[Stagnant]

"Wealth discrepancy" is just the way selfish, lazy and intolerant people talk. You don't have to take them seriously.

Are you for real? I mean, really? Wealth discrepancy doesn't exist/is not a factor? That's one of the most insane statements I've heard in a while. Jesus, this forum takes some getting used to. At least back on The Escapist, there was nobody making claims like this.

Not to complain that life is being unjust to you.

Except when it is. Except when there's no way to get ahead because you couldn't afford to get the secondary education needed for a *real* job, because you didn't have the capital to start your own business, or because you didn't have the credit to get said capital. Except that when you need to have money to get money, and the system is tellingly rigged in favor of those on top.

One of the more tellingly "out of touch" things in this whole article is the statement of "rich people spend other people's money". It's good advice, to be sure – if you can follow it. Well, you know what you need for other people to want to lend you money? Good credit. And good luck getting good credit if you are poor and have debt.

And then there's this.

Everyone in the first world has a more or less equally good opportunity to get rich.

This statement is so mind-blogglingly out of touch with reality that it makes me wonder if you actually even believe what you're saying. No, Baff, not everyone in the first world has a more or less equally good opportunity to get rich. A kid born in Harlem to a welfare mother with an AWOL/dead father does not have the same chances to be rich as a kid born to a rich family in Los Angeles with close industry ties. Their opportunities throughout their lives, regardless of their choices (barring something insanely stupid, such as the rich kid running away and disowning his family, or a freak accident, such as the poor kid winning the lottery), are simply so immensely different that there is no reasonable way to assert a claim like this. You're wrong. Period.

It's not 100% equal, but it's close enough to satisfy all but those who are acting on jealousy.

Not. Even. Close. Look, I'm sorry, but if you think your chances of being rich are equal to those of someone born rich when you are born into a lower-class family, then you are deluded. If you think that they are close to equal, then you are still deluded.

So if you feel you need more opportunities to get rich, then make yourself some.

Hey, great idea! Why doesn't everyone do that?

...Oh wait...



"Make yourself some". What a facile and oversimplistic way of hand-waving away the woes of those who are worse-off. This whole mentality DISGUSTS me. "If you're not rich, it's entirely your own fault!" That's bullshit, and if you don't get that, then you are part of the problem.

Also, I think this thread has had enough time for me to say, without a shred of remorse: fuck Ayn Rand. Objectivism is the worst ethical philosophy.

[Baff]

Everyone who wants to... does go out and make more opportunities for themselves.
And everyone who doesn't want to, doesn't.

And whiners who don't want to either still whine on that it other peoples fault that they are lazy toerags. But it isn't. They are just lazy toe rags who exploit the better part of human nature by whining themselves into other peoples goods which if they could be arsed they could just as easily provide for themselves.

Are you for real? I mean, really? Wealth discrepancy doesn't exist/is not a factor? That's one of the most insane statements I've heard in a while. Jesus, this forum takes some getting used to. At least back on The Escapist, there was nobody making claims like this.

It exists and it's only relavent to lazy malcontents.

It makes no practical difference to me if you are mega rich as long as I still have the reasonable opportunity to get what I want, which I do.
The same is true of everyone.

It does however make an emotional difference to some people.
Some people feel short changed by the greater success of others.
Some people feel jealous, that other peoples wealth is not deserved by them. They are omniscient like god and they know who deserves what money just by looking at them or hearing their name.
Other people seek to find injustices to justify their political agendas. To foment class war and start a revolution that they see as the fastest method of improving their own personal wealths/status.

Obviously it is in the best intrests of society to completely ignore these people.
What they wish is to drag others down to their level when what ordinary members of society wants is opportunity to elevate their own intrests individually.

Those that seek to reward inefficiency over efficiency get ignored. As they should do.

Just becuase an idea sounds reasonable to you or will personally benefit you, doesn't mean I have to pay any attention to it or indeed that other people should.



In my country and indeed every first world country, everyone can afford secondary education.
Typically bank loans are avialable to all to cover this at subsidised rates. So you don't usually even have to cover the full costs yourself.
If you feel that the reduced price of that education is still more than you are willing to pay, then don't do it or find somewhere cheaper. The choice is yours.

But if you are just a selfish lazy and greedy type who doesn't value education unless someone else pays for it on his behalf.... who cares about you?
Boo hoo hoo if an adult has to pay for his own bills. Guess what, the rest of us all do too.

And if you get your money from you parents instead of your job or your bank, so what?
Why should I be upset about that.
I can still get my education too.
I am pleased for such people. Not desperately trying to fuck them up out of spiteful jealousy alone.



A kid born in Harlem gets free schooling providing him with all he educationally needs to get started.
After school if he has a good business plan and has perhaps aquired some practical experience in his field, he can go to a bank and get a loan.
And that's all you need.

There is as much opportunity for him to do this as anybody else.

The first world is not the third world. You will get free education, and banks will loan money to you if you have the right stuff.
Not every has that opportunity, everyone in the first world does, however.


I don't care if my chances of getting rich are the same as another persons.
If you are the kind of person who is intending to leave this to chance... you aren't going to be getting rich.

So I'm not intresting in pandering to you at all.
A person who has no intention of getting rich in the first place does not need society weighting the system to provide him with a greater opportunity to do something he doesn't want to do...especially if it comes at the expense of those people who do want to do it and are already doing it or have already done it.

So we aren't going to nerf the ability of people who want to get rich to do so, just because you hate them.
You aren't going to get rich. You aren't trying to get rich. No amount of "opportunity" will make you rich. You still have to make yourself rich.
(And just because you try to make yourself rich and the opportunity is there, is no guarentee that you will ever get rich either. You will still need to get lucky, no matter how smart motivated or well financed you are).

You don't have an equal opportunity to get rich as some others do because primarily because your attitude inhibits you. You hate rich people and blame them for your lack of comparative success.

But that's not the reason for it.
That is just a tiny insignificance compared to having the right attitude.

Having the wrong atttiude = no chance.
Having a parental backed loan for your business instead of bank backed loan might save you a percent in intrest rates or whatever.
It's certainly an advantage, but hardly a game changing one.


Anyway, life is not about comparing financial penis sizes.
It doesn't matter if other people are richer than you or have an easier life than you.
All that matters is that you can find a comfortable niche for yourself.

[Stagnant]

Everyone who wants to... does go out and make more opportunities for themselves.
And everyone who doesn't want to, doesn't.

Horseshit.

It exists and it's only relavent to lazy malcontents.

Double horseshit.

In my country and indeed every first world country, everyone can afford secondary education.

More bullshit.

A kid born in Harlem gets free schooling providing him with all he educationally needs to get started.
After school if he has a good business plan and has perhaps aquired some practical experience in his field, he can go to a bank and get a loan.
And that's all you need. There is as much opportunity for him to do this as anybody else.

Oh for the love of god.

Dude, you are so wrong on so many levels.

First of all, a discrepancy in opportunity is meaningless. An institutionalized discrepancy, which makes it harder for those on the bottom to ever change their situation, is a problem. It means a society that has devolved to a plutocracy. Do you deny that social mobility is crucial to the success of a society? This is what programs like the Pell Grants and other social programs help change – the centralization of wealth at the top inherent to pure capitalistic systems. However, it's clear that there are further problems that need to be looked at.

After school if he has a good business plan

If. Now where would he learn how to make a good business plan? In school? Yeah, that's not likely given the state of education in such places. He's certainly not likely to get that advice from a mother who never earned much more than minimum wage in her life; meanwhile, a rich child can usually rely either on his parents directly or on private tutors to help build such plans. Also, on the subject of schooling, it seems that dropout rates are considerably higher among the poor than the rich. While his has gotten considerably better over time, it's still worth noting that this is another one of those issues.

In fact, the whole worldview that we all have a chance to be rich in life seems to be proven wrong by every possible metric. But let me make sure I'm not burning down a straw man here. Do you:
– Believe that everyone has equal opportunity?
– Believe that while everyone doesn't have equal opportunity, these differences are so small as to be irrelevant?
– Believe that everyone has different opportunity, but nobody is prevented from becoming rich through lack thereof?

Help me out here.

[QatzelOk]

Rich people think selfishness is a virtue.

Cancer agrees.

While healthy cells grow to a certain ideal size, cancer - like the rich - continues to expand until it kills its host organism.

[Baff]

First of all, a discrepancy in opportunity is meaningless.

Then there is zero reason to give a shit about it.


A good business plan is not something you learn in school. It's not something you are born with or that your parents having money provides.
The ability to write however is.
So you have the skills to present a good business plan to a bank or investor. You also have the maths skills you require to keep book.
To make good busines plan, you have to understand the business,

If your mum is on the minimum wage, so what? So is mine.
Are you suggesting that people from the working classes never advance their wealth?
I can tell you right now that this is not the case. I'm living proof. Plenty of my peers are also.

It is important to recognise that only a very few people in life will get rich. Very few people will achieve vastly more productivity than the national average.
So we aren't going to waste a butt load of time and resources trying to support those members of our society who least need the support.
We simply have no reason to give people a better opportunity to get rich.
They already have the best opportunity to do so in the world. Our charitable contributions are better spent elesewhere.

Social mobility in my country is excellent. Not as excellent as it is in say the USA but still excellent. Top 10.
I used to live in the smallest house in the village. I now live in the largest.
Life being the game of Snakes and Ladders that it is, I fully expect to go back to the smallest house in the village at some point.


Can you give me an example of someone in your country who could not afford secondary education please.
Can you explain to me why they were refused a state backed student loan that is available to all?

I think that you would like to believe that people can't afford seconadary education in your country, but that this is very far removed from being the truth of the matter.

[Arthur2sheds_Jackson]

Average people think MONEY is the root of all evil. Rich people believe POVERTY is the root of all evil.

And by staying rich, and not actively combatting poverty, they add to the evil.

Brilliant

[Baff]

Average people of all incomes think money is something to be aquired and poverty is something to be avoided.

The main difference here is that rich people demonstrably know how to avoid poverty and poor people either don't or don't find the compromises needed to do so to be worth their time.

Poor people giving lessons to others on how to escape poverty is perhaps a lesson no one needs pay any attention to.
However when a rich person does so... wise men listen.

[Pants-of-dog]

Baff, you really like telling people how to behave, don't you?

None of your posts contain any facts or evidence and seem to be filled mainly by your opinion as to how others should behave.

[oppose_obama]

The only poverty one must combat is ones own.

[Pants-of-dog]

The only poverty one must combat is ones own.

This is probably one of the 21 ways that Rich People Think Differently.

Others, such as socialists and liberal sorts and Christians, seem to think that fighting the poverty of your neighbour is also a Good Thing.

[oppose_obama]

They can do whatever they want, if they want to use the coercive power of the state to do so they can go fuck themselves. I'm in this game for me, and I'm also learning now to use the government for my own purposes :)

[Pants-of-dog]

They can do whatever they want, if they want to use the coercive power of the state to do so they can go fuck themselves. I'm in this game for me, and I'm also learning now to use the government for my own purposes

Yes. You are very tough and smart.

Anyway, we already use the coercive power of the state to alleviate extreme poverty, and the majority of people more or less support such measures. Mind you, there are also many selfish reasons for not wanting large groups of extremely poor people living near you. By paying taxes, taxpayers avoid such problems.

[Stagnant]

<stupid crap>

Yeah, no. Your unevidenced platitudes largely fly in the face of reality, and by ignoring inconvenient facts, you can get away with a clean conscience, despite acting like a total twit. I'm sorry, but I'm done. You can save that crap for a more gullible audience.

[Consistency]

The status quo is not nature; far from it.

It is the government, and the oligopoly of business owners, who are the largest determinants of which traits are rewarded with wealth and which traits are punished with poverty.

The trait of selfishness is indeed rewarded with wealth... because the legislators have made it so, by granting huge tax breaks for parasitic capital gains, and having no regulations on prices for products or services.

Also artificially rewarded is the inefficient trait of laborious authoritarian subservience, through the educational system, and government and business hiring policies which support said system, and in business hierarchies in which people 'climb the ladder' over long periods of time.

[Baff]

Baff, you really like telling people how to behave, don't you?

None of your posts contain any facts or evidence and seem to be filled mainly by your opinion as to how others should behave.

And all of your posts are trolls.

Frankly I much prefer no evidence at all to outright deliberate lies, willful misreprensentations or linking to things that I either haven't read or didn't understand to "prove" my opinion to people who do not share it.

As for telling people how to behave, I like to lead by example as a preference.
To show people how I behave.

I don't hold any great expectation of others to want to follow suit, however.

[Baff]

[Baff"]<stupid crap>

Yeah, no. Your unevidenced platitudes largely fly in the face of reality, and by ignoring inconvenient facts, you can get away with a clean conscience, despite acting like a total twit. I'm sorry, but I'm done. You can save that crap for a more gullible audience.

And yet you so consistently unwilling to refute any of them even though you obviously don't wish for them to be true.
And that's why you are done.

Because the inconveniant to you facts I speak of are ones you are desperately seeking to ignore. You have no counters to them, because there aren't any.
The evidence of my own life is all that I feel I need to both hold and share an opinion.
You are welcome to troll instead of addressing them if you prefer.

Oh and for the record. I'm not acting. I really am a twit.

[Baff]

The status quo is not nature; far from it.

It is the government, and the oligopoly of business owners, who are the largest determinants of which traits are rewarded with wealth and which traits are punished with poverty.

The trait of selfishness is indeed rewarded with wealth... because the legislators have made it so, by granting huge tax breaks for parasitic capital gains, and having no regulations on prices for products or services.

Also artificially rewarded is the inefficient trait of laborious authoritarian subservience, through the educational system, and government and business hiring policies which support said system, and in business hierarchies in which people 'climb the ladder' over long periods of time.

Yes and no.
I think that the state and "big business" certainly have the power to be the biggest influences over where value is placed in society if only for their control over such large amoiunts of socieies spendings.

But as an individual the largest determinant of which traits of mine are financially rewarded are not decided by the government or any big corp. But rather they are decided by my employers who are neither.
And I think for most people this is also true.

[Stagnant]

And yet you so consistently unwilling to refute any of them even though you obviously don't wish for them to be true.
And that's why you are done.

No. They fly in the face of reality, they actively and unfairly demean those who tried and failed or are trying and not succeeding, and it ignores the reality of the situation: whether or not you become rich has just as much to do with sheer dumb luck as anything else. If you were right, there would be a hell of a lot more rich people. However, the economy can only really support so many mega-rich, so that clearly couldn't work.

[Baff]

Are you willing to expand on which ones you think fly in the face of what reality and perhaps how you came to form said conclusion in that instance?



Getting rich is not as easy as having a good attitude or a good education, ready access to finance or knowing what do and being willing to do it.
It also takes dedication, devotion and luck.
Right person, right time, right place.

You need to have all of these things.

2/3 doesn't work.
1/3 doesn't work
0/3 doesn't work.


Getting rich takes a number of exceptional requirements. Or at least, so my rich friends tell me.
No.1 you are exceptionally capable.
No.2 you are exceptionally motivated.
No.3 you are exceptionally lucky.

In any group of people there are now have always been and always will be, exceptional people.
Knowing how to run, knowing how to exercise and having the dedication to be the fastest runner in the world does not a Usain Bolt make.

However, If you do not 1) know how to train your body, 2) have the dedication and devotion to practise for your whole life 3) really really really want to be the worlds fastest runner... you never will be, even if you have the exact same genetics as Mr Bolt.

As with many things in life, having everything you need does not guarentee success. Not having everything you need, however, still guarentee's failure.




The reason why there are not so many more rich people is because what I am describing is not in any way an easy thing to do.
It might sound easy when all we are doing is reading a handful of sentences about it, but it isn't

It's one thing to say that you need to work 12+hours a day 6-7 days a week in multiple jobs, week in week out for 50 years, all the while being very careful not to spend you money on the same luxuries your peers consider to be routine expenditures.... to get rich and it's an easy concept to understand.
It's quite another thing entirely to actually do it.





However it should not be lost on you that there are still very large numbers of rich people in developed countries.
That there are very much more rich people here than elsewhere.
And this is the reality I recognise.


So without getting rich being something you should ever consider to easily achievable....

There are indeed a lot of rich people around here. More than almost anywhere else or at any other time..
So clearly when it comes to getting rich, our (dare I call them capitalist?) systems provide very good opportunties indeed.
Probably the best in the history of mankind, I suspect.


I would also suggest that far from our economies supporting the mega rich, that it is more true to say the mega rich are supporting our economies. (Obviously there is a level of interdependance here, but I consider entrepreneurs to be the instigators of economic activity and not the byproducts of it).
There is as much room in every economy for as many mega rich who wish to participate in it. (Except perhaps France who only seem to have the economic room for their own mega rich in Belgium. Doh)



Now, while getting rich maybe extraordinarily difficult to do, even if substantially less so in our societies than most, but...
Getting wealthy is not.
In fact in our developed societies getting wealthy is the norm.

What we absolutely don't have to worry about too hard is providing more opportunities for people to get "mega rich".
Most of us feel that we have close to enough already.
Instead we prefer to focus our attentions on the opportunities to become more wealthy as individuals.

Now, some people of more limited vision, they may see that they can become more wealthy as an individual by taking money off the rich.
And that this is the path of least resistance for them.
They don't want to work 12+ hours day 6+ days a week for many decades with no guarentee of success and every possibility of losing every thing they own to boot. (And nor do I).
They see an alternative easier route to their increased wealth and that is through a political process.
Rather than risk their whole lives in an endeavour that is more likely to fail than it is succeed... they intend instead to just gang up and steal from those who have and did succeed.
An that to my mind is both morally wrong, anti-social and economically nihilistic. Plenty of others can justify it of course, but I am unable to.

[Brother of Karl]

Baff seems like it's not the money he loves so much, but the gloating part. He seems to be here mostly to attempt to justify his beliefs. It's almost as pathetic as Russkie.

That said, I had no major disagreements with the article. I'm a liberal. Not a communist.