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Comment by deadbabe | Hacker News Reader

This title comes straight from the clickbait factory.

You could make an even juicier title I bet if you calculate how much their wealth has increased in the last 5 years.

47% YoY growth is insane. 5 years of that rate would be a 7x increase in wealth over that period. I'd click on that.

It's nor insane if you have capital. The more money you have the nicer your loans are and the more people pay you to let them hold your money so they can leverage it to make more money and give you a cut.

The deceptive thing about this "eat the rich" b.s. the media likes to spread is that they make it seem like there is a pie and the rich are eating a lot of it. In reality it's more like there is a cash river and they're drinking a lot but they won't drink any less if more people got in on it. Most USD only exists on paper and most of it is not owned by individuals or considered part of their wealth.

This principle works in many other aspects of life. If google and microsoft want to hire you then so would 1000 other companies. If you can date 10 women ar once 1000 women want you. If you can defeat all your neighboring countries, you can probably give a superpower a very hard time if they invade you.

Little x little = little

Big x big = very very big

Having little capital allows for a great deal of growth in wealth. If you're total wealth is $1, assuming you've got an income, if you find a way to shave ~50 miles off your driving, you're going to see triple digit growth in your wealth.

More digits but little money.

S&P 500 YTD is at 20%

Vanguard growth fund (VIGAX) 42%

AMZN 71%

APPL 56%

MSFT 55%

GOOG 52%

TSLA 124%

Anyone with an aggressive but not insane portfolio could be at 47% growth in 2023.

yes but the size of the portfolio is the issue here

Okay, but that's not the framing of the argument I'm responding to in this thread. The title of the article and the people I'm responding to are framing the percentage growth as the problem.

It's called the AI boom/hype. I have doubts about the equity gains in the companies that have moved on AI speculation alone.

Feels like 2008.

I still regret and resent I got taken for a ride with Occupy Wall Street. A naive, young mind I was...

2008 was pretending assets were worth more then they were due to fraudulent income claims from borrowers.

Does not seem similar to today.

Today, assets thought to be worth more than they actually are due to pure delusion

Care to explain how supporting Occupy Wall Street was "naive" and being taken for a ride?

Getting indoctrinated that "I am the 99%" and festering anger towards "the 1%" is, in fact, very unproductive and a waste of time and energy especially since so-called rich people don't generally deserve any of that nonsense.

I have a lot more life experience now. If I'm going to fester anger against anyone now, it's the media (mainstream, social, et al.) and relevant powers-that-be for taking me on that ride and continuing to try and take me on more.

"media and relevant powers-that-be" == the 99%

You are right back where you started if you'll only admit to it.

And who do you think owns the media and sets its tone?

Certain, specific individuals to whom broad labels like "rich people" and "1%" don't apply in any useful manner.

To put it another way, there's a reason naive, useful idiots like myself were (and are) led to harbor anger against "rich people" and "1%". That reason does not serve to benefit the commons like you and me, nor the so-called "rich"/"1%" people.

When you think a system is rigged and out of principle refuse to participate, you miss out on the benefits of participating in the system, and in the end all your protest accomplishes nothing, the stock market or the universe won’t even notice.

> When you think a system is rigged and out of principle refuse to participate

I don't understand, you got a degree in finance, learned about OWS, then decided to be a hippie instead of getting any other type of job?

Not finding a job at that time was not a choice for most people who were left out.

What’s clickbait-y about it? The fact that it singles out the wealthiest 25 families? Good for the author of the article that puts that into perspective, because sure as hell the wealth of the normal people surrounding me (basically middle-class people somewhere in Eastern Europe) hasn’t increased by a staggering 43% in the last year.

To the contrary, inflation and housing-related costs (among many other things) are literally causing us many sleepless hours at night.

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