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Originally Posted by Ustwo
One thing I've been trying to educate myself in is economics and wealth generation. I've come to realize just how little I knew about it, understood it, and that I was taught nothing about it in school. Even most MBA's seem to know nothing about it and they are basically bean counters. Those that do understand it become the reviled 'rich'.
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I know some people who have moved out of the middle class.
The thing about them is, they worked hellishly hard, and got lucky. They didn't have some deep understanding of economics or money -- they put 30,000$ on "black 42", and it came up.
Now, they didn't literally go to a roulette table -- to a man, they worked hard (investing years of income in the gamble that it would come up black 42) and tried to improve their odds.
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So my question to you is this. If you are working pay check to pay check, if you are in credit card debt, if you can't pay all your bills, if you think your problem is you need a raise, what makes you qualified to think you understand the economy well enough to know what is 'good policy' is?
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I'm not working pay check to pay check. I have kept my spending an order of magnatude under my income. My ability to be thrifty has nothing to do with my understanding of economics.
Someone else's wish to spend money has nothing to do with their understanding of economics.
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Who would you rather get investment advice from?
A university economist who has nothing beyond his schools pension/401k and pay check, or a guy who makes millions off his assets alone?
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The guy who makes millions off his assets alone is playing a different game. Financial tools work differently once you have millions of assets.
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I can feel the responses right now. The rich just makes rules to make them richer, they can't be trusted, etc. Its true the rich like rules/laws that makes them richer, but it seems more laws are made to just punish the rich, voted by the masses of folks who can't figure out why its bad to put 9k on a credit card at 18.5% interest. They never DO punish the rich of course, the rich 'get it', they figure out how to maximize their investments and find the loop holes. They just punish themselves by making it harder to break out of the middle class. Income tax started only on the 'rich', which is how they overcame the anti-tax stance most Americans had back then, they made it someone elses problem. Well you see how well that worked out for the middle class.
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You do understand that until recently the USA had one of the best inter-generational social mobilities? With a progressive tax structure, inheritance taxes, and the like?
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The lack of financial education in this country is a travesty. I was in school longer than many of you reading this have been alive and in all that time I NEVER got any real classes on money and the economy. Never a plan for how to gain wealth, never a list things you shouldn't do.
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A list of things you shouldn't do would change over time.
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I had a few talks, but that was it. Plus of those few classes, who is teaching them? Self made millionaires or men who need to brown bag lunch?
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Ask those men if they would rather have a 1 in 20 chance of being worth 100 million (and a 95% chance of going bankrupt and being reduced to 20,000$/year), or a 100,000$/year job for life.
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Rather than think 'I wish I had that kind of money' or get jealous, I've been studying how the game works and what makes one wealthy. They know how to play the game, and you don't learn how to play well by watching the losers.
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Be careful. This is much like watching the winners at a casino and ignoring the losers.
Go to a casino and only look at the people who come out 1 million$ richer. You will end up with a very warped view of how the casino works.
Failing to look at the losers is foolish.
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I have come to trust the rich.
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You believe in a just world, do you not?