4 ms·

Well then it sounds like us poors should just grab our pitchforks if the rich can't decide how to tax themselves

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
maxharris 6y ago
> us poors No, use your brain. When the company I worked for closed up and laid everyone off (the day after Labor Day!) in 2019, I didn't know what to do. I knew I didn't want to work for another person's startup. I hated being ordered around, and I wanted the freedom to act on the ideas I have. I managed to save about $110k, and my goal was just a downpayment for a house. It took me years to do this. (I never bought a house - the real estate market kept shooting up, and I kept refusing to swing at it. I knew that property taxes and HOAs meant that I'd remain in chains forever, working for someone, had I bought in.) So I spent a lot of time working on my own open-source software. I ended up building a layout system, prototyped in JavaScript, meant to replace HTML and CSS. It's kinda like SwiftUI and Flutter, but I never picked up any contributors, so I stopped working on it when the pandemic really started. But that's not all I did. I also spent a lot of time reading about the financial markets, about investing, and I had always had an interest in how great companies are run. So I put my savings into $TSLA, $SQ, $ARKK, $ARKG and now I have $500k. (I had some money in "value investing" stocks early on, but sold out of those very quickly when I realized how poor the gains would be, pumped it all into in 10X innovation stocks.) I live cheaply - I eat hamburger and hot dogs, and I live in a total dump of an apartment. Why? Because I know that I'll be a millionaire in a year. What are the things making me rich? Excellent companies managed by the best allocators of capital out there. What are they doing to drive humanity forward? One is transitioning humanity to carbon-free energy, which is part of many changes required to help us avoid climate disaster. The other is using analytics to bring loans to people that banks refuse to serve and drastically undercutting payday lenders. I wrote up some of my story in these posts way back in May: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22958528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22958528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 Seven years ago, I had just moved to California. I had no savings, and a job that only paid $35k/year. Anyway, my point is that you don't have to be poor forever. It takes a great deal effort, planning and diligence, but you can rise up.
- AndrewBissell 6y ago
  > What are the things making me rich? Stock promotion schemes, the distribution of the $TSLA bag to holders of $SPY, the consolidation of business onto tech platforms like $SQ that's been forced by the pandemic, and most importantly of all a torrent of easy Fed money. Congrats on taking your moonshot under the kind of ideal conditions that happen maybe two or three times in most people's lifetime. But this is not some kind of repeatable anyone-can-do-it path to financial security.
  - maxharris 6y ago
    > this is not some kind of repeatable anyone-can-do-it path to financial security Correct. You can't buy $AAPL and expect it to 10X on you ten years after Steve Jobs died. Opportunities come and go, and you often have to see several of them before you're in the right position to take a swing. When Apple was a huge opportunity, I didn't have any money! My dad didn't have much either, and I leaned on him to buy an iMac way back in 2001. That $1299 would have been worth $698,467.54 in Apple stock today. http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20010101&a=1299 http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20010101&a=1299 > ideal conditions that happen maybe two or three times in most people's lifetime You're missing my point entirely. These conditions happen all the time, but most people simply don't think the right thoughts. They choose not to think about things that are coming and act accordingly. I've been on both sides of this, and I can see it's a matter of knowledge and motivation, not luck. May, 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970810

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

> us poors No, use your brain. When the company I worked for closed up and laid everyone off (the day after Labor Day!) in 2019, I didn't know what to do. I knew I didn't want to work for another person's startup. I hated being ordered around, and I wanted the freedom to act on the ideas I have. I managed to save about $110k, and my goal was just a downpayment for a house. It took me years to do this. (I never bought a house - the real estate market kept shooting up, and I kept refusing to swing at it. I knew that property taxes and HOAs meant that I'd remain in chains forever, working for someone, had I bought in.) So I spent a lot of time working on my own open-source software. I ended up building a layout system, prototyped in JavaScript, meant to replace HTML and CSS. It's kinda like SwiftUI and Flutter, but I never picked up any contributors, so I stopped working on it when the pandemic really started. But that's not all I did. I also spent a lot of time reading about the financial markets, about investing, and I had always had an interest in how great companies are run. So I put my savings into $TSLA, $SQ, $ARKK, $ARKG and now I have $500k. (I had some money in "value investing" stocks early on, but sold out of those very quickly when I realized how poor the gains would be, pumped it all into in 10X innovation stocks.) I live cheaply - I eat hamburger and hot dogs, and I live in a total dump of an apartment. Why? Because I know that I'll be a millionaire in a year. What are the things making me rich? Excellent companies managed by the best allocators of capital out there. What are they doing to drive humanity forward? One is transitioning humanity to carbon-free energy, which is part of many changes required to help us avoid climate disaster. The other is using analytics to bring loans to people that banks refuse to serve and drastically undercutting payday lenders. I wrote up some of my story in these posts way back in May: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22958528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22958528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22964850 Seven years ago, I had just moved to California. I had no savings, and a job that only paid $35k/year. Anyway, my point is that you don't have to be poor forever. It takes a great deal effort, planning and diligence, but you can rise up.

AndrewBissell 6y ago
> What are the things making me rich? Stock promotion schemes, the distribution of the $TSLA bag to holders of $SPY, the consolidation of business onto tech platforms like $SQ that's been forced by the pandemic, and most importantly of all a torrent of easy Fed money. Congrats on taking your moonshot under the kind of ideal conditions that happen maybe two or three times in most people's lifetime. But this is not some kind of repeatable anyone-can-do-it path to financial security.
- maxharris 6y ago
  > this is not some kind of repeatable anyone-can-do-it path to financial security Correct. You can't buy $AAPL and expect it to 10X on you ten years after Steve Jobs died. Opportunities come and go, and you often have to see several of them before you're in the right position to take a swing. When Apple was a huge opportunity, I didn't have any money! My dad didn't have much either, and I leaned on him to buy an iMac way back in 2001. That $1299 would have been worth $698,467.54 in Apple stock today. http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20010101&a=1299 http://stockchoker.com/?s=AAPL&d=20010101&a=1299 > ideal conditions that happen maybe two or three times in most people's lifetime You're missing my point entirely. These conditions happen all the time, but most people simply don't think the right thoughts. They choose not to think about things that are coming and act accordingly. I've been on both sides of this, and I can see it's a matter of knowledge and motivation, not luck. May, 2020: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970810 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22970810