42% of US millionaires say they're not rich

The intent of my message was not to evoke a feeling of "aww, those poor rich kids" but rather a question of "y'know, isn't capping inheritance through rising taxes really doing them a favor?"

Yes, I went there. There is such a thing as having too much fucking money.

I don't know wealth myself and I don't know what comes iwth it. I can't really judge these people as right or wrong or whatever. I honestly would really like if everyone was perfectly alturistic but that's a dream. admittedly i'mskeptica of the rich just as much as anyone becuse I fear a Plutocracy or Oligopoly.

Well, such a thing could be curbed as long as the parents went about it right and made their kids work for stuff.

"But daaaaaad, you said you'd support us! I don't want to have to lay bricks/paint houses/etc, just to get a new boat!"

"Aw, shucks, I can't say no to my favorite son. "

Or, alternatively, "All right, here's the damn boat, now leave me alone."

edited 18th Mar '11 5:30:20 AM by EnglishIvy

I ranked in the top 13% on the rich list with only student support (including housing benefit and student loan) as income.

It feels kinda strange 'cause students have the worst social welfare benefits out of all supported groups in Finnish society (for example, students support is the only social support that is never automatically adjusted to cost of living indexes; every other form of support is adjusted periodically).

I'm gonna talk a bit about the student benefits in Finland so if you're not interested (and I don't know why you would be but maybe you're interested in it for reference or as a curiosity and I felt like writing this anyway), just skip the rest of the post.

I'm getting the maximum amount, which is €298 per month in student support, €201 in housing benefit (which is 80% of your rent but doesn't include the part of your rent that goes above €252, so the maximum amount is 80% of 252) and €300 in state-supported student loan.

My girlfriend gets less 'cause she's in High School (which is a secondary school and thus her support is limited by her parents' income unlike mine 'cause in in a University, which is tertiary education and thus not limited by parents' income.) For the rich list, I only counted my income.

With the money I and my girlfriend get each month, we're able to maintain a pretty nice standard of living. We live in a 57 square metre apartment some 5km from the centre of a middle-sized (for Finland which has small cities) city. We spend about €10 a day on food and other daily things (I suppose we spend more money on food and stuff like that than your average University student) and our rent is about €430 a month, which we split (so actually, now that I think of it, the housing benefit I'm getting isn't the maximum amount; it's about €170).

You've obviously never met a Self-Made Man. Stereotyping the rich like that is really only an invitation to stereotype the poor as parasitic, jealous, incompetent and stupid.

They weren't talking about self-made men, they were talking about rich brats who get everything they want from their filthy rich parents without ever having to do a thing for it. I would think it's pretty obvious from the rest of the discussion.

A self-made man is very different from someone who gets everything ready, no one was questioning that and in fact I don't think anyone even referenced self-made men in the same context as those rich brats.

^ And those kinds of brats are so few and far between, it became a Dead Horse Trope.

Nope.

Having moved in those circles (friends at top tier private schools, studied in Cambridge, etc), they are still very much prevelant.

And the self made man is a myth. No man is an island.

Funny, I know at least one personally. He had basically nothing and built his own small business first in Kansas City and then moving to Colorado. He's been quite successful at it. (And his kids are not the bratty types. One of them is a chiropractor and recently bought his business so he could retire.)

If you were to ask does he feel rich, the answer is probably no, but he has enough to get by for a while.

edited 18th Mar '11 7:54:00 AM by MajorTom

You do realise that the guy above you is talking about the children of the very rich, not the upper middle class.

Yeah. For clarification, I'm talking about the kind of people who have their own limo drivers, not doctors kids.

Edit: That person was succesful because they worked within a society that provided the labour, security, information, schooling, infastructure, and a million other elements. They succeded because we set them up to. You don't get to then turn around and go 'lol all mine, keep your hands off guberment'.

edited 18th Mar '11 8:10:09 AM by Sandor

And might I ask how many of those (as in at or near Forbes 500 list level) qualify as "old money" types who have inherited vast sums of money for little to no effort? Last I checked, you could damn near count on one hand (mainly the Wal Mart heirs and Saudi royalty) the number of anyone qualifying as "old money".

Everyone else at the very top made their money on their own a la Self-Made Man.

Neither the spoiled rich brat nor the self-made man is a myth. Of course, both of these have plenty to do with luck and the self-made man almost invariably has a lot to do with work.

The poor lazy bum isn't a myth either, but most poor people are people who work really hard but are prevented by circumstances from making enough money to be able to raise their standard of living. And that's not a myth, either.

Plenty of different types of people and situations in this world.

Gotta disagree with you about the billionaires, though - I don't think you count as a self-made man when you start abusing your work-force and loopholes and hiding money from the tax office and all that jazz - and if you play by the rules and by following basic human decency through and through, you can make millions but not billions.

edited 18th Mar '11 8:14:27 AM by BestOf

You know, there is nothing wrong with assuming the title of this thread. If anything, it's healthier to think you don't have enough money, as opposed to thinking you have all the money you would ever need.

Because even if you're a multi-millionaire, all it takes are a couple of bad decisions to be a multi-debt holder.

How did this become about inheritance? Most people with 1 million + in assetts aren't rich. For reasons that have already been pointed out. As for inheritance taxes, it's not money the beneficiaries earned directly, and outside of supporting widows, getting descendants through college, and such, I wouldn't feel it was a huge evil if the government took 100%.

Were all inheritances straight cash that wouldn't be much of an evil. Unfair but a minor evil.

Problem is, most inheritances are tangible assets. Cars, homes, land acreage, you know the drill. Inheritance taxes affect these and because of the disproportionate number of people with such assets (like farmers, ranchers, homestead families, etc.) the taxes tend to target poorer people more often than they go after the likes of people like Warren Buffett.

Hence the calls by critics of inheritance and estate taxes of being anti-farmer.

edited 18th Mar '11 2:24:25 PM by MajorTom

But if you don't take illiquid assets, then people will just use them to avoid taxes.

Anyway, seeing as the original inheritance taxes were explicitly designed to break up large farms, I still don't see what the problem is.

edited 18th Mar '11 3:19:30 PM by storyyeller

Most farmers are hardly anywhere near what you would call "wealthy".

Aren't there a LOT of rich farmer families who are millionaires? I remember people attacking farmers as exxagerating the 'death of the family farm' in the US and getting advantages from subdisizies

I love the Objectivism joke.

The thing is, it depends on the person's response to their wealth. There are "rich" people who do not act rich and slum it up (the Buddha is an example). There are middle class people who do that same thing you discuss above. There probably is a trend of that (wasnt Monty Max from Looney Toons like that, also Montgomery Burns when younger? At least the Lonely Rich Kid trope)

EDIT: Also, I forgot. A lot of those millionaires probably live in gated communities or rich suburbs or rich city neighborhoods (Gold Coast in Chicago, Upper East Side in NYC, Mc Mansion megaburbs, etc etc). When they dont grow up in a ghetto or "middle class" place their views are skewed by that. Rich People, your solution is this: move to a ghetto. Ok not a ghetto but a 'middle cla' city neighborhood. Take the bus or at least a cab. etc etc. lol

Anyone seen the VH 1 reality show "You're Cut Off!" Its funny seeing rich spoiled girls learn how to take the bus places.

edited 18th Mar '11 4:58:03 PM by BalloonFleet

^ I'm not rich and I don't know how to take the bus to places. (Then again I am a backwoods country boy.)

I meant that as an example. Most of the rich spoiled girls (in that show) were from large american metro areas. Granted there were a lot of suburban girls etc etc but yeah :p

edited 18th Mar '11 6:13:31 PM by BalloonFleet

I wonder how much you need to make in a year to live in a kinda nice apartment and still be able to buy things you enjoy (not like crazy shit, but like maybe games, dvds, the occasional vacation)

I'd be happy with that.

edited 18th Mar '11 6:18:46 PM by Thorn14

Many family-run farms don't see much from farm subsidies, which generally go to megafarms that grow certain types of bulk crop (corn, soy, sugar being among those). California farmers in general don't see jack, for instance: most produce isn't subject to subsidy.

Further discussion of that should go in a separate thread, though.

Small business owners do get fucked over by government a lot — from both American political parties, both of whom (and the apparatus of government regulation in general) being bought and paid for by large corporations. Democrats screw them over because most of them vote Republican, and Republicans screw them over because it's not like they're going to go vote Democrat.

Wait, isn't this pretty much what happens to almost everybody in a two-party system?

(In a multi-party system, you sometimes get a similar situation with government and opposition not representing certain voter groups because they're certain these people are gonna vote the same anyway.)