Galt's Gulch

It's Not The "Idle Rich"; Study Reveals "Working Rich" Driving Top US Incomes

Posted by Kittyhawk 5 years, 2 months ago to Economics
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America's richest people aren't the "idle rich" - jumping off diving boards into giant vaults full of coins and taking off for adventures with their nephews. According to a new working paper co-authored by members of Princeton University, US Berkeley, Chicago's Booth School of Business, and the US Treasury Department, the top 0.1 percent, or those earning more than $1.6 million per year, are the working rich.
SOURCE URL: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-02-10/its-not-idle-rich-study-reveals-working-rich-driving-top-us-incomes

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  • Posted by Solver 5 years, 2 months ago
    We live in a world that punishes people for being successful at honestly working to make money that overall benefits everyone. A type of insane collective masochism.
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  • Posted by $ 25n56il4 5 years, 2 months ago
    Well, I have observed this to be true. Very few had their fortunes handed to them. They were industrious and inventive and not afraid to work hard. Hours and hours of hard work.
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 2 months ago
    I do not understand the importance of how much of a business's value comes from its founders' involvement and work and how much comes from retun on equity. This article seems to value (I may be missing the point) founders' involvement, but a system that operates w/o the founders is where the real value is. The surgeon who sells her labor at a high rate and the inventor of the surgical tool she uses both created value.

    When my wife does a lot of billing at her legal practice, the first thing I think is how can you get your associate doing that billing. In my mind it's all about scalability and saleability. This is why I left consulting: I couldn't build the processes to make it independent from me. I see nothing fundamentally noble about the founders doing a lot of the work.
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    • Posted by Kittyhawk 5 years, 2 months ago
      Pointing out that it is the founder's effort and skills which make most businesses profitable is intended to disprove the arguments of socialists and communists that the rich only get rich by exploiting the labor of the lower classes, and that once a business is established, it can be seized and handed over to the workers and remain as profitable.
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      • Posted by CircuitGuy 5 years, 2 months ago
        "is intended to disprove the arguments of socialists and communists"
        The socialist view seems absurd on many levels.
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        • Posted by Kittyhawk 5 years, 2 months ago
          You can see exactly that type of argument in the article posted here: https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... "But surely we should respect other people's property," Pigliucci writes. "Well, it depends. If it is acquired unethically, even if legally, no, I don't think there is any such moral requirement. If your wealth is both disproportionate and arrived at by exploiting others (and let's be frank, if it is the former, it can hardly not be the latter), then it is just and fair to pass laws to relieve you of much of that burden, through proportional taxation, for instance."
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