I mean, there are other stories to, of course, but the student visa and then technical visa course is one mostly reserved for people who come from well off families.
(I am not trying to knock anyone or diminish their achievements, some of these people have worked hard and achieved a lot. I am just saying that if you can get a student visa or a technical work visa, you probably did not come from a poor or powerless family.)
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014241278873246624045783346...
For other people struggling to read this comment: "(" is on the same key as "5" on Azerty keyboards.
Think of a business as being like an engine. Until you get the engine started and running under its own power, it's just costing you time and effort and money. Once it's running, it generates money at an accelerating rate. The $1M cutoff here is a proxy for "the engine is running."
Don't get me wrong; finding success is hard, and whenever someone does find it, it should be celebrated. But those that do find it shouldn't discount the struggles of those who aren't able to try, especially if it takes them several tried to find it themselves.
Why? Because they are an asshole about it? That doesn't reduce their success in any way. If they have offset the losses of their previous endeavors, they have provided a net gain and it's still a success.
"Warren Buffet didn't do anything impressive because he grew up with his parents."
What a petty way to live.
Well played
Like me: I could talk about starting with almost nothing in my bank accounts, getting a job, working through the ranks, buying a home, and working toward my first million... conveniently leaving out all the advantages that I've had to get me to this point (cultural expectation that I'd go to college instilled in me from a young age, a family well-off enough to support that financially, uninterrupted time to work on the hobbies that grew into a career, etc).
Quanticle seems to be relating the origins of Donald Trump and Bill Gates. Donald describes his fortune as self-made. Bill Gates has been described as self-made. It's true, if you only consider that their wealth is much greater than any gift they've ever received. It's false from the perspective that anyone could do it with enough hard work.
Problem is everyone on HN is talking about how to make millions when that's backwards mentality because then you'll never be satisfied. People need to strive for modest salaries and things that benefit society and the planet not filling one's pockets.
It's a lot easier to do projects that benefit society and the planet if you have millions in your pocket that you can spend/invest on them (say for paying employees or simply having financial runway).
So we go on holiday and marvel at the simple life of artisans, farmer or other, but we teach our children that such a lifestyle is a failure.
> So we go on holiday and marvel at the simple life of artisans, farmer or other.
I surely don't.
> We have reach a point in the West were a comfortable life is basically possible for everyone. However, we still have the bullish culture from after the war that paints a guy that want a simple life as some sort of loser.
And what made it possible that leading a comfortable life is basically possible for everyone? Surely not the people who want a simple life.
I can accept that technology has become too complicated for most people to grasp. I am among the first to accept this as a problem. But if this is your opinion, start to develop technology that is easier to grasp instead of complaining how complicated anything has become. The same holds for laws, too.
But is pushing everyone to push the boundaries even if they are not driven or motivated not counterproductive at some point ?
Well I may be biased by living in London and working in the financial industry, where personal enrichment seems to be the only accepted way of life. But all the scheming that is done to be on top is definitively keeping competent people out of the loop. Keeping your job is a more valuable skill that excelling at your job, and you don't need much corporate experience to know that there is a very thin overlap between the 2. I see people that are great with children, amazing artists, ... that are just grinding at their job just to keep living a life where they can afford the socially acceptable brand of car, clothes and activities, but dream of the day when they can spend more than a few hours a month doing what they are really good at.
More generally, what about all the support jobs ? Tech is very far away to replace teacher or nurses. Those jobs are loser jobs in a world that only value "potentially world changing career". You are more likely to become a millionaire as a random Goldman Sachs cannon fodder as you are as a nurse. What kind of criminal parent would encourage their kid to teach instead of getting a degree that let them into finance ?
> Keeping your job is a more valuable skill that excelling at your job, and you don't need much corporate experience to know that there is a very thin overlap between the 2.
This is true in most companies, not just finance. The fact that these 2 activities are orthogonal and require entirely different skill sets is one of the more frustrating aspects of corporate life, giving rise to: very talented people who end up grinding away as drone#19221 because they aren't great at "managing upward" and smooth talkers who BS their way into higher and higher roles.
> I see people that are great with children, amazing artists, ... that are just grinding at their job just to keep living a life where they can afford the socially acceptable brand of car, clothes and activities, but dream of the day when they can spend more than a few hours a month doing what they are really good at.
Again, welcome to work everywhere. For most people, a job is the thing you do for money so you can live, and save up to finally do what you are good at or love when you're old and retired.
So true. In today's US economy just simply having a salary, period, is something one must strive for. Continuity and regularity of compensation has become difficult to obtain.
Examples: Arabic numerals, Da Vinci, Mozart, Galileo, Maxwell, Einstein, Turing, etc. That's where a lot of those modern things come from.
Then along comes the capitalists to exploit the true discoveries for personal gain. Mass produce this-and-that, destroy the environment, etc. Build atomic bombs.
In more lenient fashion, somebody on top of this who finished university without debt, and no money apart from self-earned.
When you start thinking everything you get for free, even just in a lower middle western family, compared to someone born in a war torn village in Africa, the concept of "self-made" becomes really meaningless.
Again, contacts help with that.
The folks growing up in poverty don't have much of that. Schools are by chance, and often folks work through college so there isn't as much time for networking. Besides, networking costs money. If this person fails, they are simply homeless.
Simply moving up to lower middle class takes some work.
Sure, they are possibly "self-made", but they weren't fighting lack of opportunity.It is simply easier to make it if you have a good foundation.
Seriously are we taking this number as legitimate.. simply because it comes from a BOOK?
Is that how low our scientific standards have become?
Frickin Pixar verified that talking cars exist. Good enough for me!
Its one dude who uses that number to sell his pop psychology book.
Heres a blog from the author about where he gets his numbers:
'In my thirty plus years of surveying and studying millionaires'
http://www.thomasjstanley.com/2014/05/america-where-milliona...
I hope theres more of a fleshing out of the harry potter world in future books or movies.
An mmo would be pretty tight lol.
p(success|rich) > p(success|poor)
and never implied that:
p(success|rich) = 1
Tell that to the kid making iPhones in the Foxconn facility. Success isn't where you are, it's how far you've come. By that metric the most successful thing you can do in life is have a father like Sam Walton.
>Tell that to the kid making iPhones in the Foxconn facility.
I'm not even sure what your point is. GP was pointing out that competition at every level is fierce. Not sure what that has to do with the Foxconn employee. Are they known for not being competitive?
If you're one of the Rich Kids of Instagram, hard work doesn't seem to play much of a role in their lives.
The point about Foxconn is obvious. How many Foxconn employees have a realistic chance of topping the rich list?
Hard work, like the idea of being a self-made person, is largely a self-serving mythology.
Real hard work is doing the same shitty job for 10-12 hours a day six or seven days a week and earning barely enough to pay the rent.
That's the reality of hard work for much of the population. Fetishising the hard work of the already-rich discounts that ground truth.
Great point.
There is a good historical example you can see this in the of the current BBC adaption of Winston Grahams series, Poldark. [0] Contrasting aristocratic families surviving by Name (old money and scheming) or by Wit (entrepreneurial graft and hard work) in the 18th century UK, Cornwall.
[0] BFI Q&A with writer Debbie Horsfield and director Ed Bazalgette discussing adaption and research. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsCKYX9-ntw
The kid in the Foxconn facility is better off if he works there than if he did not have any job. If it were otherwise he would quit the job (since the kid is a poor worker, but not a slave). So indeed having a job at Foxconn lead to a better (though still bad) life for the kid. The kid should rather complain at his parents that they, as poor people, gave life to him - they should know that because of their poverty he would lead a miserable life and hazarded the consequences.
-4 in less than 30 minutes. that's a record for me. I must have said something controversial. So, glad that I could help :-)
That's $180,000 annually at a measly 0.75% interest (what my peon savings bank currently gives) for doing absolutely nothing. If you can quit your job and ride on 180k passive, risk-free income, you're not middle class.
Actually that 0.75 is negative in real terms (after taking off inflation currently 1.1% - not to mention taxation). A person drawing $180k would be burning their capital.
But, then, I grew up in a place where many if not most household incomes are less than $15k / year.
It's all relative though - I have enough saved up to probably live as a rich man in probably 99% of the earth. Yet, I keep pushing myself to get into the upper class of a minuscule area of the world. It's kind of screwed up.
There is no place on earth where you can consider yourself middle class only having $24m in net worth. What you are referring to is likely a small community filled with people with net worths above $100m, but that doesn't change the class level because of what I pointed out. If you can quit your job and make 6 figures off of interest, you are not middle class anymore wherever you live.
Just because you can't afford a penthouse apartment in downtown Manhattan doesn't mean you are middle class.
It might help if you actually stated where you live. As it stands, you're talking about your girlfriend who "goes to a different school". Which school, and what's her name?
In Seattle, there's this area where a bunch of billionaires live on Lake Washington. If you live next door in your 5 million dollar house to bill gates, that doesn't make you middle class. It just makes you poorer than he is.
http://www.loudountimes.com/news/article/the_loudouns_at_122...
Looking at Zillow, it's cheaper than where I live (Boulder, CO).
That's not middle class at all.
[1]: http://www.kiplinger.com/article/taxes/T054-C000-S001-what-s...
I just rechecked my numbers, and it turns out I was reading from the wrong column, earning >$180,000 a year would put you in the top 2.7%
https://datausa.io/profile/geo/loudoun-county-va/#income_dis...
Most current problems in our society stem from people getting more satisfaction out of pushing web buttons than doing real things out in the real world.
Oh, well, sucks to be many of you but I guess really good to be me. It's just really sad. Especially sad given how poor I grew up.
I know plenty of people who inherited money and blew it all.
Very, very few people, even children from ''rich'' families, have an ''infinite money cushion''.
People who come from poverty or communities rampant with discrimination often times have to work harder for opportunities. But hard work is hard work, and there is fierce competition at every level, no matter who you are. I hesitate to take anything away from anyone's success.
And if you think making your first million from scratch is ''almost impossible'' you should look around any suburb of Silicon Valley at the many, many immigrants who came here with nothing and have saved up that amount, or more. Lots of luck, to be sure, but lots of planning, discipline, deferred gratification, and hard work too.