[flagged]
I honestly saw it was $15million and figured that's a bargain for the estate of one of the most esteemed directors of his generation. Relative to his level of fame and respect, his monetary assets do seem low.
But then this certainly matches the public perception of Lynch. He made the things that he wanted to make, not the things that were guaranteed to sell. I'm sure commercial success was important to him, but there were lots of paths he could have taken that would have lead to a lot more.
Many, many people in CA that live in expensive homes are in this situation. It's what Prop 13 wrought. Variously, in my neighborhood, old people are paying a small fraction of the property tax that I do, and their house is worth a lot of money, but they have almost nothing, living on their social security check, month to month.
I'm not saying Lynch was living on SSI, but given his movies and what we know of how much they made, the story told by his daughter is very plausible.
Assuming they own the house outright, that absolutely does qualify as wealthy.
> I didn't say it wouldn't. I said it didn't qualify as ready cash.
I think you did say it didn't qualify as wealthy (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45301176):
> What people normally mean by wealth is easy access to cash. Someone that owns a $15M house and has very little other liquid assets is not poor, but they definitely don't qualify as wealthy.
Anyway, whatever it is, I think litigating Lynch's level of wealth on HN is probably not the most useful direction for this comment thread.
Anyone who gets a mortgage on a house is also investing other peoples' money. Using a credit card is spending other peoples' money. Buying a car on time is spending other peoples' money.
When I ask people this question most will respond with pay in cash so you don't lose money paying a mortgage. The real answer it exploit loop holes in the laws with your gain financial position.
1) Open a trust with the money. 2) Use that trust for banking and make it your mortgage lender. 3) Gain tax deductions for having a mortgage and put tax dollars in your own pocket just by shifting money around in a legal creative accounting method.
The wealthy use loop holes that can be exploited only with money to maximize the hoarding.
How does one accumulate wealth with hoarding it?
> The wealthy use loop holes that can be exploited only with money to maximize the hoarding.
You'll have to be more specific about that. Most deductions and credits phase out with increasing income.
You do realize that the rich loan out to themselves via shell corporations or trusts. The only mobility of money is putting tax dollars into the wealth hands.
Just because a wealth person bought it does not mean someone else wouldn't.
The wealthy can also use their buying power to reduce the value of the sale and harm the seller. Kroger has around 40% market share to throw their weight around a reduce the selling power of the farmer and increase cost to the consumer. So the farmer makes less all because of threat to not buy from in a market that keeps having less and less competition.
Have you had to give free labor in millions of dollars so your company could gain access to one of the big name companies on Wall-street. I have and it just highlight the inequality in wealth at a personal and corporate level.
Even Steve Jobs used his wealth of Apple to buy up companies cheap at discounted rates. I cannot find a the video any more but it talks about how a company was being bought by Apple. Steve Jobs, at the meeting, asked the company's CEO why am I buying your company for $XXX,XXX. I think it should only cost $50,000 less. CEO said there is an agreement again. Jobs, I could just not buy it.
How about the art scam loop hole.
1) Pay an artist $1000 to create a piece via trust or another organization you own. 2) Sell the at auction and buy it for yourself for $30,000. 3) Donate the art work to charity. 4) Turn a $1000 into a $30,000 tax deductible with more creative accounting.
This is not the only artwork scam. [1]
There are loop holes that wealth people pay lawyers, accounts, full time staff to do full time as a job. Exploit the laws for personal gain to hoard wealth. [0] Panama Papers even had their methods leaked and the names of their shell companies.
Another great use of a shell company is the ability remove liability from the wealth onto a corporate entity that can easily dissolve in bankruptcy and shed the liability. Laws often are designed to ease the burden of liability from companies while keeping on individuals.
Again how do you gain wealth with out hording it? Are stocks wealth, is property wealth, are bonds wealth?
Let say you own 40% of an industry and work to gain 70%. Have you not increased your industrial hoarding by 30%? Even though it is an investment it is till hoarding.
How about stocks, can you hoard those to consolidate and hoard wealth?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers [1] https://naturalist.gallery/blogs/journal/understanding-the-f...
> Even Steve Jobs used his wealth of Apple to buy up companies cheap at discounted rates.
Meaning there was someone willing to sell it to him.
> Exploit the laws for personal gain to hoard wealth
They're still not hoarding wealth, they're investing it.
There are trillions of dollar hidden by the wealth to prevent paying taxes / their fair share.
There are no good wealthy people in the world because they hoard not share.
Investing means you must hoard. Keep owing an product or service that has a limit resource is hoarding. Want to invest in housing, one must hoard house to make a profit.
You must sell a house to make a profit.
Renting and leasing economics prove your statement to be a fallacy. Airbnb wealth is built on not selling houses. Retaining bought houses increases the value because it increases the rarity. By restricting home ownership the rental properties monthly prices can be increased to reflect a manufactured market.
De Beers is a great example of how hoarding wealth grows wealth. [0] They hoard diamonds to create an artificial rarity market. This gives the ability to increase prices. Say you have a type of diamond category with 10% natural occurrence. You hoard 90% and only release 0.5% or less of that category. You just increase the rarity artificially and drove that category in price like a rocket. Even if your competition will increase prices to match or be just a few dollars below. Competition has to because they do not have access to the diamonds hoarded by De Beers.
How would you take that 90% of the hoarded 90% category diamond and make it profitable instead of just sitting on the selves? How about grinding some of the them up and selling them for diamond edge saws and bits?
My definition of _Wealthy_ encompasses individuals (you, me, human HN users) and groups of individuals (trust, companies, Apple, Meta, HN, ...).
The first thing I'd do is sell.
Me too. And it looks like that’s what the heirs are doing too.
But for David Lynch, I can see why he might want to live amongst the people involved in financing, making, and distributing movies. Similar to how founders move to the expensive Bay area to be near VCs, talent, etc.
You can do something similar if you buy a house and keep buying any neighboring house that comes up for sale (and renting them out, perhaps).
You'd need a little over 9% of stable returns over that 40 year timeframe to hit that $15M target.
My calculation makes that about $9m over 40 years.
Uhm, it must be, or more people would do it
The entertainment industry is filled with a lot of more-famous-than-rich people. By these numbers David Lynch (at 78) was probably as wealthy as 1000s of random (and anonymous) successful Mag7 SWEs are at retirement.
See Will Smith.
Care to speculate on how many struggling actors sharing flats are fallen celebrities?
The Will Smiths of Hollywood are a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction.
The phenomenon at play in “Hollywood standards” poorly reflecting the totality of the Hollywood population are winner-take-all income/attention distribution and cultivation of an illusion of opulence to satisfy audience demand — not licentiousness and depravity amongst entertainment industry personnel.
Why would suddenly famous actors be any more savvy?
See the documentary "Val" on Val Kilmer.
Despite what Hollywood would have you believe, Hollywood is not exclusively populated with rich and famous celebrities.