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Incentives. For every dollar you put into the community that's one less you have to spend. After that offer discounts on everything. Gradually you should end up where the rich people aren't so rich, but are getting a free ticket and the poor aren't so poor and are actually living at a good standard.

But that's just a thought that took 5 seconds.

Any rich people here who want to go on record as saying they've never been poor and/or never give to charity?

Poor people discussing affluent people's finances and financial decisions is so laughable. Charities are used to get the best tax breaks at tax time. 2% of all other "rich person" giving is truely because they care. Why do they care? Usually a vested interest of some sort, like a disease, etc.

Is it really? Do you actually know that for a fact? Or are you just repeating something you heard? Also. What exactly is "wealth for wealth's sake"?



Ok. I'll go over it again. The wealth that's "locked up" in the top percentage of the US is *not* just sitting in a vault somewhere. That's where you aren't getting it. Every single penny of "wealth" owned by those richest people is sitting in various investments. The gain on those investments primarily rolls back into more investment. That wealth, rather then just sitting somewhere, is represented in funds that are available for bank loans. Heck. That pool of wealth is where the money for loans comes from. Get rid of it and you can't buy a car, or a house, or start a business. Think about that.

That wealth helps you and I and every other US citizen every single day. It's what builds the new products that we build. How many people on this forum own a cell phone? How many owned one 10 years ago? Why do you supposed that is? It's because a portion of the "wealth" owned by that top 1% was put into researching and developing new and better cell phones. Why are we even on this forum today? Because a portion of that same wealth was invested into this newfangled thing called the internet. The computers we're all using to view this forum? Built as an investment expense from that same pool of wealth. Your TV at home? Result of investment of wealth. Your DVD player? Wealth. Your stereo? Wealth. The airbags in your car? Came from wealth. Antilock breaks? From wealth.

Every single thing you have around you in your home was designed and built and brought to market because someone who had "wealth" invested that money into building that product. At some point, that particular thing did not exist. Someone had to invent it. Someone had to research it. Someone had to develop the technology until it was a marketable product. All of that cost money. None of that will happen unless there's a large amount of "wealth" in your economy held by people who don't spend it on consumption (ie: wealthy people).

You can in fact, chart a direct relationship between the percentage of a nations money that's tied up in "wealth" held by the richest members of their economy and the rate at which that nation develops new and better products that benefit everyone.

In otherwords, the wealth that's "locked up" in the hands of the richest percent of the population continually improves your standard of living. Every single day, your life gets better because they have that money. Yes. We *could* take that money away and put it into health care. But then we'd stagnate that technological and economic growth. We'd provide more of what currently exists to the people. Consumption would increase, but you can only consume what already exists. You can consume items that have already been invented and developed and put on the shelves for you to buy. But no matter how much money we hand to "the people" to spend, that money will *never* cause a "new" product to appear on those shelves.


The thought experiment for the day is to do the following. Pretend you have a time machine. Go back 30 years in time. Change the economic system of the US in *exactly* the way you've described. Take that money away from the rich. Remove their wealth. Take away their ability to increase that wealth. Ensure that our taxes redistribute it constantly from that pool of "locked up" wealth and out to the people in the form of health benefits, education, housing, etc.

Now. Get back in your time machine and go back to the present. Will the internet exist? Will home computers exist? Will cell phones exist? Will DVDs exist? If you think they will, explain to me how. Because I'm positive that they wont.


When you tax the wealthy, you don't really tax them. You tax yourself. You tax your future. Because that's what they're doing with that money. Investing it in the future. I'm frankly amazed that so many people can't see that.

I'm curious what you're getting at with this question. Are you asking for people who started out poor/working class and have *not* become wealthy? Because I'm sure there's a lot of them.

Or are you asking for someone who was born wealthy and is now still wealthy to come forth? Seems to me the lack of respondants is because most people really do accumulate their own wealth rather then inheriting it. For every guy who inherits a 100M plus estate, there's a thousand people who earned a couple million by working hard and investing. I don't think it's a hard bit of math to understand.

I ask because every single "I'm successful!" story is identical.

I'm not even asking someone to admit they were the sole child of the owner of an oil empire. I'd be satisfied with someone saying "Yeah, I was raised in an upper class white neighborhood of suburbia, went to a great school and my parents paid most of my way through college before I got my job". I mean, those children raised in upper or even the better end of middle-class homes have to be somewhere, right?

Nope.. every single "rich" person who has ever posted their life story on the forum started out the foundling child of carnies who was raised under a bridge and had to collect puddle-worms after a rainstorm to sell and make enough money to buy rags.

Ok. I see where you're going with this. But it's a strawman argument really. What point does it prove? That some people do indeed inherit wealth? No one's arguing that doesn't happen.

However, some people *were* arguing that the only way to be wealthy is to inherit it. It seems kind of obvious that the anecdotal examples that will appear will be those that debunk that assumption. Now. If you want to argue that no one who's raised in a wealthy family succeeds in life, I'm sure you'll get a few people who'll give examples to counter you. But that *wasn't* the issue being debated.

I'm not trying to "prove" anything. I'm pointing out a statement of fact: every single person on this forum in all the time I've been here who claims any substantial wealth has some little boot-strap story of hardship and misery they pull out and dust off whenever a thread about wealth earning & distribution comes up. Without exception.

I find that exceptionally strange and perhaps suspicious but I don't expect it'll make anyone recant or change any opinions. Just bringing it up.

/shrug

There's a lot of overlap in logical fallacies.

His argument is probably best described as a "false dilemma", since he's essentially arguing that a lack of posts about people growing up in wealthy homes implies a falsehood to the posts about people growing up in poor homes. But the two are not interrelated in anyway. A lack of one says nothing about the other.

It's *also* a strawman arguement because of the way he uses it. In context, he's implying that a lack of posts from wealthy kids counters the posts from poor kids who became wealthy. But this in turn is used to counter the broader argument that wealth can be accumulated by anyone (even poor people) who invest their money. He replaces the argument: "We started poor and became wealthy, so anyone can", with the strawman: "There are no posts from wealthy kids who stayed wealthy, so you're arguing that all the wealthy people must have started out poor", and attacks *that* position instead of the one actually stated by his opponents in the debate.


There's a few other's that are close matches. "Burden of proof" comes close, for example, since he's requiring us to prove our position using criteria that is patently unreasonable for the situation. I could probably dig up a few more. I just chose to rattle off one name that applied and most people could recongize.

I'm not trying to "prove" anything. I'm pointing out a statement of fact: every single person on this forum in all the time I've been here who claims any substantial wealth has some little boot-strap story of hardship and misery they pull out and dust off whenever a thread about wealth earning & distribution comes up. Without exception.

Acutually I just got lucky timing wise with real estate and stocks.

Might as well have just taken my net worth and put it on 27 in Vegas when I was 20.

First off, with some rare exceptions, there's no such thing as as an "aside statement". He chose to make the statement in this thread for a very specific reason. Even if he doesn't spell out the argument, he *is* making one. In exactly the way someone who casually asks "I wonder where those WMDs went?" during a discussion of the war in Iraq is also making an argument.

Secondly, you actually left something out. The key point is that these rags to riches stories come out whenever we have a debate about economics. They're brought up for the same reason every time. Someone makes a claim that it's impossible for a poor person to become wealthy, so the handful of people on this forum with direct experience to the contrary respond with their stories.

The "rich brats" are presumably here. But they have no position to defend by telling their stories, so you don't hear them. Start a thread claiming that all children of the wealthy end up in rehab, or are spoiled brats, or anything else, and you *might* just get some responses.




Are you trying to argue that Joph didn't ask that question in an attempt to discredit the rags to riches stories? He just randomly happened to ask why no one's posted about how they started in a wealthy home for no particular reaason at all?

If he's not making a point, how can I be countering with a strawman? A strawman argument requires that I change the other guy's argument and argue against the changed argument instead of the real one. If he isn't making a argument, then there can be no strawman on my part and your point doesn't hold water. And if he *is* making a point with his statement, and not just randomly musing as you seem to want to believe, then I'm *still* right because he is attempting to argue that a lack of posts from people born into wealth somehow disproves the posts from those not born into wealth. Again. The lack of posts by wealthy kids doesn't prove or disprove anything. There is no rule of logic that requires a representative number of posts from differen't economic backrounds in order for my story to be true.


Joph is certainly free to muse on that question if he wishes. But I'm *also* free to point out that his musings have no bearing on the validity of other people's stories about their economic fortunes. Hence my initial response. You will note that I didn't start talking about a logical fallacy in Joph's statement until I'd already responded about the irrelevancy of Joph's statement and Joph kept repeating it and insisting that it was a relevant observation/question.

Lol. You'd also think someone with that many posts (yeah. I'm looking at your number now) would know what *isn't* a hijack.

"Hey. Those poor people can fend for themselves just fine. Who likes bagles?" <- hijack

"Yeah, but how 'bout them Bears?" <- hijack


Joph's post <- not a hijack...

My grandpa was filthy rich, my dad was filthy rich, now I'm filthy rich.




Although that statement isn't true, I just thought I'd help Joph out.

j/k