I met a farmer who was bitching about welfare and how people should do some proper work to make a proper wage.
Yeah. Dude worked his entire life. Yeah, dude worked hard on his farm to make it make money.
Dude is completely OBLIVIOUS that he was handed a multi-million $$$ farm with basic equipment from his father, taught by his father how to run the farm since an early age, never had to train himself, pay for education, or start from nothing.
So yeah… some of them do work hard all their lives, but are completely tone-deaf to the fact they were given the tools to do so in the first place.
Dude probably gets tons of farm subsidies from the government, too. But that doesn’t count as “welfare” because the people who get welfare are “urban”.
And they make something that they just get rid of rather than distribute to other countries that could use them. The amount of waste is astounding.
Funnily enough. Both, per capita and per volume, billionaires are the number 1 recipient of state welfare.
This is even researched by letting people play Monopoly and giving one person aan advantage, like double money at start. Usually the advantaged one wins and will attribute that win on their great strategy or something.
Well I wouldn’t take farmers as an example for someone rich doing nothing. They usually work their ass off 7 days a week and live quite in poverty. They have a lot of assets but no money to spend. The cast majority of them at least
Potentially true of the small family farm perhaps, but that’s a dying breed. Many farms are owned by large groups these days.
In France, a majority of farmers don’t meet the minimum salary
A farmer who was handed a multi-million dollar farm at birth is still significantly more advantaged than a staggering majority of people, doesn’t mean they dont work hard, but it would take most people all the good years of their lives working just as hard or harder to build up to where that farmer started. Assuming they even make it to that point.
For a while, I kept seeing memes like these and thinking, “Who actually says/believes these things about [m/b]illionaires?”
Then it unlocked an old memory from grade school where we were given a list of, like, ten things millionaires do with dumb shit like, “Get up early in the morning,” “Have a daily schedule,” and, “Keep a journal.”
Yeah seems like every month there is some random trash article along the lines of “Warren Buffet’s tips to frugal living” with shit like don’t eat out listed…… no it’s because he was the son of a congressman, he won the birth lottery, go fuck yourself for trying to push that bullshit narrative lol
Buffett is like the worst person you could use as an example. He routinely says he was set up for success by luck.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/04/warren-buffett-says-the-key-to-his-success-is-luck.html
Buffett says, he and Munger won the real-life version of the ovarian lottery and that helped launch them into their immense success. “I mean, Charlie — when we were born the odds were over 30-to-1 against being born in the United States, you know? Just winning that portion of the lottery, enormous plus,” he says.
He also points out that he and Munger were both born male and white, which gave them further advantages from the start.
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The point is that there is more than enough wealth in developed economies that, if society was structured differently, everyone would be able to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle (within reason) without having to worry about “cutting back”.
The people who have the privilege to have more money than they could ever spend did not get there through being “better” than anyone else by most definitions, they got there through privilege - or at least, on the majority of cases.
Your response is pragmatic given the reality that we live in. It bears to keep in mind though that many, or most, developed economies are currently regressing. Luxuries are becoming more out of reach, not less, for the majority of the population, despite the fact we are more productive than at any point in history.
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That isn’t the discussion at hand. We are talking about articles framing advice from people who will never want for anything as a panacea for being lower class. Sure, be financially responsible. People like me are tired of being told that financial responsibility will inevitably lead to financial freedom because it just isn’t true.
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protestant work ethic horseshit. especially in the US we love doing things in the most miserable ways because that inherently makes them better for you, apparently
like tim cook wakes up at 3AM every day. he doesn’t need to. he just does it because his material condition is so incredibly incomprehensible to the human brain, he has to pick the most miserable thing he can think of to make it seem justified
Left chart is also correct, it’s just your hard work and can-do attitude that makes them rich.
Hey, the right one isn’t true!
Where’s “not paying taxes” and “making deals with the mafia”?
That’s part of the green bit.
And manipulating tax law, don’t forget about that.
I’m not sure the second one should be a pie chart, more of a Venn diagram with both circles almost completely overlapping.
I have a friend working for a law farm. I constantly hear about children of celebrities working in that “profession”.
On a related note, when I listen to the friend, the employees’ project management skills are not that effective (baring few people). It’s more like a social game done in a hive. They make big money by
- taking advantage of disliked coworkers who will be exploited and overtasked
- collaborating with select friends they like to hang around
In simple terms, they share the pie with friends while passing the shitty job to select few. In the end, your task is to win this friendship game. The rich child can win this game without a professional skill, and you can lose even if you had one.
Those who manage their friends well enough can get promotion in this system.
It’s basically a social game for rich children, and some clients pay like 1k/h to keep the game going.
I think the one on the left is the first generation, the one on the right the second generation. When you think of the uber rich they are usually second or third generation but upper middle class can come from not much.
It is a lot of hard work mercilessly exploiting the working class, and you have to have a lot of gumption to pretend it is a good thing - but the rich CAN DO IT.
You forgot the “birth lottery AND exploiting workers” category
The left side is technically yellow, there’s just overlap.
That one’s not a pie chart, it’s a Venn diagram.
Also just lottery (not like state sponsored perse) but some people do just get lucky later in life.
Trump is equal-parts. The little trust fund child got $412 million from daddy over the years, and then he proceeded to exploit people.
… But now, Mary Trump is probably richer than he is. Actually most people probably are now.
i certainly feel less hate for billionaires that actually did something to benefit society [taylor swift, gates, etc] versus nameless faceless banker reptiles that simply move money around and live unimaginably vast and free lives, completely undeserving of any of it
How is Taylor Swift benefiting the society?
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She’s not a billionare yet.
I know a bunch of rich people (people with net assets in the millions to 10’s or even 100’s of millions). Only one of them believes or claims the left circle. He’s a douchy failure who did nothing with his life, got a bunch of money from his parents and is now a slumlord.
The rest of them would laugh at that graph.
If you actually talk to those people some of them will admit to “bending the rules”. They don’t actually want to break any laws, because that puts them at risk, but they’ll regularly push the boundaries of the interpretation of those laws. They also work incredibly hard. Almost everyone I know works 50+ hours per week. The richer people typically do 60+. 80+ is rare and typically only the first few years of their career while they’re trying to establish themselves. They also realize that there is a large amount of luck involved and aren’t shy about discussing it. Some of it is birth, some of it is geographic location, some of it is the timing of external events.
Many of them never interact professionally with “the working class” at all. They’re often tech people and the entire company is full of people with 6 figure salaries. There are literally no working class people in those companies to exploit.
Their company is comprised of working class employees.
You’re confusing working poor with working class.
If you must work survive you are working class.
People earning six figure salaries are not necessarily wealthy enough to stop working and it’s more rare they can immediate retire from any future work without a major hit to quality of life.
I also question how many of those 50+ hours are real work. The rich like to include social activities as work. Anyone who claims they are always working is full of themselves.
This has been my experience also.
