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You get rich either by being in the absolute top echelon of your field assuming also that you are in a lucrative field, by ownership of the means of production,

by CPLX 7y ago

You get rich either by being in the absolute top echelon of your field assuming also that you are in a lucrative field, by ownership of the means of production, or by inheriting or marrying into it. Those are pretty much the choices.

sendbitcoins 7y ago
A mechanism you haven't enumerated is use other people's money to buy an income stream. The easiest case being using the banks' money to buy a rental income stream.
ryanwaggoner 7y ago
Really depends on what “rich” means. And whether you consider investing in public markets or real estate to be “owning the means of production”. Because many, many millionaires get rich by those methods, for some reasonable value of rich.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Truth. Living within your means and maxing out retirement accounts will get you to millionaire status in 20-30 years, faster if you’re more aggressive about it (buy a fixer upper to realize sweat equity, BRRR real estate investment method, build your own business). I’ve followed these principles and am financially independent in my late 30s. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html TLDR Own and build things that generate income and store wealth (real estate, equities, fixed income, shares in a business, etc). Optimize for wealth, not status. This won’t get you to be a billionaire. That requires mostly luck, inheritance, knowing the “right” people, etc.
- tomatotomato37 7y ago
  By absolute top echelon I think he's talking about billionaires, not millionaires. You can't bootstrap a used car dealership or dry cleaner into mega-yacht wealth territory, but you can still retire with a nice sailboat.
  - mokus 7y ago
    I thought that was referring to skill, not starting wealth - the latter would be covered anyway by “owning the means of production”
vasco 7y ago
You can get pretty comfortable (rich for most people's definition) just being average and capturing a small part of a market. I guess one could stretch the definition of "ownership of means of production" but I'm not sure that's what you meant by it. Specially in the internet age the bar is much lower to be able to participate in the market like this.
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  It really depends on how you define rich. I think the traditional concept of “having enough assets work for you that you do not have to” (i.e. the idle rich) is the correct bar, but we often mean mega-rich now (centimillionaires+) when we say rich. I ran a small business you’ve never heard of, and left it four years ago with a not huge (<£1M) amount of money - but it was enough for me to acquire enough working assets that I have been able to retire from having to work in my early 30’s. I spend less than the assets earn, and because I’m free from having to work, I’m able to live in an inexpensive country, where my purchasing power is huge - freeing yourself from direct labour is the dividing line in my view - and you can get there by eschewing depreciating assets and instead acquiring earning assets. I don’t own a helicopter, I don’t have a yacht, my car is a beat up 1988 hilux - I could have those things, but then I would be poor again. I did spend a lot on coffee, while running the business, admittedly.
- ajross 7y ago
  "Capturing a small part of a market" is literally the definition of "ownership of means of production"! I get that political history makes discussion of Marx's ideas a ridiculous hot potato. But the actual economics behind it is pretty banal and uncontroversial. If you own a business you can get rich without bound (or bounded only by the size of the relevant market), and if you don't you're trapped at whatever the market has set for wages in your profession. That's, really, just sort of a "duh" point. This very website is effectively dedicated to that exact pursuit! "Make things people want so you can hack the system, find an exit and get rich" is just a restatement of "the bourgeoisie can lift themselves above the proletariat by ownership of the means of production" from the bourgeois perspective. Whether that is good or bad, or deserves a revolution to adjust, is sort of a different issue. But no one seriously argues with the facts here.
wayoutthere 7y ago
Choices 1 and 2 (and the "marrying in" option of the 3rd) have an implicit "you were born into a white, upper class family" built into them. To even have the opportunity to get to the top of your field or own means of production, you have to start from a base of financial surplus (not necessarily extreme wealth, though it helps). If you're anything less than that, the best you can do is try to give your kids an upper class environment to grow up in. Or just opt out of the "money is happiness" game and find other things that fulfill you.
- Spooky23 7y ago
  Not really. I’d guess that most people whom you’d assume to be fancy white upper class folks are broke, and many of the poor brown people whom you pitty are more prosperous than you think. In my life I can think of a relative whose family was living it up: fancy house and cars in a desirable suburb, kids went to great colleges, had great stuff, etc. It was all a show, fueled by home equity and debt. Now they are retired and living in subsidized housing on Social Security, and the BMWs were replaced by a 15 year old Civic. The I look at a gentlemen who recently passed away at my church. He was a custodian and handyman, his wife is an LPN. He left a significant legacy to his kids and a school, and by all accounts led a fulfilling and happy life, with many people whom he had touched in some way.
  - paulpauper 7y ago
    The reason why stories of librarians and janitors leaving huge fortunes when they die makes news, is because it is so rare, not because these people are secretly hording tons of money or have found the secrets of wealth. Many low income ppl live paycheck to paycheck and or have little to save. Stories of rich and successful people blowing away their money are popular, but the media ignores all the stories of people who make a lot of money and invest and save diligently and and retire with a lot of money and do not go broke.
kitcar 7y ago
Or get lucky... lots of people stumble into business... they are not the top of their field - they happen to be right place right time, and have sufficient skill to recognize the opportunity and not screw it up
onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago
Edit: of course people want to complain. Read the Black Swan. It'll make you happier. The world isn't fair.
- newfeatureok 7y ago
  This post is so out of touch with reality I don't know where to begin. I also work at Google, making a similar amount as you do. To suggest that all you have to do to make $400K+ is "just know what to do, know where to be, and be willing to put in a lot of time and effort" is just ludicrous. I guarantee you, and anyone else reading this, that with very little information I can predict with high accuracy how much money you make. - Where you were born - How much money your parents make - Your health status at birth - What college you went to, if applicable - What you majored in while in college, if applicable - How much your prioritize making money I hate to say it, but the #1 predictor of your income is your parents' own situation. So if you want to make more money, be born to better parents. They will gift you the health, genetic advantages and socioeconomic circumstances that will statically make you succeed. For everyone else, understand the rules of the game and bend them as much as possible. One thing I hate about working at Google is the sheer amount of out of touch engineers here. Everyone is so nice and friendly, but as soon as you talk about anything related to money you can see that some people are living, in a matter of speaking, on another planet. EDIT: Looks like the post was edited to be removed. Basically the OP was saying he made 400K+ at Google and their significant other made another 200K as a car salesperson and they are both "run of the mill" at their jobs. The OP then goes on to say that if you try hard enough it's pretty easy to get to the position their at. Ironically the reaction of removing the post is exactly the same sort of reaction I get in person in when money or money related matters is ever the subject of a conversation with someone who is an engineer at Google. If a non-engineer is in the conversation the engineer will just say life isn't fair and leave.
  - paulpauper 7y ago
    IQ matters a lot too. People who make a lot of money tend to be smarter than the general population, such as doctors or software developers. A car salesman may make $200k but these tend to be huge outliers. The median tech workers does better than the median car salesman. Commission work is a bitch.
paulpauper 7y ago
Or investing. Tesla stock is at 650 and had you invested just 10 years ago after it went public you would have made 31x your money. Such stories are rare but is one way of getting rich. Same for investing in Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc. It is hard to generalize this to a rule that can be applied, but investing in software or social networks, which have market dominance and scale well, is a good strategy. large tech companies that have network effects, wide moats, and market dominance.
- close04 7y ago
  There’s no reason anyone would have believed 10 years ago Tesla will get so big. You have to be already rich to afford to take such risks that will allow you to have one big hit, or have the kind of intimate knowledge of the market to allow consistent winnings to get rich from multiple smaller hits. Which implies it’s likely you could have gotten just as rich in many other ways. Without knowing who’s the Facebook and who’s the MySpace getting rich by investing is not very much unlike getting rich by winning the lottery. I think most riches come as a combination of hard work/smarts and right place and right time (or luck), in varied proportions.
  - paulpauper 7y ago
    look at wallstreetbets. people do it consistent and at a rate that exceeds chance/luck. They look for companies that have market dominance and strong growth and are ubiquitous, such as Amazon, and then aggressively buy call options on it. Sometimes they sloe money but the payoffs can be huge and consistent.
- greenshackle2 7y ago
  That falls under "ownership of the means of production".
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
Reedx 7y ago
Eh, that's a bit defeatist. Really, it's easier than ever to start your own business (own your production). Most people reading this could begin today. It's even possible to retire in your 30s via an average salary. Look into Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE). Is not having to work anymore not a sufficient definition of rich? Though IMO having control over your schedule and not having to work for someone else is pretty close too.
- CPLX 7y ago
  Owning a business is a literal definition of ownership of the means of production.
api 7y ago
You forgot luck, like the person who mined some bitcoin in 2010 and sold it in 2017.
badrabbit 7y ago
Or be skilled in luck.
BurningFrog 7y ago
Or by buying a house young in a NIMBY society. I can't see housing as "means of production".
- tim333 7y ago
  I was going to say the majority of people in the UK who've gone from nothing much to >£1m (dunno if that's rich) it's been through property, mostly buying a place, renting it out, buying another. Like I've got a friend, 40ish, works in education hiring teachers etc on a normal salary but every 5 to 10 years has bought a place on a mortgage and now it's worth that. She's not even entrepreneurial especially, just had the sense to do that when the opportunity was there.

by CPLX 7y ago

sendbitcoins 7y ago

A mechanism you haven't enumerated is use other people's money to buy an income stream. The easiest case being using the banks' money to buy a rental income stream.

ryanwaggoner 7y ago

Really depends on what “rich” means. And whether you consider investing in public markets or real estate to be “owning the means of production”. Because many, many millionaires get rich by those methods, for some reasonable value of rich.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Truth. Living within your means and maxing out retirement accounts will get you to millionaire status in 20-30 years, faster if you’re more aggressive about it (buy a fixer upper to realize sweat equity, BRRR real estate investment method, build your own business). I’ve followed these principles and am financially independent in my late 30s. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002103360646823936.html TLDR Own and build things that generate income and store wealth (real estate, equities, fixed income, shares in a business, etc). Optimize for wealth, not status. This won’t get you to be a billionaire. That requires mostly luck, inheritance, knowing the “right” people, etc.
tomatotomato37 7y ago
By absolute top echelon I think he's talking about billionaires, not millionaires. You can't bootstrap a used car dealership or dry cleaner into mega-yacht wealth territory, but you can still retire with a nice sailboat.
- mokus 7y ago
  I thought that was referring to skill, not starting wealth - the latter would be covered anyway by “owning the means of production”

vasco 7y ago

You can get pretty comfortable (rich for most people's definition) just being average and capturing a small part of a market. I guess one could stretch the definition of "ownership of means of production" but I'm not sure that's what you meant by it. Specially in the internet age the bar is much lower to be able to participate in the market like this.

madaxe_again 7y ago
It really depends on how you define rich. I think the traditional concept of “having enough assets work for you that you do not have to” (i.e. the idle rich) is the correct bar, but we often mean mega-rich now (centimillionaires+) when we say rich. I ran a small business you’ve never heard of, and left it four years ago with a not huge (<£1M) amount of money - but it was enough for me to acquire enough working assets that I have been able to retire from having to work in my early 30’s. I spend less than the assets earn, and because I’m free from having to work, I’m able to live in an inexpensive country, where my purchasing power is huge - freeing yourself from direct labour is the dividing line in my view - and you can get there by eschewing depreciating assets and instead acquiring earning assets. I don’t own a helicopter, I don’t have a yacht, my car is a beat up 1988 hilux - I could have those things, but then I would be poor again. I did spend a lot on coffee, while running the business, admittedly.
ajross 7y ago
"Capturing a small part of a market" is literally the definition of "ownership of means of production"! I get that political history makes discussion of Marx's ideas a ridiculous hot potato. But the actual economics behind it is pretty banal and uncontroversial. If you own a business you can get rich without bound (or bounded only by the size of the relevant market), and if you don't you're trapped at whatever the market has set for wages in your profession. That's, really, just sort of a "duh" point. This very website is effectively dedicated to that exact pursuit! "Make things people want so you can hack the system, find an exit and get rich" is just a restatement of "the bourgeoisie can lift themselves above the proletariat by ownership of the means of production" from the bourgeois perspective. Whether that is good or bad, or deserves a revolution to adjust, is sort of a different issue. But no one seriously argues with the facts here.

wayoutthere 7y ago

Choices 1 and 2 (and the "marrying in" option of the 3rd) have an implicit "you were born into a white, upper class family" built into them. To even have the opportunity to get to the top of your field or own means of production, you have to start from a base of financial surplus (not necessarily extreme wealth, though it helps). If you're anything less than that, the best you can do is try to give your kids an upper class environment to grow up in. Or just opt out of the "money is happiness" game and find other things that fulfill you.

Spooky23 7y ago
Not really. I’d guess that most people whom you’d assume to be fancy white upper class folks are broke, and many of the poor brown people whom you pitty are more prosperous than you think. In my life I can think of a relative whose family was living it up: fancy house and cars in a desirable suburb, kids went to great colleges, had great stuff, etc. It was all a show, fueled by home equity and debt. Now they are retired and living in subsidized housing on Social Security, and the BMWs were replaced by a 15 year old Civic. The I look at a gentlemen who recently passed away at my church. He was a custodian and handyman, his wife is an LPN. He left a significant legacy to his kids and a school, and by all accounts led a fulfilling and happy life, with many people whom he had touched in some way.
- paulpauper 7y ago
  The reason why stories of librarians and janitors leaving huge fortunes when they die makes news, is because it is so rare, not because these people are secretly hording tons of money or have found the secrets of wealth. Many low income ppl live paycheck to paycheck and or have little to save. Stories of rich and successful people blowing away their money are popular, but the media ignores all the stories of people who make a lot of money and invest and save diligently and and retire with a lot of money and do not go broke.

kitcar 7y ago

Or get lucky... lots of people stumble into business... they are not the top of their field - they happen to be right place right time, and have sufficient skill to recognize the opportunity and not screw it up

onlyrealcuzzo 7y ago

Edit: of course people want to complain. Read the Black Swan. It'll make you happier. The world isn't fair.

newfeatureok 7y ago
This post is so out of touch with reality I don't know where to begin. I also work at Google, making a similar amount as you do. To suggest that all you have to do to make $400K+ is "just know what to do, know where to be, and be willing to put in a lot of time and effort" is just ludicrous. I guarantee you, and anyone else reading this, that with very little information I can predict with high accuracy how much money you make. - Where you were born - How much money your parents make - Your health status at birth - What college you went to, if applicable - What you majored in while in college, if applicable - How much your prioritize making money I hate to say it, but the #1 predictor of your income is your parents' own situation. So if you want to make more money, be born to better parents. They will gift you the health, genetic advantages and socioeconomic circumstances that will statically make you succeed. For everyone else, understand the rules of the game and bend them as much as possible. One thing I hate about working at Google is the sheer amount of out of touch engineers here. Everyone is so nice and friendly, but as soon as you talk about anything related to money you can see that some people are living, in a matter of speaking, on another planet. EDIT: Looks like the post was edited to be removed. Basically the OP was saying he made 400K+ at Google and their significant other made another 200K as a car salesperson and they are both "run of the mill" at their jobs. The OP then goes on to say that if you try hard enough it's pretty easy to get to the position their at. Ironically the reaction of removing the post is exactly the same sort of reaction I get in person in when money or money related matters is ever the subject of a conversation with someone who is an engineer at Google. If a non-engineer is in the conversation the engineer will just say life isn't fair and leave.
- paulpauper 7y ago
  IQ matters a lot too. People who make a lot of money tend to be smarter than the general population, such as doctors or software developers. A car salesman may make $200k but these tend to be huge outliers. The median tech workers does better than the median car salesman. Commission work is a bitch.

paulpauper 7y ago

Or investing. Tesla stock is at 650 and had you invested just 10 years ago after it went public you would have made 31x your money. Such stories are rare but is one way of getting rich. Same for investing in Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, etc. It is hard to generalize this to a rule that can be applied, but investing in software or social networks, which have market dominance and scale well, is a good strategy. large tech companies that have network effects, wide moats, and market dominance.

close04 7y ago
There’s no reason anyone would have believed 10 years ago Tesla will get so big. You have to be already rich to afford to take such risks that will allow you to have one big hit, or have the kind of intimate knowledge of the market to allow consistent winnings to get rich from multiple smaller hits. Which implies it’s likely you could have gotten just as rich in many other ways. Without knowing who’s the Facebook and who’s the MySpace getting rich by investing is not very much unlike getting rich by winning the lottery. I think most riches come as a combination of hard work/smarts and right place and right time (or luck), in varied proportions.
- paulpauper 7y ago
  look at wallstreetbets. people do it consistent and at a rate that exceeds chance/luck. They look for companies that have market dominance and strong growth and are ubiquitous, such as Amazon, and then aggressively buy call options on it. Sometimes they sloe money but the payoffs can be huge and consistent.
greenshackle2 7y ago
That falls under "ownership of the means of production".
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

Reedx 7y ago

Eh, that's a bit defeatist. Really, it's easier than ever to start your own business (own your production). Most people reading this could begin today. It's even possible to retire in your 30s via an average salary. Look into Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE). Is not having to work anymore not a sufficient definition of rich? Though IMO having control over your schedule and not having to work for someone else is pretty close too.

CPLX 7y ago
Owning a business is a literal definition of ownership of the means of production.

api 7y ago

You forgot luck, like the person who mined some bitcoin in 2010 and sold it in 2017.

badrabbit 7y ago

Or be skilled in luck.

BurningFrog 7y ago

Or by buying a house young in a NIMBY society. I can't see housing as "means of production".

tim333 7y ago
I was going to say the majority of people in the UK who've gone from nothing much to >£1m (dunno if that's rich) it's been through property, mostly buying a place, renting it out, buying another. Like I've got a friend, 40ish, works in education hiring teachers etc on a normal salary but every 5 to 10 years has bought a place on a mortgage and now it's worth that. She's not even entrepreneurial especially, just had the sense to do that when the opportunity was there.