9 ms·
What the Rich Won't Tell You
- SubiculumCode 9y agoIf you feel embarrassed that your maid will know you buy $6 bread, buy $3 bread and give your maid $3. Instead, they peel the sticker off.
- oculusthrift 9y agoThat 6 dollars is going to the bread maker who can then feed their family and the family of their employees while being proud of the work. Not sure why the nanny should get free money instead while the bread maker is left to dry.
- Retra 9y agoThe baker is still getting paid.
- oculusthrift 9y ago3 dollar bread = corporate conglomerate fake stuff. 6 dollar bread = local baker artisan Nanny = give me more money for free because i deserve it by virtue of existing
- plandis 9y agoI think the point is that if you, as an individual, feel bad about your spending habits then perhaps a change is in order? If the root of the problem is that your embarrassed by the inequality you might be showing to others than perhaps working towards ending the inequality might be a more productive use of your capital. I'm not the original poster but that's how I read it.
- sillysaurus3 9y agoThere's nothing wrong with buying $6 bread or having many cars or whatever. You don't need to flagellate yourself just because you have money. It's just life. Even if we tear everything down and rebuilt from first principles, some would have more and others less. By six orders of magnitude. It's just inescapable. Even communist countries were like that. The rich person hate is pretty dopey. There's a subreddit /r/LateStageCapitalism that actively breeds hate against rich people the same way /r/coontown bred hate against blacks. It's just somehow more socially acceptable to post online about killing rich people than minorities. There was literally a comment that was talking over the merits of stabbing Musk just for being a wealthy capitalist. I'm not sure where I'm going with this comment other than to say it's a very strange time we live in. The whole "us vs them" mentality isn't healthy. There's no reason they should feel bad about buying $6 bread just because they can.
- pharrington 9y agoIt seems that no small part of most people's social nature is aversion to perceived unfairness, from within or without.
- nickthemagicman 9y ago/r/LateStageCapitalism is not about breeding hate against the rich? I just went there and not a single post on any page I went to had a hateful post towards the rich. Maybe there's one or two posts occasionally but there's 180,000 subscribers.... It's actually a really good subreddit about legit problems we're facing in ....Late Stage Capitalism.
- sillysaurus3 9y agohttps://i.imgur.com/OdUWQrE.jpg https://i.imgur.com/OdUWQrE.jpg https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20/gotta_deport_em/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20... Godda deport 'em! Kick those rich people out! They're destroying America. Get rid of those scumbags before they destroy you! Come on now. That's exactly what they're doing. https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20/gotta_deport_em/dmojuux/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/6yly20... "You spelled "confiscate their property, send them to gulag, and allow them to work their way back into society" wrong. Deporting the Bourgeoisie only inflicts them on another country."
- andrepd 9y agoYou're seriously this upset about (i) use of irony and (ii) commenters on an online forum?
- sillysaurus3 9y agoHere's what I almost tacked onto the end of my original comment: "In before someone defends them by saying it's sarcasm. Oh? So the people in /r/coontown who were being sarcastic about killing blacks is reprehensible, but this is somehow ok?" I didn't want to construct a strawman argument, but there you go. Dismissing online forums seems silly. Both HN and reddit have had a huge impact.
- Mikeb85 9y agoAs if 6 dollar loaves of bread even come with a sticker. For that price I'm getting an artisan boule that is tossed into a paper bag.
- breadthrow2 9y agoThe funny thing about worrying over the $6 dollar bread: what it really shows is that they have no idea how much anything costs at all for normal people. $6 is not a crazy price for a loaf of bread, which is a lot of food, and a loaf of plain, off-brand white bread costs $3 in NYC.
- conanbatt 9y agoI think people do these kinds of things all the time. People walk out of a starbucks with 4 dollar bagels everyday and pass homeless people. And people everyday choose to have something for themselves even though there is much more value to another individual if you donated it to them. The rich are vilified, and hence no-one wants to identify himself publicly to be a villain, as simple as that.
- wink 9y agoNot sure I get your example. I've never seen anyone stepping out of a Starbucks, passing a homeless person while hiding their coffee so it can't be seen. Or they were hiding it so well I also didn't see it ;)
- conanbatt 9y agoThe shame for having more than others is shared by a large portion of society. Hiding a label is just one manifestation.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- curiousgal 9y agoThis kinda reminds me of how my mother used to insist that we cleaned our rooms before the maid came because "What would she think of us?!".
- oculusthrift 9y agoi mean we had to do that too. (not maid but housekeeper) I always assumed it's because their job is vacuuming and cleaning surfaces, not cleaning up the kids mess off the floor
- nsxwolf 9y agoExactly. How are they supposed to even know where all your stuff goes?
- grzm 9y agoDiscussion two days ago; 43 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15199197 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15199197
- throwaway8341 9y agoMy dad is retired, I'm 20 years old, he's 49. I just say he's an investor. I used to explain to people how it was possible for him to be retired, without being a movie star or lottery winner with index funds, but they looked at me like I was selling a Ponzi scheme. I guess me making a throwaway for this says something.
- ams6110 9y agoNot a scheme at all. My parents lived comfortably off their investments after retirement. They had accumulated close to $2M. Combined income never topped $75,000 in their best years. How? They lived modestly, spent money judiciously, and always saved for tomorrow.
- KGIII 9y agoI was 49 when I sold my company and retired. Yes, building a business is an investment.
- randyrand 9y agoMost rich people are rich because they are frugal, save money, and invest. The person this is about is the exception not the rule.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoBULL.
- andrepd 9y agoOne: the article is about several people. Two: that's demonstrably a load of sh*t. Case in point, any study about social mobility.
- CaptSpify 9y agosource on that?
- randyrand 9y agohttp://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.html?mcubz=0 http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/stanley-millionaire.htm... This article is about people with more than $1 million in assets (sample median of $1.6 million). "About 80 percent of us are first-generation affluent." " On average, we invest nearly 20 percent of our household realized income each year." " Our household's total annual realized (taxable) income is $131,000"
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ilaksh 9y agoOne thing that many wealthy have that I hope technology will allow more not-quite-wealthy people to have is someone to clean and cook meals on a daily basis. I think that this may even be possible before we have truly general AIs. My own view is that the main thing holding this back is combining the latest advances in neural networks with some AGI concepts and then more biomimetic and performant artificial muscles and limbs. For one thing maybe activating like real muscles, a bit away from the joints, to provide more leverage versus motors in the joints. I don't know exactly but I think going more close to biologically inspired mobility for robots can reduce the gap between robots and animals in terms of dexterity and power-to-weight ratio etc which seems to really be lacking.
- wavefunction 9y agoCleaning and cooking builds character and allows time for reflection, in my opinion.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoThis is true for programmers and the like. But: Cleaning and cooking after cleaning and cooking at the Denny's all day? Not so much.
- mdekkers 9y agoCleaning and cooking builds character and allows time for reflection, in my opinion. Paying someone else to do my cleaning and cooking and other day to day drudgery work buys me time, and allows me the choice of when and how I want to "build character" and do some reflecting.
- newman8r 9y agoI don't have anything against the wealthy, but it kind of irks me when people with inherited wealth try to maintain some illusion that they're financial geniuses. Personally, I grew up thinking my grandfather was a great businessman but eventually realized he inherited everything from my grandmother's family.
- conanbatt 9y agoIts generally the case that those people made more harm to their capital than good, and in that case, anyone with spite to the "wealthy class" should be pretty happy. I once read that if Trump had invested his entire inheritance in an index fund, he would be much richer today.
- chrismcb 9y agoOnly if he had invested everything at left it in there... Our course he would have to find another source of income and most likely live "poor" since then.
- andrepd 9y agoAnd even if you did, how much of that is luck? Is an "investor" thousands of times more valuable to society than a janitor?
- Swizec 9y agoOne could argue that an investor’s job is distributing capital. Capital that provides the resources to employ tens, hundreds, or even thousands of people. All a janitor does is keep a few offices clean. A task generally done by janitors because the people working in those offices implicitly consider cleaning to not be worth their time. So ... yeah? I for one would not have a day job and most of my sidehustle market without investors.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoBut those that inherited the wealth from their daddy, who have their investor spread that wealth around, what do they do? They don't even clean for themselves.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoI wonder if we'd prefer a system where the majority of wealth after death goes back into a national trust and is immediately re-dispersed back and divided among all citizens...the national inheritance if you will. Of course there would be implementation issues.
- dec0dedab0de 9y agoso families would be thrown out of their house when the primary caregiver dies?
- SubiculumCode 9y agoEvery child deserves start up money.