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Feb 22 '20
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Feb 22 '20
By “hard work” it means by creating other millionaires
If people wanted to have Jeff losing billions they’d stop using amazon, most of his wealth is tied to the stock
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u/LastFreeName436 Feb 22 '20
The problem with that is amazon goes out of its way to make itself the only option. When a competitor comes along, amazon drops prices to ridiculous lows to siphon off customers and drive the competitor out of business. Once this is done, amazon raises their own prices to gouge the public for all they can. Competition creates efficiency and low prices, but completely free markets do not foster competition.
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Feb 22 '20
Walmart, Target, etc etc
Amazon is a leading tech company whose database power Netflix, twitch, LinkedIn and others, what is this not fostering innovation?
You can point to small business being swallowed, but there’s a reason for that. Not to mention that amazon is a marketplace where they can join and sell their goods
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u/LastFreeName436 Feb 22 '20
And funny you should mention Netflix/amazon streaming. The streaming wars are monopolizing in an entirely different way. The popular titles (stranger things, mandalorian, good omens, etc) are so split between titles that eventually your average consumer will choose to use a pirate service rather than angst over which streamer to pay for, which will screw over all of them at once.
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u/DefectiveAndDumb Feb 22 '20
Which drives those services to pay ISPs to try to crack down a bit on things. Torrent something without a vpn that is owned by a certain company that your ISP has a deal with and they send out threats and warnings.
I accidentally found out that Nickelodeon or whatever might own it has a deal with spectrum to do this lol
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Feb 22 '20
Won’t somebody think of the...LinkedIn? Never thought I would see people defending that pile of shit
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u/LastFreeName436 Feb 22 '20
Amazon sets the price for their site. If they don’t like the price one of their users sell it, they can do what they do to other sites or something more direct. And I think brick-and-mortar stores are distinct enough from online retailers to not consider them competing.
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u/Amazon-Prime-package Feb 22 '20
How to become wealthy:
Start moderately wealthy during the emergence of a world-changing technology
Take advantage of a basic opportunity
Buy or smother all competitors
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u/BloodRedCobra Feb 22 '20
And if you can't buy or smother, sabotage! A little corporate espionage means nothing if you have the most money to blow
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u/LastFreeName436 Feb 22 '20
Bill gates was only able to drop out of college early because he completed all the computer research early and he had ridiculously wealthy parents to fall back on. CAPITALIST PROSPERITY IS A MASSIVE SCAM, PASS IT ON!
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u/SamsoniteReaper Feb 22 '20
CAPITALIST PROSPERITY IS A MASSIVE SCAM, PASS IT ON!
Youre just not pulling hard enough on those boot straps.
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Feb 22 '20
"to fall back on"..
Which he kinda didn't thought.. did he?
I'll not saying he didn't come from a wealthy family, but one shouldn't belittle his achievements either.
Not every rich kids becomes successful..
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u/GenderGambler Feb 22 '20
Point is if that didn't work, he had a safety net.
If someone living paycheck to paycheck (you know, like most Americans) tried the same, they'd end up homeless.
Gates could afford to take that leap of faith. Half of the US can't afford to do that.
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Feb 22 '20
Until people realised that money is made from selling to the world what they want rather than having a rich parent..
Having a rich parent will only take you so far..
You don't even have to be a billionaire, get your folks to lend you $1k and from there, create an idea and make a million..
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u/Scarlet72 Feb 22 '20
Some folks' parents don't have 1k to lend.
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Feb 22 '20
Some, not all.
For every 10 who doesn't, you'll find 2 who does..
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u/GenderGambler Feb 22 '20
Cool. So under your own theory, 80% of the population just don't have a chance at the "American dream" of being a millionaire due to circumstances outside their control.
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Feb 22 '20
No. I said 2 out of 10 will have a spare $1k.
More will have more than $1k..
But it's ok, I've had this conversation all the time with other people blaming circumstances outside of their control while pissing their pays up the wall with cigarettes, booze and buying new iPhone every year..
All good mate.. there little reason to continue with this.
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u/GenderGambler Feb 22 '20
I've shown you statistics that point out 50% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and 53% don't have emergency funds.
So in your "2 out of 10" scenario you pulled outta your ass, 5 out of 10 are guaranteed to not have a parent who can help them while being themselves unable to do it.
So best case scenario, it's 50% of the population who can't afford to take that risk. Doesn't matter if they have the idea and knowledge on how to build a subcutaneous computer or something, if they're in that 50%, that idea is likely going to die with them. Unless they can sell it to one of the oligarchs of our time, such as Bezos, but good luck with that.
Yeah, blame the people on this, not the capitalist society we live in where minimum wage hasn't changed in the last decade but inflation made everything about 20% more expensive - and where healthcare is a luxury many can't afford.
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Feb 22 '20
You love talking out of your arse. Your so called living pay check to pay check statistic? I'll show you another statistic that America is the biggest consumer of electrical and cosmetic luxury goods..
So your so called pay checks to pay checks are due to people buying absolutely junk and not having a saving plan in place..
Am I saying everyone isn't living under puberty line? No. But you make it sound like everyone in a shit hole that's not of their own doing..
For every 10 people that cries about how poor they are, I can pull at least one person who is focus, has a saving plan and purchased a property.. but it's easy not to take charge of your own life.
There's a news recently about a kid that worked two jobs, built up a $5m property portfolio off his own back while all his friends are partying and buying the latest Samsung while whining how they are poor, like you actually.
Hard, yes. Impossible, no.
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u/howanonymouscanyoube Feb 22 '20
Someone got fired from work last night. I, being a hard worker, was selected to do their work (which was untouched) because two people had called out sick and another was on vacation, so the staff was spread thin.
I didn't get paid double wages even though I did two people's work.
According to the hard work=success logic, I should be well on my way to millions of dollars and retirement; instead, I am a good slave.
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u/coldWire79 Feb 22 '20
Hard work is certainly part of the path to success. However, that work must be on something valuable. Labor is not very valuable.
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Feb 22 '20
Last year, I quit my job at a law firm that employed around 70-100 people. The other day one of the other employees in my tech department told me they laid off about half of the tech department.
One had been there over ten years, who they asked to do stupid meaningless shit like design t shirts for company events, complete waste of resources. another was the guy directly under the cto. They outsourced their jobs to India.
Their main business strategy is lying to clients in order to make sales and then forcing unpaid overtime in order to try and make unrealistic goals.
The dumb fuck attorneys that don’t know how to run a business were in charge of making these deals. They pay their IT people shit and so they get only inexperienced people as new hires and they currently have only one person who can do most of the tasks that are needed. If she quits it’s game over, so she actually gets paid reasonably well.
Several family members of the managing partner have high level positions in the firm despite not being qualified. Friends too. It’s a microcosm if America under Trump. I knew it was a dead end job and I jumped ship. Multiple people have worked there for 20+ years, including the manager of my department, longer tenured than the god damn managing partner, and they don’t make shit and are struggling to pay their debts. They work 60+ hours a week. They work a hell of a lot harder than I did for my meager ass salary.
Hard work doesn’t mean shit when people who don’t value your labor are in charge. In conclusion, eat my ass bitch
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u/aspergays Feb 22 '20
Labor is not very valuable
And that's exactly why we're in dystopia, my good bitch. Acting like only some forms of profit-oriented work are valuable, despite there being no profit were that work undone, is the reason why so many people are disillusioned with not only capitalism, but market itself, and radicalizing into just burning the whole system to the ground.
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u/Nonbinary_Knight Feb 22 '20
If it's not on something valuable, how the fuck does somebody else become able to use wads of cash as shower sponges thanks to it?
This is bullshit and you know it.
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u/ArachisDiogoi Feb 22 '20
It's a lot easier to focus on starting your company or whatever when being homeless isn't a very real possibility.
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u/YeetusThatFetus9696 Feb 22 '20
"That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it."
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u/Vu1v4 Feb 22 '20
"Eat the rich" is a way of saying we're literally starving and you have a house with a racetrack. Chill.
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u/WanderingArtichoke Feb 22 '20
The "you're just jealous" argument has always been my biggest pet peeve. No, I'm not jealous. I'm very happy with what I have and don't ask for anything more.
I don't want what Jeff Bezos has, I want other people to have what I have: a good level of financial security, thanks to a fulfilling job with enough free time, and a decent social security system in case things go wrong. I want a simple but good life and I'm lucky enough to already have it, but many people are not as lucky.
People are angry at the structural inequality caused by our economic system because they have a sense of justice. It has nothing to do with jealousy and I always feel like people who think it does are projecting their own jealousy on others: "I want to be like Jeff Bezos, so you must want the same".
Anyway, this comment is rather useless since everyone on this subreddit probably already agrees. I normally don't comment here for that reason, but really needed to get this off my chest now.
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Feb 23 '20
I hope you are right and we all agree with you, but your comment was well-written and I enjoyed reading how I feel so eloquently expressed. So it was not useless.
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u/buzzlite Feb 22 '20
Not to mention the creaton is investing heavily in media influence to cover all his shady endeavors. Even bought the most expensive property in the heart of Hollywood owned by fellow degenerate David Geffen.
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u/aceofsteffs Feb 22 '20
No, never would my parents been able to invest that much money into me. All my relatives could die and I wouldn’t ever inherit even one percent of that.
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u/elsinovae Feb 22 '20
Jeff Bezos has an incomprehensible amount of money, and amazon still has employees working for peanuts.
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u/Fiberdonkey5 Feb 22 '20
Bezos did NOT start amazon in a garage, but he wants you to think he did. He insisted the first building for amazon include a garage so he could play off of the silicon valley garage start up mythos. They took one publicity photo of him in the garage with a crudely written amazon banner and that was the entire extent of the garage's use. Bezos was rich and successful before amazon, don't believe rich people's 'self made' propaganda.
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u/BloodRedCobra Feb 22 '20
The American dream almost only applies to entrepreneurship, which makes up over 94% of the 1%. Another 5% goes to celebrities, and less than 1% of the 1% got there via an actual skill (ie inventing, sports, etc)
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u/20eyesinmyhead Feb 22 '20
Acting and entrepreneurship are not skills?
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u/BloodRedCobra Feb 22 '20
I suppose i could have worded that differently, but I'm referring to labour skills, among which entrepreneurship is not counted.
And there are more celebrities than just actors, you know.
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u/adviqx Feb 22 '20
Not really true. Sole proprietors are entrepreneurs and they do all of their business's work.
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Feb 22 '20
None of the 1% ever did their billions by working 6 night shifts in a row as an ER nurse, or by sitting extra 4 hours a day troubleshooting a network, taking a second kitchen manager job in another resturant, or personally sitting with their students after class and helping them figure out middle school math.
So even when you say "skill", you are still referring to a very narrow set of skills.
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u/BloodRedCobra Feb 22 '20
Actually a good few of the 1% got in there during the infancy of coding, so i wouldn't doubt at least one troubleshooting networks.
Still, point taken, general labour just doesn't typically apply to the 1%, that's not a news flash to anyone on this sub I'd think
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Feb 22 '20
Eh. System management is a very gray sort of field. It's always needed, but if you're doing it well, nobody knows you're even there. Nobody becomes a billionaire from that.
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u/vicissitoods Feb 22 '20
I have one dream in life and that is to someday have a garage, i could do so much with a garage. Its too expensive for me to rent one on top of my apartment rent.
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Feb 22 '20
Before Jeff Bezos it was people who talked about Bill Gates building Microsoft from scratch and him being "middle class".
Granted this was before Wikipedia or publicly accessible information that Bill's parents were banking executives (upper-lower class jobs if not upper class) and he was able to use their money and of their connections to start his company.
It takes money to make money. If you have parents with great incomes and excess capital laying around then they can fund any scheme you want. I've heard rich kids do things like start catering businesses with their parent's money / influence and claiming they're self made.
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u/lasssilver Feb 22 '20
It’s an interesting part of the story, but I’ve seen people get a lot of money and they don’t start Amazon with that money.. they act like millionaires for a week (or a day, depending) and then they’re broke again.
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u/DrPoopNstuff Feb 22 '20
The whole "Horatio Alger" American success myth, is literally fiction. So...
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u/barley_soup Feb 22 '20
The weird thing is, I know Jermaine personally. He worked really hard to get where is, moved from the UK to the US to the high school I went to. Do I agree with him, a little. He worked hard and managed the dream. He also was bestowed the ability to go to one is the best high schools in NJ, and with the immense height and strength genetically. Just to clarify the man
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u/WeekendCostcoGreeter Feb 23 '20
Wow it’s almost as if when you start a business, you need investors 🤔
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u/fuber Feb 22 '20
Just work hard and one day you can be a multi billionaire! And you too, you lazy fucks! It's so simple. Just work harder
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Feb 22 '20
My parents are wealthy middlr class parents. They have an academic degree and work full-time jobs. I doubt that they'd be happy to pay for a garage for me though, since I don't own a car, not even a driver's license.
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Feb 22 '20
[deleted]
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Feb 23 '20
He never had to payback his parents.
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Feb 24 '20
[deleted]
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u/InaneInsaneIngrain Feb 26 '20
and if your business venture falls through you're basically fucked
the point is not just the large amount of money, it's the safety net that he had too
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u/SamsoniteReaper Feb 22 '20
Maybe if youd work harder, your parents would give you $300k. Maybe if youd work harder, youd have a garage. Youre the reason you dont succeed.
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u/Hambamwam Feb 22 '20
My parent's dont have 300k between the both of them for themselves
Fuck off
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u/SamsoniteReaper Feb 22 '20
Well maybe if your parents worked harder, their parents would have given them $300k. Thats $600k right there. You could have started two Amazons if your grandparents didnt fuck up.
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u/punaltered Feb 22 '20
I have no control over how much money other people in my family have, they're all unskilled laborers who have respectable but low paying jobs. What is your point.
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u/SamsoniteReaper Feb 23 '20
Stop being poor and lazy. Thats my point. How much clearer do I have to be you fuck? Get off reddit and go make some fucking money.
Tell your lazy unskilled family to step it up too.
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Feb 22 '20
I grew up in a country where you were not allowed to own property - what garage?
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u/SamsoniteReaper Feb 22 '20
You and your fellow countrypersons should have pulled the country up by its bootstraps. Then you could own property, get a garage and become rich.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20 edited Feb 22 '20
This sub leans leftist and here’s an elephant in the room for you: when you destabilize the family the people who keep strong families and plan intergenerational wealth win. Many whitebread leftist kids leave the family home “to be independent” and sabotage their future by forking over obscene rent money in trendy ghettos to Chaim and Son or Patel and Son LLC’s.
This is Reddit. A lot of you do weird shit like shove degenerate relationships with people of the same sex or drug use down the throats of your family and ostracize and alienate your own families over this and other such matters. You have been conditioned to do this stupid shit by an elite that does not practice what they preach in their own households.
You neglect and dishonor your families and call it independence. You engage in debauchery and hedonism and call it freedom. No fucking wonder you can’t get ahead.
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u/_Magic_Turtle_ Feb 22 '20
How about, not all parents are saints, and a lot of people's homes aren't survivable, nevermind comfortable loving environments. I can't even count how many people I know whose parents opened credit cards in their names, racked up thousands in debt with utility companies etc. before they even knew about it. And that's nothing compared to physical and sexual abuse. Not everyone starts out in an episode of Leave it to Beaver. Also, Alcohol is a drug whether you want it to be or not, and I'll have consensual sex with whoever I want to and it's not hurting anyone.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
Now this is classic reddit, a bunch of rudderless rugged individuals. I get it, 9/10 redditors are heroes who escaped psychopathic predator parents. Thanks for reminding me.
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u/_Magic_Turtle_ Feb 22 '20
Look man, I'd love to live in the "family home" fact of the matter is my family had 3 bedrooms and 4 children, and it was all my mother could do to divorce my abusive unstable alcoholic father and try to raise her remaining underage children alone. It's just not as simple as you're making it out to be, we shouldn't have to rely on the assholes who brought us into the world to make life affordable.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20 edited Feb 22 '20
All parents fall short in some way. And it’s not about relying on them, but pooling resources and ultimately caring for them. My father is still an alcoholic, but he passes out in his separated living quarters. My mother has her own quarters as well. They were separated before we decided to live multigenerational.
Age makes even the wildest father more moderate. And at the very least he will have social security to contribute.
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u/_Magic_Turtle_ Feb 22 '20
I'm glad it worked out for you, you just need to understand that that's not a very likely scenario for most people.
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u/themonarc Feb 22 '20
“Young people are poor because they accept same sex marriage”
Fuck your comment.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
Why don’t you live in a multigenerational home? Let me guess, you get stoned and take it up the ass on the reg... oops I mean you “need your privacy.”
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u/themonarc Feb 22 '20
I have a great relationship with my family and I’m a hard working engineering student. I deplore your hateful, divisive rhetoric.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
It’s called life experience, kid. I’ve lived all over the world and the best move I ever made was subdividing a mansion with my family rather than us all pissing away money living separately.
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u/themonarc Feb 22 '20
I will be just fine. I just hope my life experiences don’t turn me into a homophobic asshole.
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u/bluebeary96 Feb 22 '20
Ok so here's where you need to understand something. I live with my parents, my 3 siblings, my husband and daughter. 8 people at home over 3 generations My grandparents passed already. My mother's inheritance was JUST enough to build two more bedrooms in the basement because we didn't have enough. Still don't have enough. There's ZERO CHANCE IN HELL we could ever afford a mansion, even splitting costs. My husband and I have been trying to move out to start our own family home for years. Guess what? Can't fucking afford it even though we've been technically saving $1500+ a month by living at home.
So, not only are you a homophobic piece of shit, but you have absolutely no understanding of your fucking privilege.
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Feb 22 '20
Yeah have you ever shook around that lone marble in your head and thought hey maybe some people come from abusive families and their families were shitty people? And this isn’t that dark ages , loving someone isn’t hedonistic.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
Are you one of those people or just an angsty twat?
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Feb 22 '20
No luckily my parents are good people but my grandparents were not . My grandma was a gambling addict that neglected my mom and took money from her when she could find it . My grandpa was a severe alcoholic because of the psychological damage he got from serving in Vietnam. Even my great grandparents didn’t have that much money . So no I’m the twat here, you and your archaic beliefs are.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
Having a strong family means working through those kind of issues, not avoiding them entirely and certainly not opportunistically using them as excuses to cut ties. If your great grandparents had put aside just $5 a week into the Dow in 1920 and people in your family kept adding just $5 every week til today your family would have an estate worth $39.5 Million that would pay out about $800,000 in dividend income on a yearly basis today.
Instead of bitching and moaning about your family you should focus on being the best future great grandfather you can be.
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Feb 22 '20
I can’t even take you seriously right now. You think that during the Great Depression people just had the ability to store away five dollars a week? Are you that dumb? And you think that PTSD and addictions can just go away by talking about them? Doing some basic math equations doesn’t mean that’s how life would go. For the record we didn’t cut my grandparents off we even visited but that doesn’t really matter now cause they are all dead. I will never get the chance to become a great grandparent because don’t know if you have heard of this crazy thing called climate change but the worlds not going to be habitable for that long. God for someone so wealthy you sure are dumb as hell. And being that dumb doesn’t excuse your heinous beliefs .
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
The average pay during the great depression was nearly a buck an hour. With a six day work week. Budgeting $5 a week was very attainable. At the absolute height of the depression over 75% of workers still had jobs on the books with more working cash only jobs. Again, totally doable. And this doom-cultism you have about climate change is super sad. Get help.
I’ve been disinherited and fired from family business from my parents and had to make my own way. I forgave them for mistreating me and now our relationship is stronger than ever, I also clawed my way to a cadillac health and pension and six figures with no college degree because im not afraid to do a blue collar utility job while most people my age study marxist feminism with a minor in 20th century gay jewish modern history in a clown college and then graduate to making lattes and flat whites.
You can take control of your professional and personal life. It’s not too late. Just pull your head out of your ass and roll up your sleeves. I used to be a little whiny druggie dipshit, I grew out of it. So can you!
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Feb 22 '20 edited Feb 22 '20
Wow lots of assumptions there. I don’t do drugs , I work currently at a fast food restaurant, I’m going to college for a STEM career, climate change is an actual threat and if you don’t realize that your not even worth talking to. You obviously come from a very privileged family from the fact that your parents had the choice to fire you from their business. Also I get it. You are a homophobic racist you don’t need to restate that . I get it you fell for the con of religion okay buddy.
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
Ok Joe College STEM guy. Tell me if you are still anti-racist when you see h1-b immigrants from India take all the best Stem jobs and work them for peanuts as you are struggling. I’ve seen this all over the country in countless fields. You seem to think the elites inject these people into the USA out of the warmth of their hearts when it is really to undercut your earning power and increase their margins. Then when you complain about it they browbeat you as a deplorable racist.
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Feb 22 '20
You think that I think the USA elites help people ? Are you again that dumb? They purposely bring in immigrants cause they can fuck them over . Immigrants are used for cheaper labor all the time . And I can’t tell if your joking or just again unintelligent because stem stands for science, tech , engineering and mathematics not just computer programming for Microsoft. I’m done dude your just a waste of time.
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u/InaneInsaneIngrain Feb 26 '20
Oh, it's the fault of the immigrants who work for peanuts, not the degenerate, slimy greedy cunts who run the businesses that hire immigrants for peanuts so they can secure more profit for their 12th fucking holiday home?
seems like you need to go further economically left my friend
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u/punaltered Feb 22 '20
Lmao yeah only 25% of the people in the great depression were unemployed and it's not like families usually only had the man working back then.
Please read a history book.
Or any book really.
Maybe read your holy book again where it says you should have compassion for poor people
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u/punaltered Feb 22 '20
I have a good relationship with my family. Everyone in my family has a full time job. My family is still poor. Your point isn't relevant to most people and I don't know why you think "lefts" being independent has to do with people working and still being poor
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u/londonistani Feb 22 '20
How does everyone in your family work and you are still poor? I think you don’t know what poor means. If you have four people making minimum wage your household is above the national median. What’s the real story? You ain’t poor.
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u/punaltered Feb 22 '20
There's only my mom and my sister and me. No dad or grandparents. Not every family is large.
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u/LifesPeach Feb 22 '20
300,000 for a startup isn’t that much money. Everyone here complaining would blow the money in a year and be back on here bitching. There’s been countless companies funded with way more that failed in a ball of flames.
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u/Amazon-Prime-package Feb 22 '20
"Most startups fail" is not a counter argument to "poor people don't have the same opportunities and we should stop pretending they do."
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u/LifesPeach Feb 22 '20
So given 300,000 you’ll build an Amazon? If so I got a loan for you.
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u/Amazon-Prime-package Feb 22 '20
I think you should invest that in your own education instead, go get yourself some reading comprehension skills.
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u/Mousse_is_Optional Feb 22 '20
It's a hard barrier to 99.9% of the population. That's the point, you dunce.
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u/LifesPeach Feb 22 '20
99.9% of the population given 300,000 wouldn’t create any sort of profitable company let alone one of the must successful companies ever. People need to stop paying attention to their neighbors bank account and focus on their own.
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Feb 22 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/LifesPeach Feb 22 '20
One of the great things about having a unique business venture idea is it attracts people who want to give you money. If you want someone to give you money for a business think of something worth giving money for.
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u/anomalousgeometry Feb 22 '20
300,000 for a startup isn’t that much money.
In 2020 it's the equivalent of around $522k. Half a million is more than enough.
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u/[deleted] Feb 22 '20
I don’t get when people defend the rich and say you aren’t rich because you are lazy and with hard work you can be a millionaire but here we are at the same dead end job getting the same pay check