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I really like this post since it shows how very little there is for the wealthy to buy other than status goods. The life of the rich, other than status, is ver

I really like this post since it shows how very little there is for the wealthy to buy other than status goods. The life of the rich, other than status, is very much like the life of upper middle class. The same phones, the same digital entertainment, the same appliances in their homes. We have very few items for the rich to buy. Honestly, it is a problem it breaks incentives and it drives the rich more towards status goods which help no one since they are zero sum. We should have expensive products which actually improve lives.

Immortalin 1y ago
> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives. Maybe the super rich should take up training LLMs as a hobby.
- globalise83 1y ago
  That's literally the case already: each tech oligarch has their own toy AI company.
candiddevmike 1y ago
Yet people still hate the thought of a "maximum wage" or limit to wealth. Everyone should have a life of comfort, not just those who won the lottery or were born into it.
- andrewrn 1y ago
  The problem with a maximum wage is deciding what that maximum is. Outsides returns are what incentivize people to start companies. A earning cap will cap that incentive accordingly.
  - bjourne 1y ago
    Progressive tax scales solves that problem neatly.
    - ta1243 1y ago
      Tax on income keeps wealth with people who have wealth, and people without wealth wage slaves. If you rent a $10m house you pay $500k a year for it. With 50% tax you'd have to earn $1m a year to pay the rent. If you own a $10m house you pay no rent, and have to earn $0 a year to live there.
      - bjourne 1y ago
        Wealth tax is a thing.
  - mathverse 1y ago
    The maximum wealth should be capped exactly where it becomes a tool to buy or assert influence over democracy.
- SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
  People hate the thought because it's repeatedly failed to work historically, with even explicitly Marxist states deciding that it's best to allow some billionaires.
- refurb 1y ago
  It’s easy to determine what income would be if everyone made the same amount - average income, which is $72,000 per worker. That includes everyone who filed a tax return from the kid working at McDonald’s to Warren Buffet. Not sure what you’d call a comfortable life but a single mom making $72,000 per year would be struggling in many major cities.
  - al_borland 1y ago
    People don’t become ultra wealthy from a high income, they generally own a business that increases in value.
    - refurb 1y ago
      Sure, but the only way they can access that wealth is to sell ownership, which would produce income. So all those people who sold $100M businesses are included in that $72,000 figure.
  - blharr 1y ago
    What a complete non-sequitur. A wealth cap of, say, a billion dollars would have none of the same implications
    - refurb 1y ago
      It’s not a non-sequitor. The comment I replied to referenced a “wealth cap” and “redistribution” so “everyone could have a comfortable life”. My point is that take to an extreme of equal redistribution to everyone, people would end up in a barely comfortable position.
      - blharr 1y ago
        Your point is that too much of something to an extreme is bad. That's true of everything. What's the point?
- bluGill 1y ago
  Some of us believe in liberty of property and maximum wages is not compatible with that.
analog31 1y ago
In fact they depend on the upper middle class in order to have those things. I'm thinking about cell phones. Nobody can have a cell phone unless enough people can afford them to create an incentive to build and improve the infrastructure.
- candiddevmike 1y ago
  Same thing with 401k enrollments at businesses. Management gets way more of a benefit from them than the wage slaves, but needs to maintain a minimum amount of people enrolled.
- BurningFrog 1y ago
  Without people to buy from, money is worthless.
  - immibis 1y ago
    Sometimes it's fun to realize that if we all just decided dollars were worthless, they would be. There'd be nothing the government could do about it. Crypto ain't it, though. Even the better-scaling blockchains still don't scale very well. I've heard of a few different mesh-network currency projects, and I wonder if any of them could scale by essentially giving each user their own blockchain. However, in a mesh-network currency, you still have to find a conversion path with enough capacity, and pay a fee at each step, so maybe that's not it either.
    - doubled112 1y ago
      I’ve tried saying this the other way around to people and I’ve only received blank stares. Maybe I should describe it like that. Money is only valuable because we decided it has value. It can’t really do anything for you except be spent. It isn’t like a log, which could be burned, or ground into paper, turned into a weapon, etc
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
vidarh 1y ago
I clicked through hoping for something interesting and different, and got the same impression. So... More plus influence. I think the only thing listed that people with less money don't really "know about" is how much perspective changes with staff. You know people have people, but not necessarily how it changes things. I'm on the very low end of that - I run a small DevOps consultancy and can, now employ a few people in low cost countries, and though I've managed large teams before, having unilateral ability to set people to work on things because I want them is a game changer, and it's hard to get used to asking for things instead of doing them. The rest feels like things everyone knows, if not directly then from TV and movies.
amarcheschi 1y ago
I knew a son of two entrepreneurs with a ~30m yacht, they own a (ex) monastery they use, either for parties, events, or as a residence They have Miele appliances, but having "same appliances" doesn't make justice to the fact that there are deeper differences. Yes, they're status goods, but I think one's life might greatly improve by being very wealthy - even if your life can still be shitty as a wealthy person
- nunez 1y ago
  Miele makes really good stuff. I have their stackable W1/T1 washer/dryer. It's unbelievably good at washing or drying pretty much anything. They also supposedly last forever, even today. I'll let y'all know how true that is in 20 years LOL
  - CobaltFire 1y ago
    Have the same set, as well as dishwasher and vacuum. Nothing but good stuff to say in coming up on 10 years of use.
  - viraptor 1y ago
    Oh no... Ok, Miele rant - I got a whole set in the new house. Their firmware SUCKS. Turning on the oven/dishwasher takes 5-10s. The dishwasher takes 3 power button presses with no feedback. The oven has no indication when it starts turning on and it's a touchpanel, so you stand there like an idiot deciding is the next press will work or be perfectly timed to turn it off again. Then once you start the drying after steaming, you can't cancel (~20min). The washer needs a strong long press on "start" because it's somehow read twice in software and you can get into an in-between state where the controls go away but the washing doesn't start. ("Known issue, press harder") Their kitchen extractor fan has "loud" and "jet engine" settings. (At least that one's hardware) Would not recommend this to anyone who can't easily test them in a showroom and even then not really... They do the actual job well, but their UX makes me angry every day. The biggest difference more money would make is that I could have someone else deal with those issues.
    - 1y ago
SJC_Hacker 1y ago
I'd say it really depends on the mentality of the very rich person The very wealthy are going to fly private. Upper middle class could swing this on a case-to-case basis, but not regularly and especially if not if they frequently travel Other than that, the main difference is the very wealthy having a mentality of getting people to "take care of problems" to a much larger extent. For example, routine tasks like cleaning. An upper MC person might have a weekly cleaner at best. But they still have to load/unload dishwasher, do their own laundry, etc. A very rich person has a full-time housekeeper. The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. Like having "a lawyer" who they go to for and have known for years. There seems to be much more of a sense of personal relationships / loyalty. Almost like the old feudal oaths.
- Animats 1y ago
  > The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. At the higher levels, there's a "family office" which takes care of such things. All bills go there, and anything that needs to be done, they take care of. The first big one was the Rockefellers', which was in Rockefeller Center in New York. (That turned into a business. Now it offers Being Rich as a Service.)
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    Family offices manage investments. Personal staff are typically separate.
    - Animats 1y ago
      Traditionally, yes. That's for the people who inherited a mansion, retainers, and trusts. Now there are family office concierge services. "Luxury lifestyle as a service" is available.[1] That's for people who made a lot of money all at once and need guidance in spending it. (The people I've known with serious money made most of it themselves, and didn't need a family office. Except for one married couple who blew through 8 figures and went broke.) [1] https://www.maisonbenjamin.com/familyoffices https://www.maisonbenjamin.com/familyoffices
nativeit 1y ago
We should have 90% top marginal tax rates instead.
- HardCodedBias 1y ago
  How about we do the exact opposite? Create expensive products which materially improve the lives of those with wealth? Align the incentives of the rich so that they don't spend on these zero sum status goods. Also incentivize the rich to get richer so that they can buy these products that make their lives better in a non-shallow way. Work with incentives instead of against incentives.
  - jjcob 1y ago
    That's the current status quo, isn't it? There's yachts and fancy houses and supercars to buy for the rich. They make their lives better, in some way. A lot of people are employed to make those things. I don't see how this helps anyone. If wealth were distributed more equally, those people would work on making the lives of everyone better, not just the lives of a small elite.
  - Mashimo 1y ago
    Ah that sounds smart, so in a way the wealth will trickle down to the common man? Someone should try it.
- matwood 1y ago
  You can't talk about top rates without also talking about where they kick in. Italy's top rate of 43% kicks in for everything over 50k euros. The 50k feels a bit low to me, and maybe 100k euros would be better. 90% of everything over 5M may work, but then you run into another problem where people that rich are not bringing home a salary. So you lower where it kicks in and then just impact the working professionals, which also isn't who you really want to target. And if you do want to target those working $500k+/year, removing the cap (176,100 this year) on SS payments is probably a better path. So now we're back to the ultra-rich where you need to first think about taxing dividends as income without hurting retirees, and second think about some wealth tax. It could be small like .2% on everything over 5M or something, but it would actually put some tax burden on the people you're trying to put it on.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> We have very few items for the rich to buy Goods, yes. Services, fuck no. Look at the Four Seasons and Amangani yacht and jet programmes for a <$10mm example of the sorts of experiences wealth opens up.
- HardCodedBias 1y ago
  These are mostly positional items. The four seasons isn't materially better than the hilton next door. The rooms are basically the same, the fixtures at the four seasons are fancier, the bedding is prettier, some random furniture may be sourced from a different supplier. The four seasons will be in a location which has somewhat better views. The four seasons has prettier and more attentive staff, and there are less "less well off" at the four seasons. And you get to brag that you went to the "four seasons" but it really isn't that much better. It's almost all status.
  - sarchertech 1y ago
    I stayed at the 4 seasons a few years ago just to give it a try. Not even remotely worth it. The only real difference I noticed was the obsequiousness of the staff. If you want hotel employees to kiss your ass and pretend to respect you, then this is the place for you. But the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed. I will give you a good example of something that most upper middle class people can’t afford or at least can’t afford frequently. Disney World VIP tours. My wife has family who are club 33 members and they gifted us a VIP tour as a wedding present. The tour guide drives you around to the different parks and walks you backstage through tunnels and hidden areas to get you the very front of any ride you want to go on.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed I broadly agree with you on their hotels. But I’d note that Four Seasons doesn’t compete on room quality, but service. If you planned your stay perfectly they shouldn’t outperform. But if you forgot something, or need help with something weird, they have a habit of being halfway legendary. (Colleague left his suit at home. They had one made overnight. Concierge apparently knew a suit maker’s cell.)
cess11 1y ago
[flagged]
- criddell 1y ago
  What are the major crimes or exploitation that Warren Buffet is guilty of?
  - bombcar 1y ago
    See’s Candy
  - cess11 1y ago
    Since you bring him up specifically I'm guessing you already know he's a capitalist but is perfectly fine with hereditary wealth extracted from other people's labour, so maybe look into his predatory practices towards the poor, e.g. in lending, or other corporations. Perhaps you also recognise this quote: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
    - kortilla 1y ago
      Look at the context of that quote and you’ll understand he is not arguing either in support of your stance against the rich nor is he supportive of how the rich as a class are minimizing taxes through equity loans/etc.
      - cess11 1y ago
        If you look at the context here you'll notice that this is about whether Buffett is exploitative, and as the quote shows, he said that he is.
- Mashimo 1y ago
  > we should get rid of the rich. In what way for example?
  - 1y ago
never_inline 1y ago
If I were rich, I would have a personal data center, an aeronautics lab, a tropical farm, mediaeval fort, things like that. Not this yatches and crap.
- ownedthx 1y ago
  ‘The Manor on Stagecoach’ https://g.co/kgs/tgHhdkD https://g.co/kgs/tgHhdkD You aren’t alone
- bombela 1y ago
  And I would sell tickets (at a loss, ). Because whats something cool if nobody witnesses it.
  - LaundroMat 1y ago
    Why sell tickets then? :)
    - tryauuum 1y ago
      to filter out people completely uninterested in the topic
- Flamentono2 1y ago
  [dead]
- m463 1y ago
  when the 3D printing stack gets a little further, we'll all get "a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy."
lwo32k 1y ago
> which help no one since they are zero sum Signalling Status plays a big role in group formation/group maintenance/social cohesion etc. The larger groups grow, the more complex the group dynamics get, keeping groups of people together and preventing them from disintegrating is one of the most complex problem we face, given all the differences in culture, religion, language, class, personalities, ambitions, values, needs, intelligence, skill, education level, interests etc etc A short cut frequently used (cause its easy) is using Leisure and Luxury (see Theory of the Leisure Class). "So you like what I wear, where I stay, what I eat, who my friends are, what toys I have and want to be like me or hang out with me then do what I say". This works pretty well. In fact Veblen's prediction in Theory of the Leisure Class was that since Tech has a tendency to eliminate waste, tech would eventually eliminate the need for a Leisure/Status signalling Class that keeps large groups from unraveling. But social cohesion of large groups is such a complex problem, society even today requires all kinds of Status Signalling to keep the groups together. If you find ways to keep groups together without status signalling you are onto something special.
- 47282847 1y ago
  In my experience roaming many different groups, the ones who do not signal status typically are the most powerful/influental. Their membership is safe; they don’t need to signal status, or rather, signaling it draws too much attention (annoyances by those seeking to gain status by affiliation). I remember reading a study about this some years back to find my own findings confirmed. The people I know with a net worth over 10m do not display it. Why would they want to. It only has downsides and no upside. Same applies to other forms of status/rank/belonging. (Not contradicting your points, merely adding to them.) If you want to experiment with that, try to NOT match other people’s style AND radiate a deep sense of security/belonging/entitlement. Do not hide your (other) insecurities; those with status don’t have to hide their authenticity. This may sound like a contradiction at first, but you can develop an universal sense of belonging that remains authentic. You will be surprised which people will suddenly find you to talk with you, once you stop seeking their attention.
  - mpweiher 1y ago
ifyoubuildit 1y ago
> The same phones, the same digital entertainment, the same appliances in their homes. This stuff isn't life, it's just the random trinkets we fill our lives with. Time is life. The rich can do with their time what they please.
squigz 1y ago
> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives. We do. It's just that "wealthy" is far past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to buying high-quality expensive items. No, we don't need to come up with things for the rich to buy just to fix their incentives. We should be asking ourselves how to decrease wealth inequality, not how to make it more fair to those on top.
0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
The incentives for the ultra-rich are screwed up. I remember a few years ago Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was donating 99% to charity. The internet got very angry about it, based on flimsy reasoning: https://qz.com/564805/5-criticisms-of-billionaire-mega-philanthropy-debunked https://qz.com/564805/5-criticisms-of-billionaire-mega-phila... Bill Gates has saved millions of lives through his philanthropy, and the internet is full of malicious rumors about him. Other billionaires who do far less good, but keep a lower profile, get much less hate. A common meme on the internet is "if your intent was truly charitable, you wouldn't care whether anyone said thank you". But this is a false dichotomy. Many people find the idea of charity appealing to some degree, but most of us aren't die-hard saints either. When we see the good deeds of others get devalued or even punished, that makes us less enthusiastic about doing good ourselves. "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." Punishing do-gooders is one of the most anti-social things you can do. On the other hand, praising do-gooders is a very cheap way to incentivize people to do more good in the world. I believe that once you get to a certain level of wealth, you start caring more about your personal reputation than your material goods. Sadly, there is so much reflexive skepticism towards billionaire philanthropy at this point that it's not even clear to me whether doing philanthropy is reputationally net-positive.
- Gud 1y ago
  Bill Gates gets a lot of hate for good reason. His business practices killed off a lot of good products. BeOS, anyone?
  - keeda 1y ago
    This article, and Google's and Bing's AI overviews for "how did microsoft kill off beos", disagree with that premise: https://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html https://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html (Edited to add, another more detailed article: https://macfolkloreradio.com/be/ https://macfolkloreradio.com/be/) People make this claim about a lot of software (Netscape being the poster child) but typically whenever I look into it, the nuanced answer turns out to be "Microsoft may have thrown it's weight around, but the product largely failed on it's own merits."
david38 1y ago
Little, but largely impactful in certain circumstances * money for health care * education * money to walk away from a bad job + money to hold you over for extended periods during hard times
- tsoukase 1y ago
  After health and edu, your points do not apply. Filthy rich do not have jobs, hard times etc And at least in Europe we have (mostly) low cost health and edu and we do not (mostly) get jealous about the rich
  - song 1y ago
    I'm French and, out of all the countries I've lived in (US, developing countries in South East Asia, China, ...) I have a hard time thinking of a country where there's more hatred for the rich than in France. So I'm not sure that the statement of Europeans not getting jealous about the rich tracks. If anything Americans seem to dislike their rich less.
tuatoru 1y ago
> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives. Those are called philanthropic charities - research institutes or the like. Some of the very rich have them. Edit: the town I was born in had a Carnegie Library[1]. Edit 2: the point being that the very rich buy social status and respect. 1. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/carnegie-libraries/ https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/carnegie-libraries/
burnt-resistor 1y ago
Commissioned art and other things of little intrinsic utility plus occasional trappings of status are the discriminants for some. If you don't need these things, life is simpler and cheaper. It is nice to do things that aren't solely about advancing utility sometimes. Art is another good way to hide, transport, and increase wealth.
chrismcb 1y ago
I'm not sure what you argument is here. But I world rather have inexpensive things that improve lives. There isn't a huge market for expensive things that improve lives. It are you trying to say you want rich people to spend their money trying to build things to improve lives? Some do. Why do you think we have star link, for example
- jmye 1y ago
  I don’t think StarLink was built to improve lives. See: how it’s being used as a control and power mechanism.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Starlink was built to provide a customer for large numbers of space launches.
    - jmye 1y ago
      Maybe in part, but you build an ISP (and then strong arm people into using it) because you want to control the data and the access. Especially when you clearly prioritize those things in your side jobs.
mcmoor 1y ago
I've heard that it's even worse (better?) the more you go to the past. Bret Deveraux [argues] (https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...) that this is one reason why lots of farmers choose to stay in subsistence level, because there's not really better things they can buy anyway. So they just conserve energy and time (which some outsider may see as lazy) and focus on long term resiliency (through building horizontal and vertical social relationships) to ensure that no disaster may pull them down all the way to starvation.
124123124 1y ago
The answer is out-of-topic because the question ask what is something that ordinary people do not know.They go on a tangent about perspective and power over society, but nothing listed was a thing that I do not know. like >Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back. Funnily, my parents always call back within 60 seconds even midnight, while a certain someone get disowned by their kids. >For a donation of $100k+ to his charity, you could probably play a match with him. For a donation of 16k you can have a 1 on 1 zoom call with Keanu Reeves. He advertised this pretty well, so "ordinary people" should know this. At this point, all the riches and riches are on SNS flexing their wealth, I don't think there is anything left that ordinary people just couldn't browse SNS and see what can you buy with those money.
- Bang2Bay 1y ago
  The post is probably written by a non-rich who does not know but suspect that there is something? may be there is that we do not know now? ;)
lm28469 1y ago
Buying "things" really is the level 0 of wealth. What matters is that you don't have to sell your time for money, that alone changes your entire existence. Then you have access to better healthcare, education, seeing your kids grow, &c. That's why a lot of poor people who unlock large amount of money go broke quite fast, they still think like poor people
- madaxe_again 1y ago
  Time is indeed a very major thing, but it’s more accessible than most realise - I am only marginally wealthy, high 7/low 8 figures, and that’s ample for me to not need to work for a living and live very comfortably. Frankly, once you have even $1M in free liquid capital, you are in the endgame, as money makes money far more efficiently than labour. I spend perhaps 20 hours a year farting around with our finances, place some bets, and that’s it. I decided to go full on idle-rich when I was still practically a pauper, and have grown my worth significantly since. Perhaps my sample pool is skewed, but the billionaires and centimillionaires I know live pretty modest lives in general - yes, they fly first class, stay in the best hotels, and all that jazz, but they’re unpretentious, and you wouldn’t know them from the upper middle class family sat at the next table. In fact, one I know regularly gets weird looks because he’ll be in some elite country club in his coffee-stained slacks and threadbare jumper - but there’s the rub - he doesn’t care. The guy who looks rich is probably up to his eyeballs in debt. The guy who looks like the janitor probably owns the place. I think the single biggest thing wealth buys is not giving a shit what other people think. You don’t have to play status games when you know you’re the big dog in the room, even if nobody else knows it. I mean, I take perverse joy in showing up at places looking like I just crawled out of a gutter, because I know it doesn’t matter - my money is good.
  - st-keller 1y ago
    I also like showing up at places and don’t give a shit what other people think. It’s even more fun not being wealthy at all.
  - mykowebhn 1y ago
    I agree with this so much. I'm not your level wealthy, but I don't work, live comfortably, and I'm happy. I prefer not to eat at expensive restaurants, but I enjoy restaurants that serve good food. I don't really want to fly to an expensive city and spend lots of money. I'd rather spend time in nature, hike, try to ID plants, and spend time with my wife and our animals.
KolibriFly 1y ago
Like, at some point there's no real "better," just "rarer."
Flamentono2 1y ago
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sgt101 1y ago
Well - there is an alternative take. Whisper it... but we don't actually need to have ultra rich people in our society. They serve no purpose that normal rich people don't, and arguably introduce distortions that are profoundly corrosive.
- randomcarbloke 1y ago
  we didn't arbitrarily select people to make rich, they are externalities of our wants and needs, and a sign that those things are being ~ satisfied.
  - atwrk 1y ago
    They are decidedly a result of the taxation system of a country. The country decided they wanted to have this class of people to exist. (The degree of) Wealth inequality is always a product of society.
    - al_borland 1y ago
      Poor people pay next to nothing in taxes, yet they don’t end up wealthy from this. The tax systems doesn’t create wealthy people, it just doesn’t cut their legs out from under them.
      - RGamma 1y ago
        Public wealth vs private wealth. Trump has correctly identified that rising public debt is a problem, but not that the missing liquidity is trapped in his own class's pockets.
      - atwrk 1y ago
        Tax systems create wealthy people in two ways: a) by disproportionally tax the poor vs. the rich. In the United States, "42 states tax the top 1 percent at a lower rate than the bottom 20 percent, while 46 states tax the top 1 percent less than the middle 60 percent of earners." https://media.itep.org/ITEP-Who-Pays-7th-edition.pdf https://media.itep.org/ITEP-Who-Pays-7th-edition.pdf b) by using the taxes to disproportionately benefit the upper income brackets, e.g. by investing more in universities than schools, or infrastructure in wealthy neighborhoods than poor neighborhoods (both true for the US).
yen223 1y ago
It's really curious that something as personal to people as smartphones don't have a rich-person equivalent the same way cars do. What is the McLaren of iPhones?
- Cthulhu_ 1y ago
  There's gold plated / jewel encrusted versions of phones or graphics cards [0] but that's just making things look garish for the people that want to look rich. But as far as I know there's no 'bespoke' phone manufacturer on the same level as Swiss watches or hand-built cars. No real reason either; with a watch, any performance has peaked years ago so the only thing that remains is design. Phones are mostly functional, although I suppose you could do something cool with the back side. [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/one-day-the-silicon-in-this-usd7000-asus-rtx-5090-will-be-worthless-but-youll-still-have-a-whole-6-grams-of-solid-gold-to-make-up-for-it/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/one-day-the-...
  - strogonoff 1y ago
    It’s remarkable how every market where Apple makes itself at home basically has no real luxury bracket anymore. Almost every visible accessory or piece of functional equipment has luxury models that may be only slightly functionally better (sometimes not even better, sometimes actually worse) but also charge massive margins. Not so much with phones, tablets, or laptops. It’s as if the world has collectively decided that you simply can’t beat Apple, which astoundingly in the meantime completely ignores the luxury market. Even if you charged $50K+ per unit—I’m sure Samsung and every other maker would love to charge exorbitant prices for end-game devices—you’ll make a fool of yourself: iPhone will objectively be more premium, work smoother, have all the high-end apps, etc. There’s no choice but to tighten your belt and thin your margins to stay competitive. I’m not sure how this (undoubtedly impressive) achievement makes me feel. Maybe it’s the feeling of finally being able to afford one, or the ability to say “it’s a cute expensive toy, but it’s objectively worse for X and Y reasons”, but there is something about the Leicas and Ducatis of the world.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Back in the day, Nokia had a luxury brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu It was exactly the "expensive watch" model; priced absurdly high on the Veblen good theory. It didn't work.
amelius 1y ago
Well, they have access to more medical treatments.
JKCalhoun 1y ago
Jets, art, yachts, vacation homes. That's quite enough actually.
crossroadsguy 1y ago
When I started earning much more money than I have had before (not “rich” money by any means - that’s not the point; but much much more than I grew up in or started my career with) I realised it’s not about buying things, it’s more about being able to pay for things without giving a thought if needed/wanted. That’s really a very relaxing or freeing feeling. (And they say money doesn’t bring peace :P)
efficax 1y ago
what the super-rich can buy that the middle class can't isn't really things (except for luxury goods, which are meh), it's people (through services). you can buy someone to do anything that you want to be done (that can be done!) so you don't have to do it. nannies, companions, builders, killers, bodyguards, drivers, pilots, cleaners, house managers, lawyers, secretaries, etc. That's what you do with the money. You buy farmers to grow macadamia nuts on your hawaii estate to feed cows raised by more farmers so you can call your property a farm, get a tax break, and brag about the quality and freshness of the steak when people come over for dinner. and so on. you can even buy people to make more money for you, so you don't have to do it yourself, either through your "family office" investment firm, or through venture capital. You don't have to do anything but ask for what you want and there it is.
m463 1y ago
well, except for: IMPACT. Your money can literally change the world and change lives.

Immortalin 1y ago

> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives. Maybe the super rich should take up training LLMs as a hobby.

globalise83 1y ago
That's literally the case already: each tech oligarch has their own toy AI company.

candiddevmike 1y ago

Yet people still hate the thought of a "maximum wage" or limit to wealth. Everyone should have a life of comfort, not just those who won the lottery or were born into it.

andrewrn 1y ago
The problem with a maximum wage is deciding what that maximum is. Outsides returns are what incentivize people to start companies. A earning cap will cap that incentive accordingly.
- bjourne 1y ago
  Progressive tax scales solves that problem neatly.
  - ta1243 1y ago
    Tax on income keeps wealth with people who have wealth, and people without wealth wage slaves. If you rent a $10m house you pay $500k a year for it. With 50% tax you'd have to earn $1m a year to pay the rent. If you own a $10m house you pay no rent, and have to earn $0 a year to live there.
    - bjourne 1y ago
      Wealth tax is a thing.
- mathverse 1y ago
  The maximum wealth should be capped exactly where it becomes a tool to buy or assert influence over democracy.
SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
People hate the thought because it's repeatedly failed to work historically, with even explicitly Marxist states deciding that it's best to allow some billionaires.
refurb 1y ago
It’s easy to determine what income would be if everyone made the same amount - average income, which is $72,000 per worker. That includes everyone who filed a tax return from the kid working at McDonald’s to Warren Buffet. Not sure what you’d call a comfortable life but a single mom making $72,000 per year would be struggling in many major cities.
- al_borland 1y ago
  People don’t become ultra wealthy from a high income, they generally own a business that increases in value.
  - refurb 1y ago
    Sure, but the only way they can access that wealth is to sell ownership, which would produce income. So all those people who sold $100M businesses are included in that $72,000 figure.
- blharr 1y ago
  What a complete non-sequitur. A wealth cap of, say, a billion dollars would have none of the same implications
  - refurb 1y ago
    It’s not a non-sequitor. The comment I replied to referenced a “wealth cap” and “redistribution” so “everyone could have a comfortable life”. My point is that take to an extreme of equal redistribution to everyone, people would end up in a barely comfortable position.
    - blharr 1y ago
      Your point is that too much of something to an extreme is bad. That's true of everything. What's the point?
bluGill 1y ago
Some of us believe in liberty of property and maximum wages is not compatible with that.

analog31 1y ago

In fact they depend on the upper middle class in order to have those things. I'm thinking about cell phones. Nobody can have a cell phone unless enough people can afford them to create an incentive to build and improve the infrastructure.

candiddevmike 1y ago
Same thing with 401k enrollments at businesses. Management gets way more of a benefit from them than the wage slaves, but needs to maintain a minimum amount of people enrolled.
BurningFrog 1y ago
Without people to buy from, money is worthless.
- immibis 1y ago
  Sometimes it's fun to realize that if we all just decided dollars were worthless, they would be. There'd be nothing the government could do about it. Crypto ain't it, though. Even the better-scaling blockchains still don't scale very well. I've heard of a few different mesh-network currency projects, and I wonder if any of them could scale by essentially giving each user their own blockchain. However, in a mesh-network currency, you still have to find a conversion path with enough capacity, and pay a fee at each step, so maybe that's not it either.
  - doubled112 1y ago
    I’ve tried saying this the other way around to people and I’ve only received blank stares. Maybe I should describe it like that. Money is only valuable because we decided it has value. It can’t really do anything for you except be spent. It isn’t like a log, which could be burned, or ground into paper, turned into a weapon, etc
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]

vidarh 1y ago

I clicked through hoping for something interesting and different, and got the same impression. So... More plus influence. I think the only thing listed that people with less money don't really "know about" is how much perspective changes with staff. You know people have people, but not necessarily how it changes things. I'm on the very low end of that - I run a small DevOps consultancy and can, now employ a few people in low cost countries, and though I've managed large teams before, having unilateral ability to set people to work on things because I want them is a game changer, and it's hard to get used to asking for things instead of doing them. The rest feels like things everyone knows, if not directly then from TV and movies.

amarcheschi 1y ago

I knew a son of two entrepreneurs with a ~30m yacht, they own a (ex) monastery they use, either for parties, events, or as a residence They have Miele appliances, but having "same appliances" doesn't make justice to the fact that there are deeper differences. Yes, they're status goods, but I think one's life might greatly improve by being very wealthy - even if your life can still be shitty as a wealthy person

nunez 1y ago
Miele makes really good stuff. I have their stackable W1/T1 washer/dryer. It's unbelievably good at washing or drying pretty much anything. They also supposedly last forever, even today. I'll let y'all know how true that is in 20 years LOL
- CobaltFire 1y ago
  Have the same set, as well as dishwasher and vacuum. Nothing but good stuff to say in coming up on 10 years of use.
- viraptor 1y ago
  Oh no... Ok, Miele rant - I got a whole set in the new house. Their firmware SUCKS. Turning on the oven/dishwasher takes 5-10s. The dishwasher takes 3 power button presses with no feedback. The oven has no indication when it starts turning on and it's a touchpanel, so you stand there like an idiot deciding is the next press will work or be perfectly timed to turn it off again. Then once you start the drying after steaming, you can't cancel (~20min). The washer needs a strong long press on "start" because it's somehow read twice in software and you can get into an in-between state where the controls go away but the washing doesn't start. ("Known issue, press harder") Their kitchen extractor fan has "loud" and "jet engine" settings. (At least that one's hardware) Would not recommend this to anyone who can't easily test them in a showroom and even then not really... They do the actual job well, but their UX makes me angry every day. The biggest difference more money would make is that I could have someone else deal with those issues.
  - 1y ago

SJC_Hacker 1y ago

I'd say it really depends on the mentality of the very rich person The very wealthy are going to fly private. Upper middle class could swing this on a case-to-case basis, but not regularly and especially if not if they frequently travel Other than that, the main difference is the very wealthy having a mentality of getting people to "take care of problems" to a much larger extent. For example, routine tasks like cleaning. An upper MC person might have a weekly cleaner at best. But they still have to load/unload dishwasher, do their own laundry, etc. A very rich person has a full-time housekeeper. The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. Like having "a lawyer" who they go to for and have known for years. There seems to be much more of a sense of personal relationships / loyalty. Almost like the old feudal oaths.

Animats 1y ago
> The very rich have circles of people they rely on to take care of problems. At the higher levels, there's a "family office" which takes care of such things. All bills go there, and anything that needs to be done, they take care of. The first big one was the Rockefellers', which was in Rockefeller Center in New York. (That turned into a business. Now it offers Being Rich as a Service.)
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  Family offices manage investments. Personal staff are typically separate.
  - Animats 1y ago
    Traditionally, yes. That's for the people who inherited a mansion, retainers, and trusts. Now there are family office concierge services. "Luxury lifestyle as a service" is available.[1] That's for people who made a lot of money all at once and need guidance in spending it. (The people I've known with serious money made most of it themselves, and didn't need a family office. Except for one married couple who blew through 8 figures and went broke.) [1] https://www.maisonbenjamin.com/familyoffices https://www.maisonbenjamin.com/familyoffices

nativeit 1y ago

We should have 90% top marginal tax rates instead.

HardCodedBias 1y ago
How about we do the exact opposite? Create expensive products which materially improve the lives of those with wealth? Align the incentives of the rich so that they don't spend on these zero sum status goods. Also incentivize the rich to get richer so that they can buy these products that make their lives better in a non-shallow way. Work with incentives instead of against incentives.
- jjcob 1y ago
  That's the current status quo, isn't it? There's yachts and fancy houses and supercars to buy for the rich. They make their lives better, in some way. A lot of people are employed to make those things. I don't see how this helps anyone. If wealth were distributed more equally, those people would work on making the lives of everyone better, not just the lives of a small elite.
- Mashimo 1y ago
  Ah that sounds smart, so in a way the wealth will trickle down to the common man? Someone should try it.
matwood 1y ago
You can't talk about top rates without also talking about where they kick in. Italy's top rate of 43% kicks in for everything over 50k euros. The 50k feels a bit low to me, and maybe 100k euros would be better. 90% of everything over 5M may work, but then you run into another problem where people that rich are not bringing home a salary. So you lower where it kicks in and then just impact the working professionals, which also isn't who you really want to target. And if you do want to target those working $500k+/year, removing the cap (176,100 this year) on SS payments is probably a better path. So now we're back to the ultra-rich where you need to first think about taxing dividends as income without hurting retirees, and second think about some wealth tax. It could be small like .2% on everything over 5M or something, but it would actually put some tax burden on the people you're trying to put it on.

JumpCrisscross 1y ago

> We have very few items for the rich to buy Goods, yes. Services, fuck no. Look at the Four Seasons and Amangani yacht and jet programmes for a <$10mm example of the sorts of experiences wealth opens up.

HardCodedBias 1y ago
These are mostly positional items. The four seasons isn't materially better than the hilton next door. The rooms are basically the same, the fixtures at the four seasons are fancier, the bedding is prettier, some random furniture may be sourced from a different supplier. The four seasons will be in a location which has somewhat better views. The four seasons has prettier and more attentive staff, and there are less "less well off" at the four seasons. And you get to brag that you went to the "four seasons" but it really isn't that much better. It's almost all status.
- sarchertech 1y ago
  I stayed at the 4 seasons a few years ago just to give it a try. Not even remotely worth it. The only real difference I noticed was the obsequiousness of the staff. If you want hotel employees to kiss your ass and pretend to respect you, then this is the place for you. But the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed. I will give you a good example of something that most upper middle class people can’t afford or at least can’t afford frequently. Disney World VIP tours. My wife has family who are club 33 members and they gifted us a VIP tour as a wedding present. The tour guide drives you around to the different parks and walks you backstage through tunnels and hidden areas to get you the very front of any ride you want to go on.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > the quality of the room wasn’t noticeably better than other places I’ve stayed I broadly agree with you on their hotels. But I’d note that Four Seasons doesn’t compete on room quality, but service. If you planned your stay perfectly they shouldn’t outperform. But if you forgot something, or need help with something weird, they have a habit of being halfway legendary. (Colleague left his suit at home. They had one made overnight. Concierge apparently knew a suit maker’s cell.)

cess11 1y ago

[flagged]

criddell 1y ago
What are the major crimes or exploitation that Warren Buffet is guilty of?
- bombcar 1y ago
  See’s Candy
- cess11 1y ago
  Since you bring him up specifically I'm guessing you already know he's a capitalist but is perfectly fine with hereditary wealth extracted from other people's labour, so maybe look into his predatory practices towards the poor, e.g. in lending, or other corporations. Perhaps you also recognise this quote: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning."
  - kortilla 1y ago
    Look at the context of that quote and you’ll understand he is not arguing either in support of your stance against the rich nor is he supportive of how the rich as a class are minimizing taxes through equity loans/etc.
    - cess11 1y ago
      If you look at the context here you'll notice that this is about whether Buffett is exploitative, and as the quote shows, he said that he is.
Mashimo 1y ago
> we should get rid of the rich. In what way for example?
- 1y ago

never_inline 1y ago

If I were rich, I would have a personal data center, an aeronautics lab, a tropical farm, mediaeval fort, things like that. Not this yatches and crap.

ownedthx 1y ago
‘The Manor on Stagecoach’ https://g.co/kgs/tgHhdkD https://g.co/kgs/tgHhdkD You aren’t alone
bombela 1y ago
And I would sell tickets (at a loss, ). Because whats something cool if nobody witnesses it.
- LaundroMat 1y ago
  Why sell tickets then? :)
  - tryauuum 1y ago
    to filter out people completely uninterested in the topic
Flamentono2 1y ago
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m463 1y ago
when the 3D printing stack gets a little further, we'll all get "a utopian, post-scarcity space society of humanoid aliens and advanced superintelligent artificial intelligences living in artificial habitats spread across the Milky Way galaxy."

lwo32k 1y ago

> which help no one since they are zero sum Signalling Status plays a big role in group formation/group maintenance/social cohesion etc. The larger groups grow, the more complex the group dynamics get, keeping groups of people together and preventing them from disintegrating is one of the most complex problem we face, given all the differences in culture, religion, language, class, personalities, ambitions, values, needs, intelligence, skill, education level, interests etc etc A short cut frequently used (cause its easy) is using Leisure and Luxury (see Theory of the Leisure Class). "So you like what I wear, where I stay, what I eat, who my friends are, what toys I have and want to be like me or hang out with me then do what I say". This works pretty well. In fact Veblen's prediction in Theory of the Leisure Class was that since Tech has a tendency to eliminate waste, tech would eventually eliminate the need for a Leisure/Status signalling Class that keeps large groups from unraveling. But social cohesion of large groups is such a complex problem, society even today requires all kinds of Status Signalling to keep the groups together. If you find ways to keep groups together without status signalling you are onto something special.

47282847 1y ago
In my experience roaming many different groups, the ones who do not signal status typically are the most powerful/influental. Their membership is safe; they don’t need to signal status, or rather, signaling it draws too much attention (annoyances by those seeking to gain status by affiliation). I remember reading a study about this some years back to find my own findings confirmed. The people I know with a net worth over 10m do not display it. Why would they want to. It only has downsides and no upside. Same applies to other forms of status/rank/belonging. (Not contradicting your points, merely adding to them.) If you want to experiment with that, try to NOT match other people’s style AND radiate a deep sense of security/belonging/entitlement. Do not hide your (other) insecurities; those with status don’t have to hide their authenticity. This may sound like a contradiction at first, but you can develop an universal sense of belonging that remains authentic. You will be surprised which people will suddenly find you to talk with you, once you stop seeking their attention.
- mpweiher 1y ago

ifyoubuildit 1y ago

> The same phones, the same digital entertainment, the same appliances in their homes. This stuff isn't life, it's just the random trinkets we fill our lives with. Time is life. The rich can do with their time what they please.

squigz 1y ago

> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives. We do. It's just that "wealthy" is far past the point of diminishing returns when it comes to buying high-quality expensive items. No, we don't need to come up with things for the rich to buy just to fix their incentives. We should be asking ourselves how to decrease wealth inequality, not how to make it more fair to those on top.

0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago

The incentives for the ultra-rich are screwed up. I remember a few years ago Mark Zuckerberg announced that he was donating 99% to charity. The internet got very angry about it, based on flimsy reasoning: https://qz.com/564805/5-criticisms-of-billionaire-mega-philanthropy-debunked https://qz.com/564805/5-criticisms-of-billionaire-mega-phila... Bill Gates has saved millions of lives through his philanthropy, and the internet is full of malicious rumors about him. Other billionaires who do far less good, but keep a lower profile, get much less hate. A common meme on the internet is "if your intent was truly charitable, you wouldn't care whether anyone said thank you". But this is a false dichotomy. Many people find the idea of charity appealing to some degree, but most of us aren't die-hard saints either. When we see the good deeds of others get devalued or even punished, that makes us less enthusiastic about doing good ourselves. "Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome." Punishing do-gooders is one of the most anti-social things you can do. On the other hand, praising do-gooders is a very cheap way to incentivize people to do more good in the world. I believe that once you get to a certain level of wealth, you start caring more about your personal reputation than your material goods. Sadly, there is so much reflexive skepticism towards billionaire philanthropy at this point that it's not even clear to me whether doing philanthropy is reputationally net-positive.

Gud 1y ago
Bill Gates gets a lot of hate for good reason. His business practices killed off a lot of good products. BeOS, anyone?
- keeda 1y ago
  This article, and Google's and Bing's AI overviews for "how did microsoft kill off beos", disagree with that premise: https://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html https://lowendmac.com/myturn/02/0403.html (Edited to add, another more detailed article: https://macfolkloreradio.com/be/ https://macfolkloreradio.com/be/) People make this claim about a lot of software (Netscape being the poster child) but typically whenever I look into it, the nuanced answer turns out to be "Microsoft may have thrown it's weight around, but the product largely failed on it's own merits."

david38 1y ago

Little, but largely impactful in certain circumstances * money for health care * education * money to walk away from a bad job + money to hold you over for extended periods during hard times

tsoukase 1y ago
After health and edu, your points do not apply. Filthy rich do not have jobs, hard times etc And at least in Europe we have (mostly) low cost health and edu and we do not (mostly) get jealous about the rich
- song 1y ago
  I'm French and, out of all the countries I've lived in (US, developing countries in South East Asia, China, ...) I have a hard time thinking of a country where there's more hatred for the rich than in France. So I'm not sure that the statement of Europeans not getting jealous about the rich tracks. If anything Americans seem to dislike their rich less.

tuatoru 1y ago

> We should have expensive products which actually improve lives. Those are called philanthropic charities - research institutes or the like. Some of the very rich have them. Edit: the town I was born in had a Carnegie Library[1]. Edit 2: the point being that the very rich buy social status and respect. 1. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/carnegie-libraries/ https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/carnegie-libraries/

burnt-resistor 1y ago

Commissioned art and other things of little intrinsic utility plus occasional trappings of status are the discriminants for some. If you don't need these things, life is simpler and cheaper. It is nice to do things that aren't solely about advancing utility sometimes. Art is another good way to hide, transport, and increase wealth.

chrismcb 1y ago

I'm not sure what you argument is here. But I world rather have inexpensive things that improve lives. There isn't a huge market for expensive things that improve lives. It are you trying to say you want rich people to spend their money trying to build things to improve lives? Some do. Why do you think we have star link, for example

jmye 1y ago
I don’t think StarLink was built to improve lives. See: how it’s being used as a control and power mechanism.
- ta1243 1y ago
  Starlink was built to provide a customer for large numbers of space launches.
  - jmye 1y ago
    Maybe in part, but you build an ISP (and then strong arm people into using it) because you want to control the data and the access. Especially when you clearly prioritize those things in your side jobs.

mcmoor 1y ago

I've heard that it's even worse (better?) the more you go to the past. Bret Deveraux [argues] (https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-farmers/ https://acoup.blog/2020/07/24/collections-bread-how-did-they...) that this is one reason why lots of farmers choose to stay in subsistence level, because there's not really better things they can buy anyway. So they just conserve energy and time (which some outsider may see as lazy) and focus on long term resiliency (through building horizontal and vertical social relationships) to ensure that no disaster may pull them down all the way to starvation.

124123124 1y ago

The answer is out-of-topic because the question ask what is something that ordinary people do not know.They go on a tangent about perspective and power over society, but nothing listed was a thing that I do not know. like >Access. You now can just ask your staff to contact anyone and you will get a call back. Funnily, my parents always call back within 60 seconds even midnight, while a certain someone get disowned by their kids. >For a donation of $100k+ to his charity, you could probably play a match with him. For a donation of 16k you can have a 1 on 1 zoom call with Keanu Reeves. He advertised this pretty well, so "ordinary people" should know this. At this point, all the riches and riches are on SNS flexing their wealth, I don't think there is anything left that ordinary people just couldn't browse SNS and see what can you buy with those money.

Bang2Bay 1y ago
The post is probably written by a non-rich who does not know but suspect that there is something? may be there is that we do not know now? ;)

lm28469 1y ago

Buying "things" really is the level 0 of wealth. What matters is that you don't have to sell your time for money, that alone changes your entire existence. Then you have access to better healthcare, education, seeing your kids grow, &c. That's why a lot of poor people who unlock large amount of money go broke quite fast, they still think like poor people

madaxe_again 1y ago
Time is indeed a very major thing, but it’s more accessible than most realise - I am only marginally wealthy, high 7/low 8 figures, and that’s ample for me to not need to work for a living and live very comfortably. Frankly, once you have even $1M in free liquid capital, you are in the endgame, as money makes money far more efficiently than labour. I spend perhaps 20 hours a year farting around with our finances, place some bets, and that’s it. I decided to go full on idle-rich when I was still practically a pauper, and have grown my worth significantly since. Perhaps my sample pool is skewed, but the billionaires and centimillionaires I know live pretty modest lives in general - yes, they fly first class, stay in the best hotels, and all that jazz, but they’re unpretentious, and you wouldn’t know them from the upper middle class family sat at the next table. In fact, one I know regularly gets weird looks because he’ll be in some elite country club in his coffee-stained slacks and threadbare jumper - but there’s the rub - he doesn’t care. The guy who looks rich is probably up to his eyeballs in debt. The guy who looks like the janitor probably owns the place. I think the single biggest thing wealth buys is not giving a shit what other people think. You don’t have to play status games when you know you’re the big dog in the room, even if nobody else knows it. I mean, I take perverse joy in showing up at places looking like I just crawled out of a gutter, because I know it doesn’t matter - my money is good.
- st-keller 1y ago
  I also like showing up at places and don’t give a shit what other people think. It’s even more fun not being wealthy at all.
- mykowebhn 1y ago
  I agree with this so much. I'm not your level wealthy, but I don't work, live comfortably, and I'm happy. I prefer not to eat at expensive restaurants, but I enjoy restaurants that serve good food. I don't really want to fly to an expensive city and spend lots of money. I'd rather spend time in nature, hike, try to ID plants, and spend time with my wife and our animals.

KolibriFly 1y ago

Like, at some point there's no real "better," just "rarer."

Flamentono2 1y ago

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sgt101 1y ago

Well - there is an alternative take. Whisper it... but we don't actually need to have ultra rich people in our society. They serve no purpose that normal rich people don't, and arguably introduce distortions that are profoundly corrosive.

randomcarbloke 1y ago
we didn't arbitrarily select people to make rich, they are externalities of our wants and needs, and a sign that those things are being ~ satisfied.
- atwrk 1y ago
  They are decidedly a result of the taxation system of a country. The country decided they wanted to have this class of people to exist. (The degree of) Wealth inequality is always a product of society.
  - al_borland 1y ago
    Poor people pay next to nothing in taxes, yet they don’t end up wealthy from this. The tax systems doesn’t create wealthy people, it just doesn’t cut their legs out from under them.
    - RGamma 1y ago
      Public wealth vs private wealth. Trump has correctly identified that rising public debt is a problem, but not that the missing liquidity is trapped in his own class's pockets.
    - atwrk 1y ago
      Tax systems create wealthy people in two ways: a) by disproportionally tax the poor vs. the rich. In the United States, "42 states tax the top 1 percent at a lower rate than the bottom 20 percent, while 46 states tax the top 1 percent less than the middle 60 percent of earners." https://media.itep.org/ITEP-Who-Pays-7th-edition.pdf https://media.itep.org/ITEP-Who-Pays-7th-edition.pdf b) by using the taxes to disproportionately benefit the upper income brackets, e.g. by investing more in universities than schools, or infrastructure in wealthy neighborhoods than poor neighborhoods (both true for the US).

yen223 1y ago

It's really curious that something as personal to people as smartphones don't have a rich-person equivalent the same way cars do. What is the McLaren of iPhones?

Cthulhu_ 1y ago
There's gold plated / jewel encrusted versions of phones or graphics cards [0] but that's just making things look garish for the people that want to look rich. But as far as I know there's no 'bespoke' phone manufacturer on the same level as Swiss watches or hand-built cars. No real reason either; with a watch, any performance has peaked years ago so the only thing that remains is design. Phones are mostly functional, although I suppose you could do something cool with the back side. [0] https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/one-day-the-silicon-in-this-usd7000-asus-rtx-5090-will-be-worthless-but-youll-still-have-a-whole-6-grams-of-solid-gold-to-make-up-for-it/ https://www.pcgamer.com/hardware/graphics-cards/one-day-the-...
- strogonoff 1y ago
  It’s remarkable how every market where Apple makes itself at home basically has no real luxury bracket anymore. Almost every visible accessory or piece of functional equipment has luxury models that may be only slightly functionally better (sometimes not even better, sometimes actually worse) but also charge massive margins. Not so much with phones, tablets, or laptops. It’s as if the world has collectively decided that you simply can’t beat Apple, which astoundingly in the meantime completely ignores the luxury market. Even if you charged $50K+ per unit—I’m sure Samsung and every other maker would love to charge exorbitant prices for end-game devices—you’ll make a fool of yourself: iPhone will objectively be more premium, work smoother, have all the high-end apps, etc. There’s no choice but to tighten your belt and thin your margins to stay competitive. I’m not sure how this (undoubtedly impressive) achievement makes me feel. Maybe it’s the feeling of finally being able to afford one, or the ability to say “it’s a cute expensive toy, but it’s objectively worse for X and Y reasons”, but there is something about the Leicas and Ducatis of the world.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Back in the day, Nokia had a luxury brand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertu It was exactly the "expensive watch" model; priced absurdly high on the Veblen good theory. It didn't work.

amelius 1y ago

Well, they have access to more medical treatments.

JKCalhoun 1y ago

Jets, art, yachts, vacation homes. That's quite enough actually.

crossroadsguy 1y ago

When I started earning much more money than I have had before (not “rich” money by any means - that’s not the point; but much much more than I grew up in or started my career with) I realised it’s not about buying things, it’s more about being able to pay for things without giving a thought if needed/wanted. That’s really a very relaxing or freeing feeling. (And they say money doesn’t bring peace :P)

efficax 1y ago

what the super-rich can buy that the middle class can't isn't really things (except for luxury goods, which are meh), it's people (through services). you can buy someone to do anything that you want to be done (that can be done!) so you don't have to do it. nannies, companions, builders, killers, bodyguards, drivers, pilots, cleaners, house managers, lawyers, secretaries, etc. That's what you do with the money. You buy farmers to grow macadamia nuts on your hawaii estate to feed cows raised by more farmers so you can call your property a farm, get a tax break, and brag about the quality and freshness of the steak when people come over for dinner. and so on. you can even buy people to make more money for you, so you don't have to do it yourself, either through your "family office" investment firm, or through venture capital. You don't have to do anything but ask for what you want and there it is.

m463 1y ago

well, except for: IMPACT. Your money can literally change the world and change lives.