn't work for you the first time, it should by the 10th or 12th time."

At some point in the plight of the poorest Americans, the only risk left is the risk of jail so you can steal enough from the local convenience store to feed your kids. It's amazing to me how few people truly get that.

With good credit, most banks will lend 180k on Commercial real estate of this type no issues. Especially with 75% of the spaces already rented for an amount that would cover the note. My issue was the credit side, needed to apply prior to buying a fish store not after lol..Good way to wreck credit now days is become a small business owner. The reptile store I was next to for 4 years got a sweetheart deal on a property. Owner was retiring and carried the note for him. Direct payments to him and not a bank. Bottom line if you are motivated you will eventually find something that works. If you keep saying its not possible cause I was born poor, poor is where you will stay.

P.S. not everyone will make it thats capitalism, if I fail to make myself rich then I will try to setup my kids to do it and learn from my mistakes.

Am I the only one here that sees the disconnect between these two statements? It's just that I'm really having trouble visualizing the person that is working 60 hours a week walking into a bank and saying "Hey, I've got this great idea for a [insert property based business here]. Won't you please loan me $180,000?" and not be laughed out of the building. Not only do I not see how the person working 60 hours a week to keep food on the table and a roof over their kids' heads not finding much of a way to scrounge up another 60-80 hours a week to work this great new business venture - I'm having serious trouble seeing that person finding the time and energy to do the initial research and develop the business plan in the first place.

I know some will say that person is just lazy but if it takes working 120+ hours a week to "get ahead" in the US... well I think that may just illustrate the problem in this country quite well in and of itself. Lazy may be one thing but that's virtually suicidal (besides which, if someone did that, they'd be just as lambasted on this and other internet boards for 'not being a very good parent' because they were never at home to be there for their kids.
 
Before we even get to what we should do about this, I think we should recognize that there is a problem. We don't even need to get into what kind of corrective actions need to be taken (whether government or other). I just find it hard to believe that anyone let alone a significant percentage of our forum population really thinks the current system is efficiently allocating capital.

That much capital concentrated in the hands of a few people inherently limits opportunity because the money can't flow quickly and easily to the best ideas. We're effectively getting a centrally planned economy -- instead of a government planning the economy we have a few individuals. Outside of fundamental problems of fairness, this is a problem in terms of economic efficiency.
 
This is strictly anecdotal, but I see a pretty significant generational split in the understanding of this issue, both online and in real life. From what I see, Baby Boomers (which is to say, people that have already made their money, are at or approaching retirement age, and came up in a different time when getting a good paying job was substantially less difficult than it is now) don't view this as any big deal. They're the ones preaching about hard work and bootstraps, etc.

The problem is they're not facing the issues people of my generation (or slightly older or younger) are. Unless you work in one of a handful of VERY specific fields, the days of just going and getting a good paying job in an office or blue collar field don't really exist any more. The world has changed radically, but most of those changes occurred after their careers were relatively secure. As such, they don't really understand it.

As an example, when I was right out of college and having trouble finding a job, my dad would constantly tell the story about how he got his job by refusing to leave after they told him there were no openings and eventually getting a meeting with the hiring manager. In the 60's maybe that displayed moxie and resolve, but in the 00's that would get me arrested. My mom would constantly tell me to cold-call with resumes, and refused to believe me when I said people don't hire like that any more.

They have a very set idea of how the world works economically and career-wise because that was how things were when they entered the workforce. Things are no longer that way. Hiring and firing practices, relative pay, the ability for upward mobility, and prospects of having a long-term career with the same employer have all changed substantially (and usually not for the better), and getting people of a certain age to understand just how much things have changed (for example, 40% of the wealth being held by the top 1% versus about 9% in their time) is difficult if not outright impossible.
 
Wealth inequality? Do you think that wealth should be distributed evenly for some reason? Who's job would that be?

Watch the video. Because clearly in order to make a statement like that, you couldn't have watched the video. Isn't there some sort of middle ground between total wealth equality (socialism) in which everyone has the same amount, and total laissez faire capitalism in which the rich have everything and everyone else has nothing? Making comments like that only muddies the water and prevents a much-needed discussion about wealth distribution.
 

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