Bill Gates, Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk all came from at least upper-middle class background. None of them was ever at risk of starvation.
The carrot-and-stick approach to motivation works–in an extremely small band of human experience. But as it works in that band, which is the lower middle class, it draws people in from both sides: those richer ease up a bit, those immediately below put in an extra hour. That's why it's sort of the default experience. It's also a "winnable struggle" so it makes for good stories and is overrepresented in film and literature.
But, once you leave that narrow band, other forces are clearly at work. If inflicting pain on homeless people worked to motivate them to successfully get off the streets, there wouldn't be any homeless people. Because life on the streets sucks. If you think they are "lazy", have you ever toyed with the idea of just quitting and checking out an underpass with a good view? No...? But you do have a vague idea what laziness is? So then: that's not it.
At the time of Bezos' birth, his mother was a 17-year-old high school student and his father was 19 years old.[18] After completing high school despite challenging conditions, Jacklyn attended night school while bringing Bezos along as a baby.[19] After his parents divorced, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel "Mike" Bezos in April 1968.[20] Shortly after the wedding, Mike adopted four-year-old Bezos, whose surname was then legally changed from Jorgensen to Bezos.[21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Bezos
We can all pick examples to fit our narratives
After Mike had received his degree from the University of New Mexico, the family moved to Houston, Texas, so that he could begin working as an engineer for Exxon.[22] Jeff Bezos attended River Oaks Elementary School in Houston from fourth to sixth grade.[23] Bezos' maternal grandfather was Lawrence Preston Gise, a regional director of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in Albuquerque.[24] Gise retired early to his family's ranch near Cotulla, Texas, where Bezos would spend many summers in his youth.[25]
[...] He accepted an estimated $300,000 from his parents and invested in Amazon.[47][51][52] He warned many early investors that there was a 70% chance that Amazon would fail or go bankrupt.
The one thing many CEOs have in common is early access to resources and tinkering opportunities which aren't available to most of the population.
Which is the exact opposite of your point.
Bezos is a ridiculous example to use anyway, as he obviously made bank working in finance before he took risks on Amazon such that he was never risking being homeless.
Just the simple fact that your parents own a home where you are welcome to live can be enough for you to be able to take risks. And Zuckerberg and Gates and others were not middle class, they were at least upper middle and I would bet their parents (dentists and prominent lawyers) were already above 90th percentile in wealth.
I love when people tell me examples of extremely poor people taking risks and hitting it big, and at the same time lament how people irresponsibly have children and debt they could not handle. Celebrate them when the gamble pays off, but shit on them when it does not.
How often does this happen? Who says those two things simultaneously?
But many, especially the older generations, also like to complain about people not striking it out on their own as a causal factor for why they remain poor.
It is a popular trope in culture too. It makes people feel good about themselves if they can forget about the shoulders they stood on, and for those who do not have shoulders to stand on, it gives them hope.
> people tell me examples of extremely poor people taking risks and hitting it big, and at the same time lament how people irresponsibly have children and debt they could not handle
Is having children a risk that could mean one hits it big? And it's definitely also possible (if not normal) for debt to come from lifestyle overspending rather than risking things to make it big. I just don't see the logical connection, although I can see there's an emotional one there.
Also pretending like the barrier of entry into technology _hasn't_ gone up is ignoring the material conditions people face now.
If you think it was easier when you had to study at or work for a wealthy university, and also everything had to be done painstaking by punched card instead of today's instant feedback on a free, beautiful tutorial website, then I'm not sure what to tell you.
There is a strand of thinking that turns up sometimes, something like "they will realise their choices are making things worse, then make different choices!". I have not seen that work out well very often. People usually persist in their mistakes with little heed for the results.
The correct approach is almost always to move directly in a better direction.
If you meant to convey all Chinese banks against just JPM, sure, but that's a silly comparison because there are many more US banks that when also compared in aggregate the % difference is still roughly the same.[0]
If politicians' incentives can be aligned with their constitutional constituencies (not donors), they can make decisions that are actually in the best interest of those they represent, rather than the highest bidder.
Are you saying it is simply having some power over the budget that corrupts politicians, and not what they have to do in order to obtain that power that corrupts them?
Erm. I didn't really say anything to do with that.
Or do you feel like a billionaire space race is a good use of society's efforts?
of course they will not define what what "fair share" is, just that is "more than they are paying now" however much that is...
I firmly believe even if we had a 110% tax rate it would not be "enough" for some of these people
That second class is who the people are referring to when they say "the rich".
And most of them are paying much less taxes over their income than you or I, in percentage. They are so wealthy that they can afford to pay full teams of people who specialize in tax evading, and that costs them 1% of their income, but then they avoid paying taxes on the rest.
The usual "fair share" tax is a gradual tax. For example. 10% for the first $10000 earned. 15% for the next $20000. And so on. Such a tax can never reach 110%, by definition. It cuts a dev salary by 40% or even 50%. For one of these rich people, it can go to 70% or 80%, but it would be orders of magnitude more, in absolute numbers. But as I said, none of them pays that. They'd rather provoke a war than pay that.
And then make you pay for it.
There are 3 problems with that.
1. Even if you took 100% of their wealth, no income, their entire wealth, it would not even pay the interest on the debt. Let alone anything meaningful
2. You still have not defined "the rich" I want a number. 1 Billion? 10 Billion? 100 Billion? Give me an income or even wealth number..
3. It is not actually true. And it is easily proven as we have a few example. The most famous was Bernie. He was always "Millionaires and Billionaires do not pay their fair share" until he became a millionaire then just like that is was "Billionaires do not pay their fair share". Then you have many champagne socialists on YT spending millions on homes, cars, etc all talking about how the "rich do not pay their fair share" and ofcourse they are not the rich
>>And most of them are paying much less taxes over their income than you or I, in percentage.
Playing with the tax rates is not going to change that, in fact most of them increasing the tax rates will cause a inverse in collections as it becomes more profitable to evade..
If you look at the amount of revenue the IRS collects from Income tax as a percent of GDP it is almost a flat line, it does not matter what the rate it, the IRS ends up collecting about the same amount.
>>Such a tax can never reach 110%
Sure it can, in a number of ways because it is not a single taxing entity, State, Federal, Local.. They do not have to allow you to deduct the taxes you paid to the other entities, infact that is a big issue today with the SALT limits. Then you have people proposing WEALTH based taxes, which could exceed the actual income a person made if they are asset heavy and income light.
> it can go to 70% or 80%, but it would be orders of magnitude more, in absolute numbers. But as I said, none of them pays that. They'd rather provoke a war than pay that.
No Shit, that is just strait up theft. I dont know how anyone could even begin to justify 50+%.. I am opposed to income based taxation in the first place, but Shit 80%? really.
So I am left to ask.
1. Please define "Rich" in a actual dollar amount
2. Please define what you believe is a "fair" marginal rate for all income based taxation (state, federal, and local) for a person making this "rich" income.
3. If the government cannot collect the amount if needs to pay for goods and service how or (who) do you propose they make up the difference?
Income tax is fairly worthless when it comes to the actually rich.
It's hard to overstate just how bad the track record of "economic shock therapy" strategies is. Tens of millions of people have died, and hundreds of millions more lost their basic freedoms, because leaders thought they could "shock therapy" their way out of economic problems.
This is better than sitting doing nothing, starving, and waiting for a handout to come, as happened in many, many countries.
My strongest belief is that America needs an economic shock therapy, to spring out of economic lethargy.
Lets face it. America is no longer the financial superpower. China is currently world biggest foreign investor, and creditor, and has banks that make Morgan's balance sheet look like pocket change.
Betting on banks to lead America's return to prominence is futile. It's akin to trying to wing a card game against a professional card trickster who lives off ripping off casinos.
Nor is the dream of service the dream of "service economy" feeding much of the country materialised. You can't earn much FX selling McKinsey consultants, nor are they are much needed around the world, because the world doesn't have American problems.