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[NT] Why does so many people fail to get rich?

Owl

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When I used to do consulting work I learned that the real money was made by people who prolonged the problem as long as they could. You can see it in many types of work. Take a car salesman, which makes more--the one who honestly wants to get you a good deal or the right vehicle for your particular needs? Or the one willing to manipulate you in order to sell you the car with the highest profit margin? You could probably think of endless examples.

Edit: Well looky here, guess which grad students are most likely to cheat?

And guess which undergrad students have a difference of -24.4 from the mean of their own graduate entrance exam?

I wonder if there's a correlation?
 

Kra

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Maybe not everybody wants to get rich at all?

Very good point.

Money =/= happiness by any means. There is also a great deal of mental stress involved in maintaining wealth. If you couple that with the human tendency to move from one desire to the next as soon as one is fulfilled, it'd be a little too easy to get lost in your own wealth.
 

yenom

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This, and to further explain it. Supply and demand. Demand most definatly being the most important factor in getting rich. Or rather said, the breaking point and how you work it in terms of competition.

ummm, no, supply and demand does not work in real life.

otherwise the market would be 100% efficient
 

Fluffywolf

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ummm, no, supply and demand does not work in real life.

otherwise the market would be 100% efficient

Reaching the breaking point of supply and demand and hover just above it while staying healthy amidst the competition is.

Hence, supply and demand are important factors that are used in business'.

I was not in any way insinuating a 100% effecient supply and demand is neccesary.
 

PeaceBaby

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Everyone has their own talents. MBTI and enneagram are both systems to shine light on what they are and leap you ahead decades ahead those who do not know. Instead of knowing your type and cheering, ask, how do I leverage this knowledge? Deep down, I really do applaud everyone here who have taken the time to discover who they are. By knowing this, you are aware of your strengths and weaknesses. Knowing this is spirituality.

I like this; well said.

a lot of people want to become sports stars, but few have the physical gifts and the willingness to push themselves hard enough.

a lot of people want to be smart, but few have the drive or curiosity to compel themsevles to study.

a lot of people want to be rich, but few are disciplined enough to build wealth.

opportunities abound; most people are simply not trained, don't have the will to work for it or even don't truly want to become rich. some people are, whether they admit it or not, completely happy not being wealthy.

to sum up, it's a combination of motivation, natural ability and culture.

And generally there's an element of luck and timing mixed into that.

Most people who are wealthy are persistent and have many failures before they meet with success.

This.

I also find that many people don't realize that you don't usually achieve wealth through one venue. Most wealthy individuals have spread their assets into several markets with promising outlooks.

However, no matter how intelligent or good at investing you may be, there will always be some element of chance involved. The trick is, don't be afraid of taking those chances I suppose.

Yes, this.
 

Moiety

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Explain

If capitalism favor self interest and equal opportunity for all, why does so many people fail to get rich?

Because some people don't know how, and those who do aren't ready to make the sacrifices to get there. Getting rich requires a certain level of obsession. After you are rich...you want to remain rich. It's a vicious cycle.


Anyone read "Think and Grow Rich" ? I think the guy had a point. If all you think about is your goal, and you work everyday with that in mind (by working I don't mean busting your ass at work...just working for that goal, whichever avenues you choose) as a priority, you're bound to succeed. It's when "you're don't want to get rich THAT much" that things get trickier.
 

INA

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Here's another theory, though this has more to do with remaining poor than with not becoming rich.
Excerpt from The sting of poverty - The Boston Globe
In the community of people dedicated to analyzing poverty, one of the sharpest debates is over why some poor people act in ways that ensure their continued indigence. Compared with the middle class or the wealthy, the poor are disproportionately likely to drop out of school, to have children while in their teens, to abuse drugs, to commit crimes, to not save when extra money comes their way, to not work.

To an economist, this is irrational behavior. It might make sense for a wealthy person to quit his job, or to eschew education or develop a costly drug habit. But a poor person, having little money, would seem to have the strongest incentive to subscribe to the Puritan work ethic, since each dollar earned would be worth more to him than to someone higher on the income scale. Social conservatives have tended to argue that poor people lack the smarts or willpower to make the right choices. Social liberals have countered by blaming racial prejudice and the crippling conditions of the ghetto for denying the poor any choice in their fate. Neoconservatives have argued that antipoverty programs themselves are to blame for essentially bribing people to stay poor.

Karelis, a professor at George Washington University, has a simpler but far more radical argument to make: traditional economics just doesn't apply to the poor. When we're poor, Karelis argues, our economic worldview is shaped by deprivation, and we see the world around us not in terms of goods to be consumed but as problems to be alleviated. This is where the bee stings come in: A person with one bee sting is highly motivated to get it treated. But a person with multiple bee stings does not have much incentive to get one sting treated, because the others will still throb. The more of a painful or undesirable thing one has (i.e. the poorer one is) the less likely one is to do anything about any one problem. Poverty is less a matter of having few goods than having lots of problems.
 

FDG

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I like that explanation, Ina. However, let's remember that being poor and not being rich is far from equivalent. I still think that it will not be impossible for everybody to reach a decent standard of living, but I cannot envision a future with limitless resources, so that everybody would be able to get rich. Even if ability was, in some way, equalized - then chance would come into play (ex. you're born in a country with lots of resources, or not).
 

INA

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I like that explanation, Ina. However, let's remember that being poor and not being rich is far from equivalent. .
ahem . . .
Here's another theory, though this has more to do with remaining poor than with not becoming rich.

Also, I think we can extrapolate somewhat and argue that people do not become rich partly - but only partly - for similar reasons.

I still think that it will not be impossible for everybody to reach a decent standard of living, but I cannot envision a future with limitless resources, so that everybody would be able to get rich.
Agreed, and this has to do also with the relativity of the concept of rich - i.e. it constantly readjusts to suit the level of resources of a given place. If rich was once having X benchmarks, as soon as most people have X, the benchmark for the rich readjusts to a higher value.
 

AOA

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I think it's because many people (initially) rely on the system, and the conveniences it offers out of it's job opportunities and public demand that they eventually become dependent on it - that's to say they end up living mundane lives, barely. They forget the attitude of competition, and without that they won't get rich...
 

The Decline

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xENY5.png


The concise answer is simple: Wealth begets wealth.

The reason that the richest top 1% of the world holds more than 50% of the total wealth is because the more money you acquire, the easier it is to acquire more. Despite the myths of meritocracy and endless opportunity, poorer people have little chance at climbing the class ladder because they have no resources and are infinitely bogged down due to difficulties that the wealthy never need to worry about.

Not to mention that wealth is passed on in family. Social class mobility upwardly is rare because of a common legacy in lower social classes of poverty. If a family never had one person to go to college, when one does indeed make it to college and earns more money, they will have plenty of relatives asking for help, not to mention that every step of the way will be extremely challenging, from taking out loans to simply not having social capital to figure out what to do next. In contrast, a higher social class individual is already imbued with plenty of social capital by their family, knows exactly what to do, will receive family loans interest-free, will not need to worry about much, and probably has a good idea of what he can do and what is at his disposal.

And besides, the capitalistic wealth system is imbalanced to begin with. The moment someone became incredibly wealthy was the moment a little bit of wealth was stripped from the rest of everyone else. The unrestricted amassing of wealth by few people results in little money to circulate and enable the enrichment of others.
 

AOA

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a lot of people want to become sports stars, but few have the physical gifts and the willingness to push themselves hard enough.

a lot of people want to be smart, but few have the drive or curiosity to compel themsevles to study.

a lot of people want to be rich, but few are disciplined enough to build wealth.

opportunities abound; most people are simply not trained, don't have the will to work for it or even don't truly want to become rich. some people are, whether they admit it or not, completely happy not being wealthy.

to sum up, it's a combination of motivation, natural ability and culture.

Good post. Agreed.
 

Alwar

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The concise answer is simple: Wealth begets wealth.

What is the graph from? I read a few years ago a study that showed that most wealth in the United States is inherited and only a fraction made it themselves.

You can also get rich by selling gimmicky books on how to get rich.
 

Synarch

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1. Wealth requires discipline.
2. Supply and demand. Most people (especially uneducated or otherwise undesirable) are not in demand.
3. If everyone were "rich" there would be no concept of richness. The concept of riches demands inequality. Humans are a race that values distinction. If wealth were abolished people would distinguish themselves with something like brightly colored feathers and these feathers would become a "currency". Humans love to seek distinction from their fellows. It's mostly from the desire to fuck and leave offspring.
 

FDG

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ahem . . .


Also, I think we can extrapolate somewhat and argue that people do not become rich partly - but only partly - for similar reasons.


Agreed, and this has to do also with the relativity of the concept of rich - i.e. it constantly readjusts to suit the level of resources of a given place. If rich was once having X benchmarks, as soon as the majority of people have X, the benchmark for the rich readjusts to a higher value.

Lol, sorry, I just read the quoted part without the introduction, ahaha
 

AOA

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INTJ123

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Intelligence is not linked to wealth, according to a US study, but I bet being a selfish piece of shit with no integrity is!

I agree.

xENY5.png


The concise answer is simple: Wealth begets wealth.

The reason that the richest top 1% of the world holds more than 50% of the total wealth is because the more money you acquire, the easier it is to acquire more. Despite the myths of meritocracy and endless opportunity, poorer people have little chance at climbing the class ladder because they have no resources and are infinitely bogged down due to difficulties that the wealthy never need to worry about.

Not to mention that wealth is passed on in family. Social class mobility upwardly is rare because of a common legacy in lower social classes of poverty. If a family never had one person to go to college, when one does indeed make it to college and earns more money, they will have plenty of relatives asking for help, not to mention that every step of the way will be extremely challenging, from taking out loans to simply not having social capital to figure out what to do next. In contrast, a higher social class individual is already imbued with plenty of social capital by their family, knows exactly what to do, will receive family loans interest-free, will not need to worry about much, and probably has a good idea of what he can do and what is at his disposal.

And besides, the capitalistic wealth system is imbalanced to begin with. The moment someone became incredibly wealthy was the moment a little bit of wealth was stripped from the rest of everyone else. The unrestricted amassing of wealth by few people results in little money to circulate and enable the enrichment of others.

I agree. and by the way in terms of population size the glass would be upside down, way more poor folks than rich folks. The glass is right in terms of amount of wealth though.

Because those in power don't wan't to give up their power. If all our needs are met, then we can't be enslaved and manipulated into doing their bidding.

Do you agree?
 

onemoretime

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Do you mean which are most likely to admit to cheating?

And are you implying that the other majors arent going to use their degrees to make money? I get sick of the "businessmen are evil" tirade.

Isn't the only way to make money in tertiary industry by using your information advantage to sell to a consumer at a higher price than you purchased the good for in the first place?

Seems to me that this is somewhat dishonest by its very nature.
 

simulatedworld

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Well, or by designing and copyrighting/patenting the idea for a product that a lot of people want to buy.

That's kinda what I'd prefer to go for, myself.
 
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