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Have you seen the margins on businesses old enough to be owned by heirs? They're only "siphoning off" a few percent. Edit: I misunderstood. I thought the compl

Have you seen the margins on businesses old enough to be owned by heirs? They're only "siphoning off" a few percent. Edit: I misunderstood. I thought the complaint was that the heirs were taking a lot of created wealth from each worker. Not simply that they were wealthy.

hef19898 4y ago
Those heirs are the richest people in Europe, owning everything from VW and Porsche to BMW and a bunch of other household names. And those few percent are coming off from quite huge figures...
- leereeves 4y ago
  Yeah, the lack of new businesses is a big problem in Europe. Regulations and taxation kill them or drive them out of Europe. But I was speaking from a US perspective (since I'm from the US and this story is about the US), and our biggest, most profitable businesses are mostly under fifty years old, not over.
  - malermeister 4y ago
    And most of them are also started by heirs of generational wealth. Just because the companies change doesn't mean the owners do.
    - leereeves 4y ago
      Who specifically are you thinking of? Every founder I can think of was born in the middle or upper middle class.
      - malermeister 4y ago
        Elon Musk's dad was a South African millionaire. Bill Gates' mom was on the board of directors of a bank and gave him an intro to IBM execs. [0] Bezos parents invested 250k to fund Amazon. [1] Upper middle class is generational wealth already if it passes a generation. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-paren...
        leereeves 4y ago
        Yeah those parents are all upper middle class. None of them are at all comparable to the owners of a company like VW, Tesla, or Amazon. And none of them were "heirs who own the majority of stock" nor support your claim that "just because the companies change doesn't mean the owners do". Edit to reply: You don't need to tell me about the social mobility of people living in poverty. I was born into a family of construction workers, and escaped poverty by learning to program. I know from experience that new businesses create opportunities to escape poverty, even if that isn't measured or sufficiently weighted by the index you cited.
        malermeister 4y ago
        You can call it "upper middle class" all you want, but to the vast majority of the population those folks would simply be "rich". I'm not as concerned as you with the various strata of richness and the mobility between them. I'm much more concerned with the social mobility of people living in poverty, which is pretty bad in the US compared to Europe. [0] Key factor in that? Unions. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
        SamReidHughes 4y ago
        The thing you're linking doesn't even measure social mobility, it just calls itself a social mobility index.
        GAN_Game 4y ago
        Zuckerberg went to Phillips Exeter, a high school which costs at least $47,000 a year. Zuckerberg bought Instagram from Kevin Systrom who went to Middlesex high school, which costs at least $55,000 a year. At this point it becomes a parlor game of who is rich, and who is "upper middle class", which apparently means spending $55,000+ a year on your kid's high school.
        leereeves 4y ago
      - dexterdog 4y ago
        He's not talking about the founders. He's talking about the funders.
  - westpfelia 4y ago
    OH 1000000% I mean can you even name a single business that has started in Berlin in the last 25 years? You cant. Because not a single business has started. Taxes have killed all brand new business ideas in the German tech start up scene.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    That is an interesting way to read my comment so. It is not regulation nor taxes that make it hard for "tech" start ups in Europe. It is harder access to Venture Capital and smaller adressable markets, overall the European Market is huge, but harder to access due to language barriers.
GAN_Game 4y ago
If you have thousands working and creating wealth, and then a handful of heirs not working, and siphoning off expropriated surplus labor time of those who do work, then the heirs have a pretty good deal going for themselves. A couple percent of the created wealth of a few thousand workers just for one person? That adds up quick.

hef19898 4y ago

Those heirs are the richest people in Europe, owning everything from VW and Porsche to BMW and a bunch of other household names. And those few percent are coming off from quite huge figures...

leereeves 4y ago
Yeah, the lack of new businesses is a big problem in Europe. Regulations and taxation kill them or drive them out of Europe. But I was speaking from a US perspective (since I'm from the US and this story is about the US), and our biggest, most profitable businesses are mostly under fifty years old, not over.
- malermeister 4y ago
  And most of them are also started by heirs of generational wealth. Just because the companies change doesn't mean the owners do.
  - leereeves 4y ago
    Who specifically are you thinking of? Every founder I can think of was born in the middle or upper middle class.
    - malermeister 4y ago
      Elon Musk's dad was a South African millionaire. Bill Gates' mom was on the board of directors of a bank and gave him an intro to IBM execs. [0] Bezos parents invested 250k to fund Amazon. [1] Upper middle class is generational wealth already if it passes a generation. [0] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influenced-the-success-of-microsoft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/05/how-bill-gates-mother-influe... [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-parents-to-invest-in-amazon--turning-them-into.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/02/how-jeff-bezos-got-his-paren...
      - leereeves 4y ago
        Yeah those parents are all upper middle class. None of them are at all comparable to the owners of a company like VW, Tesla, or Amazon. And none of them were "heirs who own the majority of stock" nor support your claim that "just because the companies change doesn't mean the owners do". Edit to reply: You don't need to tell me about the social mobility of people living in poverty. I was born into a family of construction workers, and escaped poverty by learning to program. I know from experience that new businesses create opportunities to escape poverty, even if that isn't measured or sufficiently weighted by the index you cited.
        malermeister 4y ago
        You can call it "upper middle class" all you want, but to the vast majority of the population those folks would simply be "rich". I'm not as concerned as you with the various strata of richness and the mobility between them. I'm much more concerned with the social mobility of people living in poverty, which is pretty bad in the US compared to Europe. [0] Key factor in that? Unions. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Social_Mobility_Index
        SamReidHughes 4y ago
        The thing you're linking doesn't even measure social mobility, it just calls itself a social mobility index.
      - GAN_Game 4y ago
        Zuckerberg went to Phillips Exeter, a high school which costs at least $47,000 a year. Zuckerberg bought Instagram from Kevin Systrom who went to Middlesex high school, which costs at least $55,000 a year. At this point it becomes a parlor game of who is rich, and who is "upper middle class", which apparently means spending $55,000+ a year on your kid's high school.
        leereeves 4y ago
    - dexterdog 4y ago
      He's not talking about the founders. He's talking about the funders.
- westpfelia 4y ago
  OH 1000000% I mean can you even name a single business that has started in Berlin in the last 25 years? You cant. Because not a single business has started. Taxes have killed all brand new business ideas in the German tech start up scene.
- hef19898 4y ago
  That is an interesting way to read my comment so. It is not regulation nor taxes that make it hard for "tech" start ups in Europe. It is harder access to Venture Capital and smaller adressable markets, overall the European Market is huge, but harder to access due to language barriers.

GAN_Game 4y ago

If you have thousands working and creating wealth, and then a handful of heirs not working, and siphoning off expropriated surplus labor time of those who do work, then the heirs have a pretty good deal going for themselves. A couple percent of the created wealth of a few thousand workers just for one person? That adds up quick.