10 ms·

Absolute wealth, relative wealth, taxes, and staying rich

83 points by colinprince 5y ago

asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
I would like to see more evidence to support this viewpoint. In the US there are plenty of very wealthy people who are opposed to higher taxes. It seems like the claim in this article could be true, but it's not obviously the case to me. I also think it's very questionable the view that there are a certain number of rungs of the wealth ladder and you have to displace someone else to climb. That may be true if the purpose of wealth is to be highly ranked among the wealthy, but that is not what most wealthy people seem to care about.
- roenxi 5y ago
  "Higher taxes" is a very broad term and so the original article can be right that wealthy people support higher taxes and your "...opposed to higher taxes" observation can also be true. The incentive for wealthy people is to avoid changes to the status quo. So billionaires tacitly benefit from stiff taxes on millionaires or new billionaires, because then they can't accumulate wealth so easily. Millionaires benefit from stiff taxes on the middle classes and new millionaires because then the competition can't climb out of the crab basket. If the taxes were going to reshuffle the social order I suspect there'd be a lot less support from very wealthy people. It is a very rare soul who smiles when faced with an actual decline in their social standing.
  - imranhou 5y ago
    A lot of claims here my dear about the intentions of other people, what evidence would you like us to refer to?
- chickenmonkey 5y ago
  I had the same impression, it's not like there are a limited number of rungs of wealth. Furthermore, I doubt that rich people believe that supporting higher taxes will have an immediate effect in ensuring 'usurpers' don't get rich - it will probably take a few years to come into play. The most confusing aspect of this is the fact that taxes are often progressive. Increasing taxes would then definitely hurt the wealthy more than the usurpers. This aspect of Hoffman's argument didn't make much sense to me.
skybrian 5y ago
This is speculating about the motives of a nebulous class of other people. It also doesn't provide any evidence.
- bpodgursky 5y ago
  Auren Hoffman is not speculating about the motives of wealthy people, because he (1) is quite wealthy, and (2) is extremely well-connected.
  - giomasce 5y ago
    Still, he does not provide any evidence.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    Doesn't matter. If a well connected vaccine researcher starts talking about 5G microchips with no evidence presented, you'd still not put much weight into their arguments.
  - wernercd 5y ago
    "he is wealthy and connected" He still doesn't speak for all wealthy people any more than any individual speaks for any "group". I don't speak for white people any more than a Mexican speaks for all Mexicans or a gay person speaks for all gay people. One mans opinion is just that... unless he has more evidence than his "well connected" words.
atlgator 5y ago
The wealthy are very supportive of higher tax on EARNED WAGES. Why? Because they don't make money through earned income. They make it through capital gains, which is taxed much less than wage tax. Wage tax increases at best affect the working rich like doctors, lawyers, Oracle employees making all cash, etc. Just look at the reactions to Biden's proposal to raise capital gains taxes to 40%+ above a certain threshold. The wealthy are up in arms, which is why it won't happen. Wage tax is a great system for the wealthy, because they look humanitarian in their support of higher taxes to fund welfare programs while not actually being affected by such increases. And the general public largely knows no different because they lack basic personal finance knowledge.
- adanto6840 5y ago
  I'm "young" and relatively unexposed to capital gains; I have some index funds, etc -- but I'm not "loaded". Capital gains taxes are purely based on profit; you can carry over $3k in losses each year, and that's a "common" tactic, to sell losing positions at EoY to reap the $3k benefit (which can carry over if >$3k). Why don't we tax capital gains higher, perhaps average it over 5-10 years even, and continue to allow carryover of losses, etc... ? Surely there's middle-ground here that [most] everyone could support....
  - ed25519FUUU 5y ago
    The thing to remember about tax-loss harvesting is that it delays taxes. It lowers the cost basis on the new assets, which are eventually sold. I did a big TLH in March of last year when the market tanked. Now I have a bunch of assets that just entered capital gains again, but I still have to pay taxes on 75+% gains.
    - verall 5y ago
      But if you're a high wage earner, those losses could have offset taxes at a 35% marginal rate, whereas you will pay a lower rate on long-term capital gains. It's not just delaying, it's lessening the marginal rate. As a young person fortunate enough to be highly paid, it seems like a total scam on poorer (non-wealthy) people.
hourislate 5y ago
A very similar play is used by corporations who lobby the government for more regulations. Big oil is famous for this, they lobby the Government to institute new licensing, fees, programs, carbon taxes, new environmental assessments, etc. You might wonder why would an oil company like Exxon or Shell, etc lobby for things that will end up costing them 10's of millions? It's because these 10's of millions in cost are trivial for them. The smaller players get killed, they don't have the same amount of resources like teams of lawyers or billions of dollars and end up struggling to stay in the game. It plays out like this all the time.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kdsudac 5y ago
Interesting read and makes some good points. The reasoning about the "incredible run of ursurpurs" is a very flawed though. It's not like Bezos, Zuck, Jobs, Gates, Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, et al. made their fortunes collecting their paychecks and funding their 401k's to the max and paying the top-level income tax bracket. Their fabulous rise in wealth was because of the equity of the companies they founded becoming publicly traded at very high valuations. Remember Jobs was only taking $1 in annual salary. I'm not blaming the wealthy founders, they did remarkable things and deserve to be fabulously well compensated (not that fair or deserved have anything to do with it). If anything I think the author should distinguish between capital gains taxes and regular income.
dannyw 5y ago
The ability for the super rich to borrow against their assets, tax free, is why a sensible "wealth mininum tax" must be introduced to reduce wealth disparity and create a better society. It doesn't need to be additivie. It can be a minimum offset against any other taxes paid, meaning that someone with $1 billion must pay at least $10 million (1%) in taxes per year.
- utopcell 5y ago
  How is that not stealing ?
  - DFHippie 5y ago
    Stealing is taking something illegally. If a judge takes away your license because you drive on the wrong side of the road, he isn't stealing it. If a mugger takes away your license because he's grabbed your wallet, that is indeed theft.
    - utopcell 5y ago
      That seems to imply that whatever is legal is also ethical. If a law is passed that states that if your name is Jeff Bezos then you should submit 100% of your property to the state then it might be legal but it's still stealing. It seems to be that the first thing that poor people vote for when they get to power, is more money for themselves.
      - anoncake 5y ago
        Of course they do, they need it.
        utopcell 5y ago
        Full circle: How is that not stealing ?
        5y ago
rabbitonrails 5y ago
Counterpoint -- only poor people might even consider this topic.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  I'm having a hard time parsing your sentence. Do you mean only poor people would want to raise taxes?
aledalgrande 5y ago
"For the super wealthy, the easiest way for them to protect their wealth is to raise taxes." This is especially important for that tipping point of reaching financial independence in my opinion. Higher taxes will make it more difficult for people on the tipping point to leave their jobs and retire early (Canada puts emphasis on this: taxes on investments have a margin rate, I think in US the rate is fixed, in UK it's definitely fixed, but correct me if I'm wrong). So let's say you make it big on a new altcoin, you have to pay a ton of taxes and your win is greatly reduced. Meanwhile, for who already has a lot of capital, it isn't hard to skirt around taxes because it becomes economical to setup corporations and trusts or to have residence in a different country. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well, but basically "becoming rich" for people who could potentially be rich, is hard because the taxman, as much as I think it's fair to pay tax, is taxing the upper middle class the most. "The usurpers are not yet rich. They are trying to get rich. If they do eventually make money, they get to keep whatever is left after they pay their federal, state, and local taxes."
jedberg 5y ago
This feels like a propaganda piece written by a wealthy person trying to convince you, a not wealthy person, that you shouldn't support higher taxes on the wealthy because they are just doing it to prevent you from being as wealthy as they are. There is no evidence presented. I know a couple of billionaires. None of them are even trying to get richer. Their investments are all made in an attempt to make the world a better place, from their point of view. Getting richer is just a side effect of that. They want higher taxes because they think wealth inequality is bad, but they know that if they just give away their own money, it won't solve the problem, because there needs to be systemic changes forcing everyone to give their money away, otherwise the people who aren't giving their money away will just collect it from the ones that are, via middle class and poor intermediaries.
- Pfhreak 5y ago
  100% my read too. The fact that the author doesn't make an effort to identify which taxes is a signal that they aren't really being truthful.
- roenxi 5y ago
  The article is trying to provide a framework for why it is that very wealthy people might be vocal supporters of taxes. The observations you are making of your billionaire friends are more specific but broadly in line with the reality the article is arguing for; so it isn't obvious what more evidence you need. EDIT And any billionaire who says getting rich is a side effect is lying to someone. Possibly themselves. A billion dollars has never happened by accident.
  - jedberg 5y ago
    No, getting richer is a side effect. They very much intended to get rich to make the first billion. It's the investments after that that aren't intended for wealth building, but are intended to fund things they think make the world better. > The article is trying to provide a framework for why it is that very wealthy people might be vocal supporters of taxes. And I'm saying that it's wrong. They are vocal for higher taxes because they know that higher taxes reduce wealth inequality, and we know that inequality is bad for economic growth. But they also know that they can't just give their own money away to solve inequality, because then the people who aren't giving it away will just collect what they give away.
phonebucket 5y ago
> But once your assets cross a certain threshold, almost all your spending is relative to the Joneses. The amount of absolute wealth no longer matters — what matters is the amount of wealth relative to your peers. This seems to be the premise of the whole article: that being rich is some kind of big competition. It feels presumptuous to me. Perhaps there are people who are rich because they are smart, worked hard, and are fortunate. Perhaps these people generally also wish well for their peers? Such a cynical view of motivation that this article presumes.
md_ 5y ago
This entire essay is a “[citation needed]”. Aside from the lack of evidence given for basic claims (like that the rich support higher taxes), it seems to take as a given that all tax codes are regressive (what about wealth taxes?)—a critical assumption in its argument. Yet even if the evidence were presented, causality would be tough to establish. An easy reason to assume, hypothetically, that countries with a higher degree of inherited wealth would have more popular support for higher taxes is not that taxes are a ploy by the rich (what?) but that democracies tend to favor higher taxes when wealth distribution appears less fair—and that getting rich due to the luck of birth appears especially unfair. What’s especially irksome about this essay is that, if it has a policy argument, that argument seems to be, “give up on public policy. The rich will just pervert it anyway.” That’s very disappointingly cynical.
- catears 5y ago
  Couldn't agree more. The article doesn't even mention sentiments like "I think the government is a moneywaster so I don't want higher taxes". Instead, the group that want small government is grouped under "not rich, but think they can get rich", which is a complete misrepresentation of their opinion. This is why we underline our argumentation with sourceable facts!
roofwellhams 5y ago
I think makes sense. To get rich 10 years ago with tax 30% it's easier than getting rich now with tax 40 or 50. So they are pushing for higher tax so new riches are less motivated and reduce their changes too
TheGigaChad 5y ago
Great article, thank you for sharing.
iamgopal 5y ago
Even I could be rich if I be given loan at amount near to rich and at same interest rate. But even debt industry favours rich.
jmpman 5y ago
So, much higher estate taxes, and lower taxes on those on the cusp of becoming rich? Sounds good to me.
practicalpants 5y ago
> their biggest worry is a new class of people getting richer than them fast You can read a lot of Western political history since the industrial revolution, when the new class of mega rich Rockefeller types shocked the established orders, as filled with attempts/policies to prevent new Rockefeller like classes of entrepreneurs from happening. Perhaps counter intuitively, real free market capitalism is a great threat to the established political order since it produces the levels of wealth in new people that can actually change said political order.
seu 5y ago
Such an oversimplified analysis. What does "higher taxes" mean? Higher for everyone or a progressive tax scheme? What about inheritance tax? Or taxing financial operations? This person clearly does not understand much about how complex taxes can be.
timdaub 5y ago
There was surprisingly little novel information in that article a hacker might find curious.
bumbada 5y ago
The article is an oversimplification. I have worked in the US, Asia and Europe, and they are completely different places with different realities. For example, in the US it is normal for medicine doctors and lawyers to be rich. That concept alone is very strange in the rest of the world. They have amazing doctors that are not millionaires. In Europe wealth was created by colonies. The fact that today the US is the hegemonic power in the world means that today the rest of the world is a colony of the US, who could not stop printing dollars the rest of the world are forced to buy in order to buy essentials like energy, because the US controls militarily those energy places(Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and they want to control Iran, the only one left). China and India are just overpopulated. Wealth in China is related to being close to the CCP, that is just a mafia, like in Russia, Communism makes it possible for people that fill a room to own the entire country. You just can't understand what happens in those countries. In India you just can get killed if you try to save young women or men from the streets(and anger the mafias that profit from that). In China you will disappear if you do harm to the CCP. In Africa wealth is related with controlling the natural resources the world demand. That usually means killing the members of the opposing factions and specially being in favor of the most powerful countries in the World, like the US or China. Only the countries in Africa that significantly lack natural resources live in peace and could aspire to prosperity. The concept of the "American dream" only applies to the US. In China, Japan or Europe population are getting older at a never seen before rate and that is their main problem today.

83 points by colinprince 5y ago

I would like to see more evidence to support this viewpoint. In the US there are plenty of very wealthy people who are opposed to higher taxes. It seems like the claim in this article could be true, but it's not obviously the case to me. I also think it's very questionable the view that there are a certain number of rungs of the wealth ladder and you have to displace someone else to climb. That may be true if the purpose of wealth is to be highly ranked among the wealthy, but that is not what most wealthy people seem to care about.

roenxi 5y ago
"Higher taxes" is a very broad term and so the original article can be right that wealthy people support higher taxes and your "...opposed to higher taxes" observation can also be true. The incentive for wealthy people is to avoid changes to the status quo. So billionaires tacitly benefit from stiff taxes on millionaires or new billionaires, because then they can't accumulate wealth so easily. Millionaires benefit from stiff taxes on the middle classes and new millionaires because then the competition can't climb out of the crab basket. If the taxes were going to reshuffle the social order I suspect there'd be a lot less support from very wealthy people. It is a very rare soul who smiles when faced with an actual decline in their social standing.
- imranhou 5y ago
  A lot of claims here my dear about the intentions of other people, what evidence would you like us to refer to?
chickenmonkey 5y ago
I had the same impression, it's not like there are a limited number of rungs of wealth. Furthermore, I doubt that rich people believe that supporting higher taxes will have an immediate effect in ensuring 'usurpers' don't get rich - it will probably take a few years to come into play. The most confusing aspect of this is the fact that taxes are often progressive. Increasing taxes would then definitely hurt the wealthy more than the usurpers. This aspect of Hoffman's argument didn't make much sense to me.

skybrian 5y ago

This is speculating about the motives of a nebulous class of other people. It also doesn't provide any evidence.

bpodgursky 5y ago
Auren Hoffman is not speculating about the motives of wealthy people, because he (1) is quite wealthy, and (2) is extremely well-connected.
- giomasce 5y ago
  Still, he does not provide any evidence.
- dannyw 5y ago
  Doesn't matter. If a well connected vaccine researcher starts talking about 5G microchips with no evidence presented, you'd still not put much weight into their arguments.
- wernercd 5y ago
  "he is wealthy and connected" He still doesn't speak for all wealthy people any more than any individual speaks for any "group". I don't speak for white people any more than a Mexican speaks for all Mexicans or a gay person speaks for all gay people. One mans opinion is just that... unless he has more evidence than his "well connected" words.

atlgator 5y ago

The wealthy are very supportive of higher tax on EARNED WAGES. Why? Because they don't make money through earned income. They make it through capital gains, which is taxed much less than wage tax. Wage tax increases at best affect the working rich like doctors, lawyers, Oracle employees making all cash, etc. Just look at the reactions to Biden's proposal to raise capital gains taxes to 40%+ above a certain threshold. The wealthy are up in arms, which is why it won't happen. Wage tax is a great system for the wealthy, because they look humanitarian in their support of higher taxes to fund welfare programs while not actually being affected by such increases. And the general public largely knows no different because they lack basic personal finance knowledge.

adanto6840 5y ago
I'm "young" and relatively unexposed to capital gains; I have some index funds, etc -- but I'm not "loaded". Capital gains taxes are purely based on profit; you can carry over $3k in losses each year, and that's a "common" tactic, to sell losing positions at EoY to reap the $3k benefit (which can carry over if >$3k). Why don't we tax capital gains higher, perhaps average it over 5-10 years even, and continue to allow carryover of losses, etc... ? Surely there's middle-ground here that [most] everyone could support....
- ed25519FUUU 5y ago
  The thing to remember about tax-loss harvesting is that it delays taxes. It lowers the cost basis on the new assets, which are eventually sold. I did a big TLH in March of last year when the market tanked. Now I have a bunch of assets that just entered capital gains again, but I still have to pay taxes on 75+% gains.
  - verall 5y ago
    But if you're a high wage earner, those losses could have offset taxes at a 35% marginal rate, whereas you will pay a lower rate on long-term capital gains. It's not just delaying, it's lessening the marginal rate. As a young person fortunate enough to be highly paid, it seems like a total scam on poorer (non-wealthy) people.

hourislate 5y ago

A very similar play is used by corporations who lobby the government for more regulations. Big oil is famous for this, they lobby the Government to institute new licensing, fees, programs, carbon taxes, new environmental assessments, etc. You might wonder why would an oil company like Exxon or Shell, etc lobby for things that will end up costing them 10's of millions? It's because these 10's of millions in cost are trivial for them. The smaller players get killed, they don't have the same amount of resources like teams of lawyers or billions of dollars and end up struggling to stay in the game. It plays out like this all the time.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kdsudac 5y ago

Interesting read and makes some good points. The reasoning about the "incredible run of ursurpurs" is a very flawed though. It's not like Bezos, Zuck, Jobs, Gates, Musk, Ellison, Page, Brin, et al. made their fortunes collecting their paychecks and funding their 401k's to the max and paying the top-level income tax bracket. Their fabulous rise in wealth was because of the equity of the companies they founded becoming publicly traded at very high valuations. Remember Jobs was only taking $1 in annual salary. I'm not blaming the wealthy founders, they did remarkable things and deserve to be fabulously well compensated (not that fair or deserved have anything to do with it). If anything I think the author should distinguish between capital gains taxes and regular income.

dannyw 5y ago

The ability for the super rich to borrow against their assets, tax free, is why a sensible "wealth mininum tax" must be introduced to reduce wealth disparity and create a better society. It doesn't need to be additivie. It can be a minimum offset against any other taxes paid, meaning that someone with $1 billion must pay at least $10 million (1%) in taxes per year.

utopcell 5y ago
How is that not stealing ?
- DFHippie 5y ago
  Stealing is taking something illegally. If a judge takes away your license because you drive on the wrong side of the road, he isn't stealing it. If a mugger takes away your license because he's grabbed your wallet, that is indeed theft.
  - utopcell 5y ago
    That seems to imply that whatever is legal is also ethical. If a law is passed that states that if your name is Jeff Bezos then you should submit 100% of your property to the state then it might be legal but it's still stealing. It seems to be that the first thing that poor people vote for when they get to power, is more money for themselves.
    - anoncake 5y ago
      Of course they do, they need it.
      - utopcell 5y ago
        Full circle: How is that not stealing ?
        5y ago

rabbitonrails 5y ago

Counterpoint -- only poor people might even consider this topic.

Pfhreak 5y ago
I'm having a hard time parsing your sentence. Do you mean only poor people would want to raise taxes?

aledalgrande 5y ago

"For the super wealthy, the easiest way for them to protect their wealth is to raise taxes." This is especially important for that tipping point of reaching financial independence in my opinion. Higher taxes will make it more difficult for people on the tipping point to leave their jobs and retire early (Canada puts emphasis on this: taxes on investments have a margin rate, I think in US the rate is fixed, in UK it's definitely fixed, but correct me if I'm wrong). So let's say you make it big on a new altcoin, you have to pay a ton of taxes and your win is greatly reduced. Meanwhile, for who already has a lot of capital, it isn't hard to skirt around taxes because it becomes economical to setup corporations and trusts or to have residence in a different country. I'm not sure I'm explaining myself very well, but basically "becoming rich" for people who could potentially be rich, is hard because the taxman, as much as I think it's fair to pay tax, is taxing the upper middle class the most. "The usurpers are not yet rich. They are trying to get rich. If they do eventually make money, they get to keep whatever is left after they pay their federal, state, and local taxes."

jedberg 5y ago

This feels like a propaganda piece written by a wealthy person trying to convince you, a not wealthy person, that you shouldn't support higher taxes on the wealthy because they are just doing it to prevent you from being as wealthy as they are. There is no evidence presented. I know a couple of billionaires. None of them are even trying to get richer. Their investments are all made in an attempt to make the world a better place, from their point of view. Getting richer is just a side effect of that. They want higher taxes because they think wealth inequality is bad, but they know that if they just give away their own money, it won't solve the problem, because there needs to be systemic changes forcing everyone to give their money away, otherwise the people who aren't giving their money away will just collect it from the ones that are, via middle class and poor intermediaries.

Pfhreak 5y ago
100% my read too. The fact that the author doesn't make an effort to identify which taxes is a signal that they aren't really being truthful.
roenxi 5y ago
The article is trying to provide a framework for why it is that very wealthy people might be vocal supporters of taxes. The observations you are making of your billionaire friends are more specific but broadly in line with the reality the article is arguing for; so it isn't obvious what more evidence you need. EDIT And any billionaire who says getting rich is a side effect is lying to someone. Possibly themselves. A billion dollars has never happened by accident.
- jedberg 5y ago
  No, getting richer is a side effect. They very much intended to get rich to make the first billion. It's the investments after that that aren't intended for wealth building, but are intended to fund things they think make the world better. > The article is trying to provide a framework for why it is that very wealthy people might be vocal supporters of taxes. And I'm saying that it's wrong. They are vocal for higher taxes because they know that higher taxes reduce wealth inequality, and we know that inequality is bad for economic growth. But they also know that they can't just give their own money away to solve inequality, because then the people who aren't giving it away will just collect what they give away.

phonebucket 5y ago

> But once your assets cross a certain threshold, almost all your spending is relative to the Joneses. The amount of absolute wealth no longer matters — what matters is the amount of wealth relative to your peers. This seems to be the premise of the whole article: that being rich is some kind of big competition. It feels presumptuous to me. Perhaps there are people who are rich because they are smart, worked hard, and are fortunate. Perhaps these people generally also wish well for their peers? Such a cynical view of motivation that this article presumes.

md_ 5y ago

This entire essay is a “[citation needed]”. Aside from the lack of evidence given for basic claims (like that the rich support higher taxes), it seems to take as a given that all tax codes are regressive (what about wealth taxes?)—a critical assumption in its argument. Yet even if the evidence were presented, causality would be tough to establish. An easy reason to assume, hypothetically, that countries with a higher degree of inherited wealth would have more popular support for higher taxes is not that taxes are a ploy by the rich (what?) but that democracies tend to favor higher taxes when wealth distribution appears less fair—and that getting rich due to the luck of birth appears especially unfair. What’s especially irksome about this essay is that, if it has a policy argument, that argument seems to be, “give up on public policy. The rich will just pervert it anyway.” That’s very disappointingly cynical.

catears 5y ago
Couldn't agree more. The article doesn't even mention sentiments like "I think the government is a moneywaster so I don't want higher taxes". Instead, the group that want small government is grouped under "not rich, but think they can get rich", which is a complete misrepresentation of their opinion. This is why we underline our argumentation with sourceable facts!

roofwellhams 5y ago

I think makes sense. To get rich 10 years ago with tax 30% it's easier than getting rich now with tax 40 or 50. So they are pushing for higher tax so new riches are less motivated and reduce their changes too

TheGigaChad 5y ago

Great article, thank you for sharing.

iamgopal 5y ago

Even I could be rich if I be given loan at amount near to rich and at same interest rate. But even debt industry favours rich.

jmpman 5y ago

So, much higher estate taxes, and lower taxes on those on the cusp of becoming rich? Sounds good to me.

practicalpants 5y ago

> their biggest worry is a new class of people getting richer than them fast You can read a lot of Western political history since the industrial revolution, when the new class of mega rich Rockefeller types shocked the established orders, as filled with attempts/policies to prevent new Rockefeller like classes of entrepreneurs from happening. Perhaps counter intuitively, real free market capitalism is a great threat to the established political order since it produces the levels of wealth in new people that can actually change said political order.

seu 5y ago

Such an oversimplified analysis. What does "higher taxes" mean? Higher for everyone or a progressive tax scheme? What about inheritance tax? Or taxing financial operations? This person clearly does not understand much about how complex taxes can be.

timdaub 5y ago

There was surprisingly little novel information in that article a hacker might find curious.

bumbada 5y ago

The article is an oversimplification. I have worked in the US, Asia and Europe, and they are completely different places with different realities. For example, in the US it is normal for medicine doctors and lawyers to be rich. That concept alone is very strange in the rest of the world. They have amazing doctors that are not millionaires. In Europe wealth was created by colonies. The fact that today the US is the hegemonic power in the world means that today the rest of the world is a colony of the US, who could not stop printing dollars the rest of the world are forced to buy in order to buy essentials like energy, because the US controls militarily those energy places(Iraq, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and they want to control Iran, the only one left). China and India are just overpopulated. Wealth in China is related to being close to the CCP, that is just a mafia, like in Russia, Communism makes it possible for people that fill a room to own the entire country. You just can't understand what happens in those countries. In India you just can get killed if you try to save young women or men from the streets(and anger the mafias that profit from that). In China you will disappear if you do harm to the CCP. In Africa wealth is related with controlling the natural resources the world demand. That usually means killing the members of the opposing factions and specially being in favor of the most powerful countries in the World, like the US or China. Only the countries in Africa that significantly lack natural resources live in peace and could aspire to prosperity. The concept of the "American dream" only applies to the US. In China, Japan or Europe population are getting older at a never seen before rate and that is their main problem today.