The surprising psychology behind being rich

https://www.bbc.com/reel/playlist/conversation-starters

by quickthrower2 • 6 years ago

41 47 6 years ago

mac010212• 6 years ago

This link no longer points to an article with that title.

pmiller2• 6 years ago

I actually liked the new one better, but here is the actual video OP presumably meant to link: https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07vts5j/the-surprising-psych...

Needs (2019) in the title though.

gandalfian• 6 years ago

https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p07vts5j/the-surprising-psych...

Are rich people heartless? 22 NOVEMBER 2019|HUMANITY According to Christopher Ryan, rich people have the tendency to separate themselves from the rest of the world

heliodor• 6 years ago

*have the means. The desire is probably much more spread among the population.

tdevito4• 6 years ago

Once I saw the title of that video I knew they were all nonsense. What an inhumane thing to say, as if how hard you work has anything to do with what kind of person you are. Is there a certain net worth where you cross a line and no longer have a heart? The problem is not inequality, it's poverty.

gsk22• 6 years ago

Rich people are not rich solely because of how hard they worked. THAT is an inhumane thing to say, as if poverty would vanish tomorrow if only the downtrodden masses put in a little effort.

StillBored• 6 years ago

The problem isn't really the billionaires, so much as they are the modern version of the king/feudal system because the wealth becomes hereditary.

I'm pretty much a believer that estate taxes should be 100% over some fixed threshold, say 5x the median wealth. And no, I don't feel bad about the "family farm" which turns out to be worth 50 million dollars.

mac010212• 6 years ago

Median household wealth in the US is less than $100k, so 5x would be half a million.

So I guess the question is, do you feel bad about the family farm that turns out to be worth 1 or 2 million?

("No" is a legitimate answer, but probably a rather controversial one)

labster• 6 years ago

It seems like there ought to be a happy medium between taxing nearly all homes in California at 100% and the Prop 13 level of 1%/max 2% inflation.

loxs6• 6 years ago

There are two reasons this is a very bad idea:

1. Who is going to take it? The government is a very bad guardian. Everyone from the former East Block can attest (me including). This literally happened here after 1944 and we still suffer the consequences. The political class became all-powerful as they controlled all the resources.

2. This will make people a lot less entrepreneurial and as a result - everyone will become a lot poorer. This also happened in my country between 1944 and 1989. Even the Chinese realised this can't and won't work and are currently heading in the opposite direction.

Really, fantasy is a great thing, but you have to think about the consequences. The Western World is heading off a steep cliff with this kind of thinking.

anoncake3• 6 years ago

1. Sell it, finance public services with the revenue, and lower other taxes. You don't have to be socialist and/or critical to market economies to support 100% OP's proposal.

2. I don't think "estate taxes were raised" is all that happened in the East Block.

hackyhacky3• 6 years ago

The government is a very bad guardian. Everyone from the former East Block can attest (me including).

So, you had a bad government, therefore all governments are bad?

This will make people a lot less entrepreneurial

Do you think Jeff Bezos would have given up if he was able to become only a multi-millionaire, instead of a billionaire?

dragonwriter• 6 years ago

The government is a very bad guardian. Everyone from the former East Block can attest

“I had an abusive parent” does not imply “In general, parents are bad guardians”.

The same thing for governments.

I'm not saying that there isn't a valid critique of government-as-guardian generally, but any such valid critique is going to be more involved than “governments of the Soviet Bloc were bad, so government is bad”.

imtringued• 6 years ago

People will just sell their possessions to the largest corporation around and then spend their remaining money on something wasteful. Others will try to find loopholes such as buying products from your daughter's company or simply smuggle their assets.

Proposals like this also usually do not address what should be done with the tax revenue. It's almost guaranteed that it will be used for something that increases wealth inequality, because as it is right now that is the default state.

jjeaff• 6 years ago

Interesting thing about the family farm anecdotes, supposedly, researchers have struggled to find even a single instance of a family farm getting broken up by estate taxes.

aeternum2• 6 years ago

The trivial way around this is to start a non-profit, put all your net worth into it, then appoint your children/heirs as the sole execs.

The children give part of the yield which still amounts to plenty of money without touching the principle, and use the non-profit as a limitless expense account to travel the world or curry favor as needed. All tax-free.

javert4• 6 years ago

You can't actually give all your money to a non-profit and then spend it on yourself, so that won't work.

I mean, you can, but if you get caught, which you almost certainly will, you will go to jail.

Source: Ask any CPA.

zaphirplane• 6 years ago

Selling assets to offspring for a $1 is as old as money

To close all the simple loop holes and the complex ones is

How do you distinguish between a retiree selling their home to live off the income vs selling it ti pass the money to their kid

ValentineC2• 6 years ago

Selling assets to offspring for a $1 is as old as money

Some tax authorities frown on this, and require that transactions be conducted "at arm's length": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arm%27s_length_principle#Examp...

icu• 6 years ago

The wealthy people I work for strive towards giving their wealth away as best as they can to maximise their impact. They are also susceptible to health crises and family tragedy like everyone else. All the money in the world can't bring back family members or magically solve incurable health issues. While there must be some bad apples, my experience has led me to believe that it's unfair to categorize all wealthy people as uncaring, greedy and selfish.

My big takeaway from watching how 'the other side' lives, is that money is like a magnifying glass of who you really are. If you're genuinely virtuous--for example generous and caring--the wealth allows you to express that. I'm sure if you're greedy or have an addictive personality, you'll be even more destructive to yourself, those around you, and wider society. I'm extremely lucky to have the ability to not have to work with people like that.

GuB-42• 6 years ago

Most of the rich people I have known are actually better people than the average person. I guess the fact they have everything they want allows them to better focus on improving themselves and thinking about their actions than someone who barely have enough to survive. A starving dog is more dangerous than a well fed dog.

There are exceptions of course, some are psychopaths. But I have always been impressed by how nice the rich tend to be in person.

Now about the wealth distribution. In developed countries, the rich are usually not sitting on top of a mountain of gold, mountains of gold are not of much use anyways. Most of their wealth is actually in their businesses, buildings, etc... Businesses get people to work and produce things for people to use, buildings house people, etc... Only a fraction of it is actually used for their luxurious lifestyle, the rest runs the economy.

Now the question would be, wouldn't it be better if money went to the people instead of a few billionaires. Well, yes and no. Yes, for obvious reasons, concentrate wealth too much and that's how you get slavery. But also no, because too much equality is not always a good thing. We need some people with crazy money to do crazy stuff, Elon Musk comes to mind, no billionaire, no SpaceX to do what NASA failed to do.

While it is not about money, another interesting example is the discovery of the Hubble deep field. The director is awarded 10% of the telescope time to use as he sees fit. Kind of like a "telescope billionaire". Robert Williams, the then director, decided to use a substantial fraction of his time looking at an empty patch of sky, discovering many galaxies as a result. It was a bit crazy, and he couldn't have done that if he went through the usual procedures, and it payed of in the end.

That's why I think we need some inequality. Not too much, people deserve to live with a minimum of comfort, but not too little, we need to make large scale personal initiatives possible.

pksebben• 6 years ago

we are way past 'some' inequality. and a lot of that capital sits in places where it doesn't do much to stimulate the economy. then there are the vast swaths of the economy that aren't actually productive or actively detrimental (here's looking at you, financial services, payday lenders, and fossil fuels). further, more inequality means more economic capture (private interests in control of regulation), which decreases our ability to deal with those harms as a society. then you have folks like the koch bros. I like musk as much as the next guy, but I question whether we're at a net positive.

ornornor• 6 years ago

Bezos could give a 105,000$ bonus to each of his employees and still be as rich as before the pandemic

That’s insane. I can’t even comprehend how big an amount of money that is. But instead amazon nickel and dimes their workforce. What a time to be alive.

The surprising psychology behind being rich

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