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Do you think the 1% are there because of nature (genetics) or nurture (education, connections, etc.)?

[deleted]

July 15, 2014
8 upvotes
/r/askTRP
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Title Do you think the 1% are there because of nature (genetics) or nurture (education, connections, etc.)?
Author

[deleted]
Upvotes 8
Comments 17
Date July 15, 2014 2:45 PM UTC
(12 years ago)
Subreddit Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/2arky3/do_you_think_the_1_are_there_because_of_nature/
Archive Link https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/do-you-think-the-1-are-there-because-of-nature.194960
https://theredarchive.com/post/194960

Comments

[–]1kick67 points8 points9 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Combination. A lot of them were born into money, but you don't stay rich by not continuing to make it.

[–]4Stayinghereforreal12 points13 points14 points 12 years ago (5 children) | Copy Link

I have spent many years working with the 1%. Made good money off of them.

They bust their asses harder than anyone I know. They work longer hours. They bring to the game far more intensity and brains as compared to the other 99%. They sacrificed a fair portion of their youth to develop the skill and social network to be in the top 1% of income earners. They continue to carefully husband those skills and networks.

And yes, all of them are self-made; none is a trust fund kid of rich parents.

But don't listen to me, go read the books and studies on this topic. You will find that most millionaires and high income earners fit my description, not the Occupy Wall Street morons' version of who is rich.

[–]noblepaladin1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Finances is one of those things that takes a long time to get right. If someone is in their mid-20s, and they have done things wrong, it is probably too late for them to turn it around during their women-chasing years. If you are 25 with $200k in student debt, a college degree in something that is unmarketable, and working a dead end low paying job, chances are you are going to have below average socio-economic status until you are in your 40s or 50s even if you start doing everything right. That is why most people choose cognitive dissonance.

In terms of financial health, it is very similar to The Wall. Most people are in very good condition early on. But if they don't make the right choices by the time they are in the mid-20s, they slam into the financial wall and there is almost nothing they can do about it. If you get a criminal record, you are going to have a hard time being employed at good jobs. If you rack up too much debt for a worthless college degree, you won't have the capital or the leeway to attempt to start a business. If you fuck up in school, many career paths will be shut off from you (ex: if you want to be a banker at Goldman Sachs, you better ace high school, get into one of the target colleges like Harvard, and own it there too). And age discrimination, although technically illegal, is a very real thing. Nobody is going to hire a 50 year old trying to break into a new field. And due to the nature of how money compounds, if you are late to the finance game, the gap between you and your peers tends to grow over time ("the rich get richer" phenomenon because they have assets that grow while someone else may have debt that grows).

Your late teens and early 20s will, for the most part, define your socio-economic status for the rest of your life. Sure there are some examples of people moving up or down, but they are exceedingly rare. It's not like weight lifting where someone who is in bad shape can make huge gains in 1 year. With finances, the time frame is more like 10+ years to make a significant difference. So when people screw their life up and their own choices ensured that they will have a below average standard of living, they choose not to believe that they had a chance to be rich.

[–]Confluenced0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (3 children) | Copy Link

This is the correct answer.

http://www.fidelity.com/inside-fidelity/individual-investing/fidelity-2012-millionaire-outlook

The answer hovers around 90%.

Those who say "Oh they were born into it" or "They got it in bad ways" are losers. They have no idea what it takes to get to the 1% and will stay in poverty forever.

[–]4Stayinghereforreal2 points3 points4 points 12 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

The data in this area is overwhelming: high income earners in America are typically people who work for their income, and they do not come from family wealth. Those with wealth in the form of assets also tend to have been people who earned their wealth over the lifetimes, not people who inherited it from parents, let alone distant forebears from the last century.

The ironic part of such discussions is people who most bitterly complain about "the rich" and live in America thanks to an accident of birth never realize that, as far as most of humanity is concerned, their middle class asses are properly considered "the lazy rich". Being born in America is pretty much a guaranty of a reasonably comfortable life as compared to the better part of the world, even if you do nothing but hang out in the trailer park and wait for the gub'mint check.

[–]Confluenced-1 points0 points1 point 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Yup. To piggy back on this.

TRP is about being a fucking real man. Part of that is handling your finances, working hard, and setting goals.

Even if most people were rich by inheritance it wouldn't change what is required to reach the 1% level.

If you are born in America, you are already in the top 10% class.

[–]AlmostRP0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Millionaires =! 1%. Not even close. Most people can be millionaires by the time they retire if they have a 401k.

[–]2niczar2 points3 points4 points 12 years ago (7 children) | Copy Link

This dilemma is not the most interesting way to look at the problem you're (I believe) thinking of. The problem is that most of the 1% directly inherited their wealth. They did not merit it. I can accept that someone have an advantage and be better off due to good genes and better upbringing, though I believe society should try to help (would benefit from helping) those who are not as fortunate in that respect.

What I have a problem with is straight inheritance of huge wealth. Or rather, I have a problem with huge concentration of wealth. Lawrence Lessig demonstrates how this is fucking up the American political system, and Piketty shows how it's happening and why it's very dangerous to the global economy. The inheritance of that wealth results in the creation of new aristocracy, and turns our society in a de facto neo-feudalism.

I believe wealth should be taxed, not income. There is a way to do this, the Automated Payment Transaction tax, which surprisingly does not require actually taxing wealth directly. The benefits are too long to list.

[–]4Stayinghereforreal1 point2 points3 points 12 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

The problem is that most of the 1% directly inherited their wealth.

Which nation are you speaking of? Because if you are talking about America, you have no clue. There really is no debate about the repeatedly-tested statistics showing most of the wealthy have earned their asset base from their career. And those with high incomes are people who, obviously, work for their high incomes.

There certainly are people who are the trust funders of lore, but by and large they form a relatively small minority of the asset-holding and high income upper percentiles.

What you can point to is that people from the upper middle class and upper class backgrounds tend to stay in those brackets where their parents were. But since intelligence is largely heritable, and it is typically intelligence which more closely correlates with income, this is to be an expected outcome. Tall parents begat tall kids, on average. And smart parents begat smart kids.

[–]2niczar0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

You're right, I wrote 1% but I was thinking of the super rich, which is something entirely different. The 0.00001%.

[–]autowikibot0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

Automated Payment Transaction tax:

The Automated Payment Transaction (APT) tax is a proposal to replace all United States taxes with a single tax (using a low rate) on every transaction in the economy. The system was developed by University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Economics Dr. Edgar L. Feige.

The foundations of the APT tax proposal—a small, uniform tax on all economic transactions—involve simplification, base broadening, reductions in marginal tax rates, the elimination of tax and information returns and the automatic collection of tax revenues at the payment source. The APT approach would extend the tax base from income, consumption and wealth to all transactions. Proponents regard it as a revenue neutral transactions tax, whose tax base is primarily made up of financial transactions. The APT tax extends the tax reform ideas of John Maynard Keynes, James Tobin and Lawrence Summers, to their logical conclusion, namely to tax the broadest possible tax base at the lowest possible tax rate. The goal to significantly improve economic efficiency, enhance stability in financial markets, and reduce to a minimum the costs of tax administration (assessment, collection,and compliance costs). There is disagreement over whether the tax is progressive, with the debate primarily centered around whether the volume of taxed transactions rise disproportionately with a person's income and net worth. Simulations of the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances demonstrate that high income and wealthy individuals undertake a disproportionate volume of transactions since they own a disproportionate share of financial assets that have relatively high turnover rates. However, since the APT tax has not yet been adopted, some argue that one can not predict whether the tax will be progressive or not.

Daniel Akst, writing in the New York Times, wrote "the Automated Payment Transaction tax offers fairness, simplicity, and efficiency. It may not be a free lunch. But it sure smells better than the one we eat now."

On April 28, 2005, the APT proposal was presented to the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform in Washington, DC.

Image i

Interesting: Financial transaction tax | Currency transaction tax | Edgar L. Feige | European Union financial transaction tax

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[–]pDiddyParty0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

why would anyone save any money if they knew that it would go to the government when they died? the drive to give your offspring the best chance at survival and success is what makes people work hard.

[–]2niczar-1 points0 points1 point 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

  1. It doesn't have to be 100%

  2. Why would people not born into wealth work hard if they realize how insanely difficult it's becoming to get a decent living due to the new aristocracy buying its laws through campaign contributions?

[–]El_Shakiel0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (1 child) | Copy Link

The problem is that most of the 1% directly inherited their wealth.

What's your source for that ? Because to my humble knowledge, the richest man on Earth hasn't inherited shit and became dumb-rich from scratch.

[–]2niczar0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (0 children) | Copy Link

That's the whole subject of Piketty's book (which I haven't had the time to read yet unfortunately)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago (2 children) | Copy Link

It's probably a mix of both. Genetics are the foundation. You can never build a skyscraper if the foundation sucks, but even if you have a great foundation, you'll never get a skyscraper if you don't put a shitload of work into building it.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point2 points 12 years ago* (1 child) | Copy Link

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