How Rich People Get Rich

[MrScorpio]

[phasma ex machina]

1. Rich people make (buy) their own luck so in reality 100% comes from merciless exploitation. nt

[hughee99]

7. So how would one get from "not rich" to "rich"?

It certainly isn't normal, or guaranteed in any way through effort, but it does happen. If someone starts out "not rich" how can they afford to "buy" luck?

[phasma ex machina]

10. They find a wealthy patron who needs some dirty work done. Like Julius Caesar making his services

available to Crassus.

If you prefer Americana Dream Time, you got IBM Chairman Watson getting his start by beating up people for NCR's Patterson.

[hughee99]

14. I was thinking about Michael Moore,

and Ben & Jerry's co-founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield.

[phasma ex machina]

15. Touche. Allow me to roll back my cynicism a bit.

[brewens]

2. They inherit before they exploit usually. n/t

[alittlelark]

3. +1000

[Ikonoklast]

4. This is the correct answer.

By sheer numbers, the way most people in this country become millionaires is they inherited it.

[HughBeaumont]

5. That first one should read . . .

. . .. (according to rich people and the "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" who defend them)

[dimbear]

6. Show me a man who made a million from scratch and I'll show you a man who just

missed going to jail.


Old saying.

[drdtroit]

8. The chart needs to include nepotism n/t

[HiPointDem]

9. Inheritance. Theft.

[baldguy]

22. +1000

Extreme wealth is an obscenity.

[hfojvt]

11. yeah, what about inheritance?

and who is rich?

Isn't Bill Clinton rich? What about JK Rowling? What about Emma Watson? She's made over $16 million making Harry Potter movies.

I guess that would fit the "luck" part, although she presumably had to win an audition, and did not get the part from a random drawing. But I don't see a lot of "merciless exploitation" involved there.

What about Tiger Woods? Or Peyton Manning? Luck? Merciless exploitation? Or are they not "really" rich?

I don't think there is an easy generalization to say how rich people got rich. Sometimes they do have the ability and drive to get the better paying jobs. Sometimes they claw their way to the "top". Sometimes they invent something, or market something. Sometimes they run a scam, like Amway or Payday loans.

I don't wanna demonize them or stereotype them, I just want them to pay higher marginal tax rates, like they did in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s - three very prosperous decades for America.

[phasma ex machina]

12. Small fry. How many trillions is Rockefeller or Rothschild worth? The wealthy that mass media never

talks about.

[hfojvt]

13. so what if there are a few people who are even richer?

Does that somehow make $16 million "NOT rich"?

I don't buy that for a second.

And nobody is worth even one trillion. According to Forbes, the richest man in America, William Gates is only worth $59 billion, and the 2nd richest, Warren Buffet, is worth $39 billion and 3rd, Harlan Ellison, is worth $33 billion, then come my fake uncles David and Charlie at $25 billion.

The only Rockefeller is David, 159th with $2.5 billion, and there are no Rothschilds in the top 400.

What happened to their money? Perhaps inflation, perhaps inheritance. There are 4 Waltons in the top 15. Their collective net worth, which once belonged to just Sammy, is $87 billion. That would make Sammo first. Yet divided they are 6th, 9th, 10th and 11th. Let that wealth be divided over two more generations and they will fall out of the top 100.

Funny thing about $59 billion, is that it is not all that much. There are, after all, 110 million+ households in the United States. In 2002, 8.5% of them had a net worth between $25,000 and $50,000. Taking the bottom value of $25,000 times .085 times 110 million gives me $233,750 million. Or $233.75 billion - at the least. Collectively, even that small, and fairly poor, group has 4 times as much wealth as Bill Gates.

[phasma ex machina]

16. And I don't buy Forbes for a second. So, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

[hfojvt]

19. that's not much of an argument

Do you buy the GDP?

The US GDP is currently $15 trillion. According to IRS estimates the top .1% got 7.8% of all taxable income. The richest 400 only got 1.59% of all income. Which is only .24 trillion. Divide that by the 400 people and you get just .0006 trillion - a mere 600 million.

Even IF you ASSUME that is off by a factor of ten, and then quadruple it because the richest members of the group are making much more than the "poorest" members of the Fab 400. That's only income of $24 billion per year for the richest person. Even if they saved all of it, and spent none of it on lavish living, it would take 42 years to accumulate $1 trillion.

That's not so long, but one other trouble is that 42 years ago - in 1970, the US GDP was only $1.04 trillion. Also, even as recently as 1995, the Fab 400 were only getting .49% of the total income. Thus, their average income would only be .013 billion or a mere $12.7 million. It becomes even harder to accumulate $1 trillion in wealth if you are "only" making $500 million a year.

But even IF, by some financial miracle, somebody, somewhere, somehow has $1 trillion in wealth. Well, I, with a mere pile of 16 (million) can buy a really, really fancy house with, say $2 million, put my remaining wealth in tax free bonds at 1% interest and take home $140,000 a year tax free. Which happens to be more income than 90% of the rest of the country makes.

Which may be too poor to fall in love, but I am too young to know.

[foo_bar]

17. Harlan Ellison? Mr. It's-not-SciFi-dammit?

Or is that the love child of Larry Ellison and Harland Sanders? I don't think even L. Ron Hubbard made that kind of scratch.

[phasma ex machina]

18. How many trillions are in offshore trust fund accounts?

[The Doctor.]

20. All three in that top diagram could be wedged into a 10% sliver of the bottom one.

Then you'd have an almost perfectly accurate pie chart. Not quite as funny, but still terribly unflattering to the rich... and uncomfortably true.

[Wounded Bear]

21. They make their money the old fashioned way......

They inherit it.

The most common source of wealth is genetics.