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Comment by scaredginger | Hacker News Reader

What percentage of readers here would you estimate have missed a chance of becoming a billionaire?

Probably nearly all of them over 30 of sound mind and body, that live in America, avoided the lure of alcohol, drugs, and crime, got themselves educated in a useful skill, and avoided the tar pits of victimhood and grievances.

By what avenue?! Inventing a unicorn business and developing the connections to sell it to the people who matter? Buying the right lottery ticket?

> By what avenue?!

Leveraging everything you had and bought MSFT when it went public. Or AMZN. Or Bitcoin. Or Apple. As the value of the stock increased, buy more on margin.

Of course, this is risky. Note I mentioned a willingness to take risks.

Look at the median incomes throughout the us, then look at the living expenses, and honestly consider whether speculative investing would be even remotely feasible, or even a morally defensible financial strategy with other people relying on you? Not being put into a position where other people rely on you— elderly parents, relative's children, etc— is pretty lucky in most socio-economic sections in our country.

11.6% of Americans are below the poverty line, not 50%.

You can start an investment program for $100 at robinhood.com.

Do you know how absurdly low the federal poverty level is compared to actual living expenses, anywhere? Do you honestly think $ > FPL = able to speculatively invest? Lots of basic needs assistance programs start tapering once you hit 133% of the regionally-adjusted federal poverty level and many don't disqualify until you until you hit multiples... And we still have a lot of food insecurity, housing insecurity, and lack of access to medical care among people who don't qualify.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/04/11/58percent-of-americans-a...

58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Throwing money into some Robinhood investment when you're living paycheck to paycheck, especially if you're responsible for other people, as many people in lower socio-economic brackets are, is completely irresponsible.

> 58% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck

That's one of the most misleading statistics ever. Lots and lots of people live paycheck to paycheck because they see money they spend money. I know people who live in McMansions with new cars, spiffy threads, and expensive furniture who spend every dime. Every time they get a raise, they ramp up the spending. When I worked at Boeing, payday was every other Thursday. People would leave the building and run to their cars. This is because they'd already spent the money and needed to get the paycheck deposited ASAP.

They're not poor people. What they are are fiscally irresponsible.

A corollary is the percentage of people with less than $500 in the bank. Well, I have less than $500 in the bank. It's not because I'm poor, it's because I put every dime to work for me in investments.

BTW, what do you think of those millions of people dressing up like Barbie and going to see Taylor Swift concerts, spending a thousand bucks and more on travel, tickets, costumes, etc.? Me, it shows Americans are not mired in poverty.

With only $100 you're basically going to have to win the lottery: get the right symbol (most won't be) at an ideal buy time, and sell at an ideal selling point. Be sure not to go bankrupt or homeless while buying those tickets and waiting for that perfect timing.

LOL. Every investment program starts with a first step. AMZN opened at $35 a share. Buying 3 shares would be worth what, today? North of $100,000. Not bad, eh?

Are you suggesting that if 100 times as many people bought those stocks at the right time, we'd have 100 times as many billionaires? What exactly would be generating all that extra wealth?

There are a fixed number of shares. If A buys 100 shares, there are 100 shares fewer available for others to buy.

Until a corporation dilutes the shares by issuing more.

Yes, that was kind of my point. I'm not really seeing how many more people could have possibly become mega-rich just by having bought more of the shares that happened to make the few people that actually did mega-rich, which seemed to be what you were suggesting - apologies if I misinterpreted.

"willingness to take risks" and betting the farm on a tech stock _continuosly_ over 20+ years are two very different things

I happen to know a person who did exactly that, and became very wealthy.

Making lots of money is usually proportional to how much risk you're willing to take.

How many more did the same, but only managed to yield spectacular failure? Such lottery wins are not repeatable, and relying on them is horrible advice.

I pointed out upthread the willingness to take risk. Nothing is guaranteed. But you can tilt the odds very much in your favor.

BTW, AMZN had far, far better odds than any lottery.

"I know a guy" is a useless measure of whether or not something is feasible for most people. There's a lot of useful data out there about this stuff.

I don't name names for privacy reasons, not because I'm making things up.

The Seattle Times reported in the 1990s that there were over 10,000 Microsoft millionaires living in the Seattle area, excluding housing. And that was when a million dollars was real money.

Ten thousand.

There's probably a similar figure for Amazon employees.

Buying the right lottery ticket is the closest chance to this being accurate. If you look at the percentages in social strata and honestly evaluate the logistical and cultural paths most people would have to access billionaire-level opportunity, it's apparent that American meritocracy at the upper echelons is a fucking joke.

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