If you're so smart why aren't you rich?

[old goat]

Nothing matters as much as being born in the right place at the right time. You don't need a study to figure that out.

[Harry]

Luck is a huge factor. Guy I went to HS with got a job right out of college working at the Chicago board of trade (or whatever it’s called). He was not a high level investment guy by any means. But in the mid-80s “flash crash” he ended up owning, for 8 seconds, the entire world’s supply of whatever commodity he was trading. (Frozen concentrated orange juice futures ?) Boom. Instant billionaire in his mid-20s.

He was an early buyer at the Yellowstone Club and was surprised to find me living there. I skied with him a lot at the YC over the years, and he speaks openly about luck being the only reason he is a billionaire.

[Stikki]

You don't need a study to figure that out.

How about an interactive map of outcomes by neighborhood? Is that ok?

https://www.opportunityatlas.org/

[yeahman]

Health is wealth, and the only luck that matters.

[Nobody Famous]

You don’t have to be an asshole to wind up rich but you usually have to be cheap. You don’t become a millionaire by earning a mill. You get there by saving a mill.

The Millionaire Next Door, a popular book from the 1990s said just that. It was supposedly based on quite a bit of academic research. I think it was discussed on here many years ago.

[byates1]

Health is wealth, and the only luck that matters.

Word.

[dunfree]

The Millionaire Next Door, a popular book from the 1990s said just that. It was supposedly based on quite a bit of academic research. I think it was discussed on here many years ago.

1996 was a long time ago. You get rich by getting money. You can inherit it, luck in to it, “earn” it. Then if you want to keep on staying rich you repeat the latter by earning more or having your money work for you or both. You might stay poor by squandering money on skiing, wine, women and song. But you won’t get rich by eschewing them necessarily.

[neufox47]

You don’t have to be an asshole to wind up rich but you usually have to be cheap. You don’t become a millionaire by earning a mill. You get there by saving a mill.

The surest way of becoming a <$10M millionaire is to save and invest in the stock market. But to become wealthy you generally need to own at least part of a company. Then, it’s not about being cheap.

[subtle plague]

Money isn't the measuring stick people think it is.

The numbers on a payslip are no Indikcation of worth....

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4a-qZcb23-A

[Cocximus]

Because I couldn't sell a boat on the Titanic

Sent from my Pixel 5 using Tapatalk

[schuss]

As other have pointed out, luck is a huge factor. I'd also agree that it's easier when you're an asshole, as most of the people I know that made a lot don't give two shits about the people they run over or how exploited their own staff is. You can do very well for yourself and not be an asshole.

[Core Shot]

Nice rich people are lucky. Or well connected. Or inheritance

Many nouveau riche are sociopaths that would stab you in the scrotum for that next dollar. Some are generational wealthy sociopaths. It’s genetic.
They are evil motherfuckers. I’ve met dozens. And avoid them like the plague. They are the plague. CEO or politician 99% of the time.

[bagtagley]

Huh? Malcom Gladwell? The same guy who promotes being Anti-racist? He always seemed to be more center left to me.

He was a conservative journalist in his youth which he cops to and says he eventually saw the light. Left of center is probably about right, though he has some libertarian leanings. I think he pissed some people off with his stance in The Bomber Mafia.

[TahoeJ]

Money isn't the measuring stick people think it is.

This. I could absolutely be making a lot more $$ than I do now having passed on various opportunities that would have been very lucrative but also a time suck. I traded that for flexibility and have zero regrets, and that only gets more true as I get older.

And yeah, luck is a huge factor and I always appreciate those who have done well and can acknowledge that. Also, most wealth over the past several decades is inherited.

[Bunion 2020]

Win the birth lottery:

With inequality rising in the West, perhaps it’s no surprise that people cheer politicians who complain that their governments spend too much of their tax money abroad. But even the developed world’s poor and middle classes are, by global standards, extraordinarily rich. After adjusting for cost-of-living differences, a typical American still earns an income that is 10 times the income received by the typical person in the world.

Do Americans understand this fact? In short, no. Does their misperception of their comparative affluence help to explain deep-seated opposition to foreign aid and other forms of international redistribution? In short, yes. Let me explain.

Here’s how I did the research

To explore these questions, I recruited a nationally representative sample of about 1,500 U.S. residents through the GfK KnowledgePanel. I randomly assigned respondents to three groups. I asked members of the first group for their attitudes toward foreign aid, U.S. trade protections for domestic agriculture and charitable giving.

In the second group, before asking for these attitudes, I asked respondents to estimate the percentage of the world’s population receiving a lower annual income than they do, and to estimate the income received by the typical person in the world — the global median income. I then gave them accurate cost-of-living-adjusted information for both the percentage below them and the global median income, based on data collected by Branko Milanovic. Then I asked them the same questions as answered by the first group.

A third group of respondents was asked to estimate the median income and their percentile in the income distribution but not given any information. This makes it possible to quantify the effect of the increased mental salience of relative affluence on people’s attitudes even absent any information; the effect is about half of what the rest of the post discusses among people also given the correct information.

Americans profoundly underestimate how rich they are compared to the rest of the world.

So what did they say? The average U.S. resident estimated that the global median individual income is about $20,000 a year. In fact, the real answer is about a tenth of that figure: roughly $2,100 per year. Similarly, Americans typically place themselves in the top 37 percent of the world’s income distribution. However, the vast majority of U.S. residents rank comfortably in the top 10 percent.

What explains these mis-perceptions? Human beings draw heavily on their own local, lived experience to make judgments about the wider world. As individuals’ own incomes rise, and therefore the incomes of those around them, so too do their overestimates of the global median income. Upon being recruited into the sample, people shared their incomes. A $10,000 increase in a person’s annual household income is associated with about a $670 increase in that person’s estimate of the global median income.