undefined | Better HN

0 pointskypro5y ago0 comments

Not that I disagree with anything you said necessarily, but it's so much more complicated than this.

Sometimes being less fortunate is what motivates people to become rich. The truth is I had a huge amount of stuff holding me back as a child, and still do, but imo that is why I managed to succeed (relatively at least) where others I knew who had similar intelligence and better backgrounds did not. Even in my own family the difference between my sister and myself is massive, she's probably in the bottom 10% and I'm probably in the top 1-2%, yet she has almost the exact same background as myself.

Being poor might just be the single greatest motivator. It also teaches people a lot of valuable lessons for acquiring wealth such as how to save and ration. If you look at wealth statistics in the UK some of the wealthy people here are immigrants or second generation immigrants from India and East Asia which doesn't really fit with this narrative of rich people get rich, while poor people stay poor.

I understand sometimes people are so unlucky that the obstacles in front of them are insurmountable, but I also don't think this paints a full picture. I also generally agree with the article, although I think it's easy to criticise without providing answers. It would have been nice to see some suggestions on how to fix the problem of wealth inequality, because unfortunately many of the popular solutions (raising taxes, expanding welfare programs, etc) could just make things worse.

0 comments

3 comments · 3 top-level

TheOtherHobbes5y ago

Being poor is only a motivator for an incredibly tiny number of people who are probably prone to risk-taking anyway. The unfortunate reality is that some of them shade into outright narcissism.

https://www.psypost.org/2021/02/narcissists-make-their-way-t...

It's vastly easier to become rich if you don't care about employees, customers, tenants, and co-workers, or if you can persuade yourself that people who don't take risks and succeed are somehow inherently morally inferior and deficient.

In fact a good safety net is likely to increase entrepreneurial activity, because it makes it possible to fail into a safety net instead of failing into homelessness and catastrophe.

Tax increases are a separate issue. But generally wealth inequality is politically as well as financially toxic.

You want to reward smart, clever, inventive individuals. But you do also want to make sure they don't automatically get privileged legal or ethical treatment which encourages destructive narcissistic and authoritarian behaviours in the culture as a whole.

1 more reply

catears5y ago

I think there is some truth to this. Obviously too complicated subject for me to understand everything, but I wanted to add my own experience.

One of the most motivating things I did to get a well-paying job and work hard to earn it was by having a deadend job as a kid. There is nothing that has motivated me to study hard as much as the realization that some people will be stuck stacking boxes their entire life.

Motivation makes a big difference, but obviously those who always think about how to make rent and still have food on the table don't always have the opportunity to live a better life...

greyhound5y ago

This. I come from a coal mining village in the eastern Ukraine, where people didn't get salaries for 4-5 months and would live off the food that they grew in the back yard. My home village is controlled by the DPR separatists, my parents became refugees in their 50s. I made it to the top ~5% in Germany. Of course there are many factors to it: my parents saved up to buy me a computer, I was fond of western culture to an extent of self-learning English and of course I was just very lucky. Now, here in Germany, all of a sudden I get treated as if I had a head start over the other 95%, especially given my skin color and gender. I'm definitely not a fan of Ayn Rand, but some tirades about people who are not poor get more and more resemblance with the monologues of her grotesque looter characters.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse