Post: #76

(03-05-2014 11:41 PM)j r Wrote:  And what is this "massive amount" of data? How about a citation?

I didn't mean massive amount of data, but data that shows a massive amount of the population will not be a success. I'm not complaining, just saying that I don't agree with the guys that say anyone can succeed. Not everyone can or will, but I agree that you should do all you can to be as successful as possible.

Post: #77

There is some sheer stupidity being floated around in some cases here. The phrase "you can't get ahead unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

I grew up in one of those neighborhoods where the 1% live. Of the children in the 2 streets in our "court," not one other than myself graduated university within 6 years. A couple drop outs of university. A couple who are on pace to take 8+ years to make it. Not one of them making a wage above 40k. A couple girls with kids before they were 22. Many of them have this don't give a fuck attitude and put no effort into anything. It astonishes me. I'd say if anything there's going to be a lot of children born into rich families that will fall backwards. While many people born in the middle class will have that extra drive to make it rich.

People will then say but they'll inherit a lot of money. It's a lot easier to blow through money then it is to make money. If you don't develop the skills to make money there's a very good chance you'll blow it. See lottery winners.

The problem people have is self-selection. No one is really rich until 30+ and usually 40+ unless they are a) on TV or b) sold a business or c) inheritance.

This is simply due to the fact it takes time to build wealth. You have perhaps 1 compounding period from 22-30. Then another from 30-38, another 38-45 or so. Money compounds over time. Hence, why moving social classes isn't likely to occur in ones 20s or even their 30s. Look at the Forbes rich list. It reads almost like an obituary. 92,80, 83, 78...ages of the people in it. They've had many compounding cycles to take advantage of by that point.

You can become a millionaire never making more than 30 thousand a year. A lot of it comes down to life choices. The rich don't feel the need to look rich. (Outside the extremely rich, or the get rich quick types (athletes) Whereas nearly everyone who isn't rich has it engraved in their mind that they need to look successful. How do they do this? buy a house they can hardly afford, a car that's well beyond their income level, expensive clothing etc. This leaves them with no real opportunity for climbing the social pyramid as they are leveraged to the gills in depreciating and under-performing assets.

This is even more magnified in places where people are truly poor. My girlfriends in Cuba probably spend 80% of their incomes on clothes...when what they should be doing is saving that money for a few years and starting a private business. I've showed them the math and within 2 years with me they could easily save 3+k (enough for them to start a business there that can make them an income of 300+ a month quickly. keep in mind this can keep on being scaled until they are making thousands) which is more than triple what they make outside of my help. It's beyond them though. They just keep spending the minute they have money in their hands. We exhibit the principles here just we have more access to money.

You don't have to be all that intelligent to make a good living. On 80k you could save 40k a year if you really wanted to. If you did that and invested you should become a millionaire within 10 years or so. After that you may very well make more a year on your investments than your salary.

Everyone has an opportunity to be successful. Sure it's easier for some. Who cares. Make the most of what you have cause 99% of people aren't. They are contempt with mediocrity and blame stuff like taxes for there lack of success / achieving their dreams. Mediocrity is a mind set.

It's all a mindset.

Post: #78

^Brilliant.

Post: #79

(03-05-2014 01:33 PM)nomadicdude Wrote:  Look at it this way. You basically have no chance of moving up in society unless you are born with a silver spoon. Statistics back this up. The very rich have been allowed to accumulate too much wealth.

Complete utter BS. I love when people post such nonsense without any evidence or support. Thomas Sowell has written about a dozen articles on the topic, complete with scholarly studies and statistics. Not to mention many others.

Quote:Such a conclusion, however, would be utterly false. The fact is that America, to an extent that may be unprecedented in its or any other country's history, is a land of opportunity and upward mobility. When we follow individuals through time, as opposed to following statistically defined income groups, we find a picture of growth and opportunity.

Several recent studies have shed light on this critical issue. In 1992, the Treasury Department analyzed tax returns filed by 14,000 taxpayers for all of the years from 1979 to 1988. For each year, they determined the distribution of income among all 14,000 filers and assigned each tax filer to an income quintile for that year. They then compared the economic status of each tax filer in 1979 with the status achieved by 1988.

The results were startling. The Treasury Department study found that very few of those who started out poor (i.e., in the bottom 20 percent of income) in 1979 remained poor. On the contrary, 86 percent of those who were in the bottom quintile in that year had moved to a higher quintile by 1988. And the Treasury Department found that a person who was "poor" in 1979 was more likely to have become "rich" by 1988 than to have remained "poor." Only 14.2 percent of those in the bottom 20 percent in 1979 were still in that category in 1988, while 14.7 percent had not only improved their lot, but had moved all the way to the top income category.8

This study tells us something critically important about America's "rich" and "poor." They are, in large part, the same people at different times in their lives. "Poor" people certainly include some who are demoralized, disabled or dissolute. But to a greater extent, "poor" family units consist of students, young people who are just starting out in life, recent immigrants, and retired people. The authors of this article, and many of those who will read it, were once classified as "poor" in government statistics. This year's bottom 20 percent are not the same as last year's, or those of the year before. Over time, the vast majority of low-income people find jobs, work their way up, and spend their peak earning years in far more prosperous circumstances. They are replaced at the bottom by young people, immigrants and others who then proceed to work themselves into a higher category.

Income mobility, of course, is a two-way street. The "rich," like the "poor," are an ever-changing group. Contrary to popular conviction that the rich only get richer, the Treasury Department study found that of those taxpayers who had ranked in the top 1 percent in income in 1979, 58 percent had dropped out of that category by 1988.

Further confirmation of the remarkable degree of mobility in the American economy comes from a second study, conducted for the Urban Institute by Isabell Sawhill and Mark Condon. Sawhill and Condon followed a procedure somewhat like the Treasury Department study. They identified a group of families and recorded their incomes in 1977, arranging them into quintiles of family income for that year. Then, in 1986, they recorded the family incomes for the same people. Rather than arranging the 1986 incomes into quintiles, they calculated the average family income, as of 1986, for each of the five groups that had been identified in 1977. The results of the study are shown below.

Sawhill and Condon found that the group that experienced the largest percentage increase in income, on average, were those who started out in the bottom quintile. Those families saw their real incomes increase a remarkable 77 percent, on average, by 1986. The second-poorest group experienced the second-largest increase -- an average of 37 percent. The smallest average increase between 1977 and 1986 was that of the highest income group. Families in the top 20 percent in family income saw their average real incomes increase by only 5 percent in nine years. On the basis of these data, Sawhill and Condon characterize the period from 1977 to 1986 as an era when the poor were getting wealthier fast, and the rich were getting wealthier slowly.9

These income mobility data are of tremendous significance to the income inequality debate. They show that much of what passes for inequality between rich and poor is really inequality between generations.10 America is not a country in the process of stratifying into permanently separate and unequal camps, one rich and one poor. Rather, it is a country that offers its young people and immigrants unprecedented opportunity to achieve financial success.

http://www.americanexperiment.org/public...inequality

Post: #80

I was in Burma yesterday.

Post: #81

(03-06-2014 12:44 AM)lavidaloca Wrote:  There is some sheer stupidity being floated around in some cases here. The phrase "you can't get ahead unless you are born with a silver spoon in your mouth."

I grew up in one of those neighborhoods where the 1% live. Of the children in the 2 streets in our "court," not one other than myself graduated university within 6 years. A couple drop outs of university. A couple who are on pace to take 8+ years to make it. Not one of them making a wage above 40k. A couple girls with kids before they were 22. Many of them have this don't give a fuck attitude and put no effort into anything. It astonishes me. I'd say if anything there's going to be a lot of children born into rich families that will fall backwards. While many people born in the middle class will have that extra drive to make it rich.

People will then say but they'll inherit a lot of money. It's a lot easier to blow through money then it is to make money. If you don't develop the skills to make money there's a very good chance you'll blow it. See lottery winners.

The problem people have is self-selection. No one is really rich until 30+ and usually 40+ unless they are a) on TV or b) sold a business or c) inheritance.

This is simply due to the fact it takes time to build wealth. You have perhaps 1 compounding period from 22-30. Then another from 30-38, another 38-45 or so. Money compounds over time. Hence, why moving social classes isn't likely to occur in ones 20s or even their 30s. Look at the Forbes rich list. It reads almost like an obituary. 92,80, 83, 78...ages of the people in it. They've had many compounding cycles to take advantage of by that point.

You can become a millionaire never making more than 30 thousand a year. A lot of it comes down to life choices. The rich don't feel the need to look rich. (Outside the extremely rich, or the get rich quick types (athletes) Whereas nearly everyone who isn't rich has it engraved in their mind that they need to look successful. How do they do this? buy a house they can hardly afford, a car that's well beyond their income level, expensive clothing etc. This leaves them with no real opportunity for climbing the social pyramid as they are leveraged to the gills in depreciating and under-performing assets.

This is even more magnified in places where people are truly poor. My girlfriends in Cuba probably spend 80% of their incomes on clothes...when what they should be doing is saving that money for a few years and starting a private business. I've showed them the math and within 2 years with me they could easily save 3+k (enough for them to start a business there that can make them an income of 300+ a month quickly. keep in mind this can keep on being scaled until they are making thousands) which is more than triple what they make outside of my help. It's beyond them though. They just keep spending the minute they have money in their hands. We exhibit the principles here just we have more access to money.

You don't have to be all that intelligent to make a good living. On 80k you could save 40k a year if you really wanted to. If you did that and invested you should become a millionaire within 10 years or so. After that you may very well make more a year on your investments than your salary.

Everyone has an opportunity to be successful. Sure it's easier for some. Who cares. Make the most of what you have cause 99% of people aren't. They are contempt with mediocrity and blame stuff like taxes for there lack of success / achieving their dreams. Mediocrity is a mind set.

It's all a mindset.

Post: #82

(03-06-2014 01:04 AM)RioNomad Wrote:  I was in Burma yesterday.

Post: #83

Save your complaining for the things worth complaining about, like rising obesity in our women. See, that is the real problem facing American. American men that work hard and fight for our country, most men that work, are having to come home to beached whales. It is no wonder there is an erectile dysfunction epidemic.

Post: #84

When people start complaining about "materialism", I just assume they're broke.

Post: #85

(03-06-2014 01:21 AM)deathtofatties Wrote:  Save your complaining for the things worth complaining about, like rising obesity in our women. See, that is the real problem facing American. American men that work hard and fight for our country, most men that work, are having to come home to beached whales. It is no wonder there is an erectile dysfunction epidemic.

QFT!

I don't believe anyone under 50 has ED. What they have, is the wrong woman.

Post: #86

LOL, this thread really pissed some people off. My bad. Maybe I should not have written my OP in such a one sided way. Anyway, definitely the America No. 1! crowd gets PO'd at anything remotely negative said about beloved Amerika. It's an interesting thing to see...

Post: #87

I hate boot strap stories.

There is your attitude, and then there is reality.

You can walk with all the alpha swagger in the world, but that doesn't mean shit when you are in a dark alley with 3 guys who want to see your blood.

To borrow a quote from the fight game: everyone has a plan, until they get hit.

Post: #88

This dude is hating all over the board.

Hating on America
/thread-9846-p...#pid150492
/thread-33666-...#pid670686
/thread-33493-...#pid668293

Hating on New York
/thread-24095-...#pid454402
/thread-13854-...#pid230067

Hating on India
/thread-17885-...#pid371703

Hating on guys getting pussy in Philippines
/thread-16725-...#pid311356

Hating on Romania
/thread-7227-p...#pid105941

I am sure there are a lot more but there definitely seems to be a pattern here...

Post: #89

Wherever you go in the world, your problems will go with you.

Post: #90

(03-05-2014 01:33 PM)nomadicdude Wrote:  You basically have no chance of moving up in society unless you are born with a silver spoon.

I think this thread has debunked this opinion. I grew up in the lower 20% and was able to move up. If I lost all of my money tomorrow I'm confident I would make it back again. It's a mindset and a personality type.

Nomad, right now there are people that are frustrated because an existing company is selling them crappy products and giving them subpar service. Find those people and give them the products/services they deserve. Treat them like you want to be treated by a company. This forum at it's core is about self improvement. Don't give up before you've even started.

Post: #91

The dude is just a troll. Complains all day no value add anywhere on the forum.

You can complain about American women, the shitty personalities... Obsession with their phone/pop culture etc.

But.

Complaining about making money in the USA means you are an idiot. That is the one thing the USA is #1 in and it's not even close. Not even comparable and not even debatable.

It would be like me complaining about the quality of women in the best strip club in Vegas. Complaining that they weren't "wife material"... Bro you're in a strip club. That is literally the comparison this keyboard jockey broke kid is making. Period.

Post: #92

(03-06-2014 09:28 AM)WestCoast Wrote:  Complaining about making money in the USA means you are an idiot. That is the one thing the USA is #1 in and it's not even close. Not even comparable and not even debatable.

If there are aspects to living in the US that you don't like, which I can fully understand, you can always geaoarbitrage, i.e. make your money in the US but live somewhere else.

That's what I do.

Post: #93

(03-06-2014 01:48 AM)nomadicdude Wrote:  Anyway, definitely the America No. 1! crowd gets PO'd at anything remotely negative said about beloved Amerika.

You have completely learned the wrong lesson. This has nothing to do with the so-called "America No. 1" crowd.

For example, I no longer believe that the ideal of "America" even exists, at least as envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I never refer to it as America any longer, only the United States. Plenty of things wrong, which is why I am looking to head for the exit.

But lack of social mobility (or static income inequality) is not one of them.

What pissed people off was the complete lack of intellectual rigor in your original post. Your original assertion was utterly fallacious and devoid of any logic, reason, or evidence.

Many forum members from the U.S. are direct beneficiaries of upward mobility, so they have seen it first-hand in their own lives, which is why they now have the opportunity to travel the globe and how they know that your argument is ridiculous.

Post: #94

I'm straight gettin' it in America. I wasn't born rich but now I drink with my pinky extended. You can make it happen.

Post: #95

^ good shit man.

I don't really know why people are so infatuated with "smart" as a necessity to make money.

Over here, there are dog walkers that make $1,500 a week. Yeah that's only about 78K... But good luck making $78K a year walking dogs anywhere else.

America ain't perfect but the dolla dolla bills are.

Post: #96

Most of it has been said already but I really like reading American history and this 'crisis'/end of america paranoia has been going on since at least the start of the 1800s. Rich exploiting circumstances, stock market crashes, people exposing or posting conspiracy theories (the freemasons/illuminati during the 1860s is interesting). People are always going to think America is going to explode tomorrow or that they will be held down. Its a matter of riding the right wave, its currently north dakota, was real estate before that and .com before that, again back in the late 1800s it was profiteering from the Civil War. That money is the capital that was put into the industrial and and railroad boom. To get ahead you need to be where, or at least involved where the action is. Lavidaloca called it well, a rich family will die out in a generation or two with lazy offspring.

Post: #97

Dr. Howard -- exactly. North Dakota is where I work. You have to go where the opportunities are. I know a lot of guys here that didn't finish high school but make 130k or more a year. That's not to say an idiot can make it here. These are all really sharp hardworking guys, who happened to come from bad environments. But they came out with nothing but that work ethic and were able to make it because the opportunities are here.

Post: #98

I can somewhat relate to this sentiment, however America is a great country to live. And I say this as a somebody who moved from EE pussy paradise to the American wasteland. The wage to cost of living ratio is very good in most places (well, at least for the jobs that we here aspire to), definitely better than in most of Europe. Enterprise is encouraged and has low barriers to entry. Corruption is pretty low compared to world at large (although probably higher than many EU countries). The problem is that most people spend all their income (or even go into debt) to pay for completely unnecessary consumerist lifestyle that brings very little in terms of real quality of life.

This Cadillac commercial that was being aired during the Sochi olympics says it all:





Always cringed when I've seen that. Big fan of Mr. MoneyMustache and Early Retirement Extreme. This commercial is pretty much a complete antithesis to what they preach.

Post: #99

(03-06-2014 10:35 AM)WestCoast Wrote:  ^ good shit man.

I don't really know why people are so infatuated with "smart" as a necessity to make money.

Over here, there are dog walkers that make $1,500 a week. Yeah that's only about 78K... But good luck making $78K a year walking dogs anywhere else.

America ain't perfect but the dolla dolla bills are.

Who is walking dogs for almost 80k a year? If the money for dog walking was that good why isn't everyone doing it given the low barrier of entry for that job? Not bitching with you, I'm asking seriously. There has to be a catch somewhere.

$1500 a week assuming they take two days off means they must bill at about $38/hr to walk a dog, and that assumes that they are booked solid EVERY single hour of their work week. Not including driving between clients which I assume they don't get paid for.

Quote:Dr. Howard -- exactly. North Dakota is where I work. You have to go where the opportunities are. I know a lot of guys here that didn't finish high school but make 130k or more a year. That's not to say an idiot can make it here. These are all really sharp hardworking guys, who happened to come from bad environments. But they came out with nothing but that work ethic and were able to make it because the opportunities are here.

If I didn't have a fucked up back, I'd seriously consider heading up to ND for a year.

Post: #100

(03-06-2014 03:44 PM)speakeasy Wrote:  

(03-06-2014 10:35 AM)WestCoast Wrote:  ^ good shit man.

I don't really know why people are so infatuated with "smart" as a necessity to make money.

Over here, there are dog walkers that make $1,500 a week. Yeah that's only about 78K... But good luck making $78K a year walking dogs anywhere else.

America ain't perfect but the dolla dolla bills are.

Who is walking dogs for almost 80k a year? If the money for dog walking was that good why isn't everyone doing it given the low barrier of entry for that job? Not bitching with you, I'm asking seriously. There has to be a catch somewhere.

$1500 a week assuming they take two days off means they must bill at about $38/hr to walk a dog, and that assumes that they are booked solid EVERY single hour of their work week. Not including driving between clients which I assume they don't get paid for.

Quote:Dr. Howard -- exactly. North Dakota is where I work. You have to go where the opportunities are. I know a lot of guys here that didn't finish high school but make 130k or more a year. That's not to say an idiot can make it here. These are all really sharp hardworking guys, who happened to come from bad environments. But they came out with nothing but that work ethic and were able to make it because the opportunities are here.

If I didn't have a fucked up back, I'd seriously consider heading up to ND for a year.

http://petbusinessexperts.com/business-t...ing-rates/

Time Dog walking price
1/2 Hour $15.00 to $20.00
1 Hour $22.00 to $30.00
Second dog same family 1/2 price going rate

Those are some pretty good rates. Now imagine you can easily have 5 or more dogs at the same time, if you get a lot of customers, that's some good business.