Do you think those people are Wal-Mart cashiers without a high school degree?
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Wiped-Out Hedge Fund Manager Confessed His Losses on YouTube
- Thread starter DJwest
- Start date
Do you think those people are Wal-Mart cashiers without a high school degree?
See, now you're not wanting to engage the argument. You brought up average American savings, so you have to discuss why they aren't saving. I asked why and you said, "Oh, sounds easy!" now you're here. I think you just want a gotcha moment.
The starting point for this was someone saying that it's "pretty easy to become [a] millionaire". I pointed out that even in the top 10% of savers the median is less than a fifth of $1m, and you're here talking about cashiers at Wal-Mart getting high school diplomas.
I'm not here to educate you on the injustices of capitalism and what it does to the working and middle class. Do some reading.
What a thread of people talking over each other.
As for the actual topic: hope he's okay, but easy come easy go in the financial game, especially with high risk practices that look "foolproof" on paper.
I think there's a real chance some people have come into financial ruin because of this hedge fund, especially if they do indeed owe the lenders to it. Despite how much cash or assets some of them can liquidate, huge losses are always psychologically destructive on fragile human minds.
And the markets as they are being so volatile, I can only expect there to be many more widespread consequences than just "rich people losing what they deserve to lose" lol. I think when the ultra wealthy start panicking, everyone under them will feel it (they start pulling or hoarding money even more and cause crazy economic reactions across other eocnomic groups).
I don't think it's that helpful to be bitter. It's personally not very productive. Do your best in this game to survive and fight for better measures to regulate equality at the same time, and if you do come to abundance, make sure you give back too.
As for the actual topic: hope he's okay, but easy come easy go in the financial game, especially with high risk practices that look "foolproof" on paper.
I think there's a real chance some people have come into financial ruin because of this hedge fund, especially if they do indeed owe the lenders to it. Despite how much cash or assets some of them can liquidate, huge losses are always psychologically destructive on fragile human minds.
And the markets as they are being so volatile, I can only expect there to be many more widespread consequences than just "rich people losing what they deserve to lose" lol. I think when the ultra wealthy start panicking, everyone under them will feel it (they start pulling or hoarding money even more and cause crazy economic reactions across other eocnomic groups).
I don't think it's that helpful to be bitter. It's personally not very productive. Do your best in this game to survive and fight for better measures to regulate equality at the same time, and if you do come to abundance, make sure you give back too.
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Generally I've thought that this thread has gone way too far with the anti-capitalism, but this phrasing still made me want to punch my monitor. I spent two years applying literally everywhere ("No skills required, do you have hands? That's cool then, come work for us. Even if you've lost your arms, that's still probably fine, we're very desperate") before I got a job. My education was in STEM.
"Find work", oh my god.
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You are just trying to avoid any logical discussion, you are the one out of touch for saying everyone should give up just because inequality exist.
Do you know the average IQ for American? Be better than average, it is not a lot to ask for.
If you are aware of American's spending problem; take a look at S&P 500, take a look at average house price in the past 30 years, then you will know why some people are better at accumulating wealths. We have so many successful immigrant that start with nothing and ended in middle class within 2 generations. It should be self evidence that it is possible to climb up.
Dude empathizes with buying $50 pancakes and can't empathize with people who can't "find work". It's all it is.
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I'm surprised that people are actually still engaging him and his "look I'm rich!" schtick
But then again, I'm also amazed that there's actually a rich people defense force. The "American Dream" is an incredibly toxic form of Capitalism for everyone who doesn't want to live by exploiting other people.
I couldn't give two shits about that overstuffed suit. He wants to gain pity points on YouTube for 'losing it all' and downgrading from yaht parties to sailboat parties.
That same fucker and his ilk have no problems lobbying to pass laws that gut safety nets, social programs, and give them fatter tax breaks all while sneering at the ''middle-class''' and low income people they negativity affect.
There are people who are in his situation every damn day and it's for shit like medical bills, car accidents and sudden job loss. I'll save my empathy for those people.
He can go fuck off. Those rats always rebound.
I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about his clients.
Will Bernie be one of the rich eaten? He owns multiple houses, is worth multiple millions, makes over $200k a year and has an amazing pension.
It's tougher for most but not unobtainable. That's just being defeatist and lazy. Sorry.
Many of these hedge fund managers weren't born with silver spoons. They worked their asses off in high school to get into good colleges, then worked 100-120 hour weeks for years as investment bankers before finally getting that hedge fund offer. They didn't play video games or dick around on the Internet when they were teens, they studied.
Obviously this isn't true for everyone. Many get born into that life. But many also don't. It's possible for the masses to attain, it just requires hard work and sacrifice.
Are you going into ever "rich person" thread and just concern trolling why poor people are poor?
Not that I don't understand, this thread is kinda insane with the amount of people who just think "well off people = lazy silver spoons" and stuff, but still.
wtf? This is a complete joke. You have to be aware that the idea of a rags-to-riches hedge fund manager is almost a complete fantasy. And fetishizing the rich as a moral class is pretty pathetic as well. Everybody drinks and dicks around in college. Brett Kavanaugh has shown that many of them commit sexual assault as well and just get away with it.
You phrase it like I'm Mr. Burns.
How do you empathize with buying $50 pancakes? It's $50. That's 10 bananas.
Finding work is a difficult or easy thing. It depends on your skill set and how you sell yourself. I'm sure there are people out there applying to every job they can and not getting a call, but then you got to ask why that is.
They wouldn't shed a tear for me
There's a certain point where you have more wealth than you need to live in great comfort yet you continue to accumulate as much wealth as possible, with the goal of having unfathomable numbers. And all that wealth redistribution comes at the loss and short-changing of millions working just as hard to survive.
Capitalism encourages the exploitation of the working class.
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I did say that many of them do get a free ride into that life.
...but many also don't, and just worked their asses off while the rest of us were playing video games in high school.
Drinking and dicking around once they got into a target university, sure. The hard work came before getting into that school. And then afterward when they were hating their lives as analysts on Wall Street. Hedge fund gigs aren't exactly easy to come by, they're the enviable relief from an otherwise shitty life working in finance.
The political class in the US made it so it's an amazingly lucrative career, even though practically all people would agree that they're not terribly good at their job.
Also, that's a good way to guarantee that we'll be ruled by rich people, even if we all decide to not vote for them.
That's more of a systemic problem than something you can put at someone's feet, but I'm not against giving shit to every single elected official who is not actively working to rectify this.
Can you explain how trading options is short changing your average low wage worker?
I donate to local homeless shelters and to foodbanks. How monstrous of me. I also take money from legit rich people so I am Robin Hood.
I guess this is where the difference in viewpoints is for me, then. I don't see how anyone could be seeking stability going with options instead of index funds or similar. Get rich quick schemes are notoriously not stable.
It doesn't directly, but this type of trading it not a productive economic activity, you don't really generate money, or anything for that matter, you get it (if you succeed that is) from someone else. And while it's not directly from low wage workers, on the macro level, increased profits for the financial sector has to be siphoned from the productive parts of the economy. The argument for that is "sure, we take money from people who actually make shit but we help everyone", and there's some truth to that when it comes to the financial sector in general, but most certainly not for hedge fund managers like this one, whose mission is to make rich people richer.
Almost nothing is productive economic activity as there isn't unlimited money. If your company is making a lot of profits then another in that field is making less. You may as well consolidate all businesses into a megacorp to get rid of the idea of people not getting what they need.
That's not the same.
If I buy a widget from someone, I get the widget which I need and the they get money. That's not a zero sum transaction, in fact, it should be that both of us got what we wanted/needed (it's obviously not always a perfect win-win, but it's also almost never "I win you lose" type of situation).
When a hedge fund makes money, who is on the other side of that transaction and how are they benefiting from it?
His clients make money, which is the "widget" they want. Money.
Me buying an iPhone is not a productive economic activity. It's just something I want. It's not saving humanity or ending starvation. I just get to load my memes faster.
You don't have to ask why that it is. We know why it is. Not that you would understand of course, you're too busy eating a $5 banana.
Where is that money coming from?
By every normal definition of the term, selling an iPhone is a productive activity. But I don't want to get too much into semantics here, do you really don't see a difference between buying goods and doing day trading?
I would gladly go into more detail here if you want.
Neither are helping to combat inequality, so no, I don't see the difference as it pertains to the discussion at hand.
Neither are meant to combat it and it's not the argument being made here.
So here's the macro 101 explanation of it. I just want to make we're on the same page in terms of terminology, because I don't think we were before -
In simple terms, productive economic activity is one that also grows the entire economy, wherein in unproductive one, it's just money changes hands and total pie which is the economy doesn't grow.
Now, individually, both types of activities can increase or decrease inequality, but on the macro level, if you have a large sector of the economy that doesn't generate any wealth but get a lot of money, it has to get it from somewhere, and in the case of the financial sector, it's mostly from people who make less than the median income of a bank exec.
This is also backed up by data.
I don't see how companies getting money for products is somehow different from "getting it from somewhere" in the financial sector. Money is changing hands either way. Difference is that in finance, money is the actual product.
A semester of school here cost about $18,000 (not even a good school), a "good, great even" paying job here 30-40k a year before taxes. Despite what you seem to think all poor people are not just coal miners who refuse to get free training and education for 100K+ jobs
You don't see the different between you selling me a product you made and us making a bet about the Michigan Ohio State game?
One transaction is productive, one isn't.
It's not everything, it's not the only distinction that matters, but it's still an important one, and FWIW, kinda a basic one when talking about macroeconomics.
Why is it different, because you (or whoever compiled your data) decided that money itself is not a valid "product" to seek?
I understand now your definition of "productive," but I fail to see what being "productive" has to do with ending inequality in the United States, which was the topic that was being discussed here.
I could nail a piece of plywood to a keyboard and sell it, and it'd then be "productive" by definition. Who gives a shit? I spend $750 on a new iPhone to replace my current, perfectly adequate iPhone because I want a new iPhone. Who gives a shit? A hedge fund manager seeks to increase his rate of return to generate wealth for his clients...
I didn't came up with any of that, it's a basic macroeconomic definition.
That distinction is important because it allows you talk about very complex systems in simpler terms, which you know, is how most terminology works.
And people "give a shit" because such activities have quite a different impact on the economy. Individually there is obviously a lot of difference in types and utility, but productive economic activities grows the economy, so they can at least in theory help everyone. Non productive economic activities are a zero sum game, by their very definition every dollar someone made is a dollar someone had to lose.
This is just a framework that I thought could help explain the issue and differences between a hedge fund and a factory, but we don't have to, we can approach it on the micro level if you prefer.
Just seems like a bunch of alphabet soup to me. I get that it's the standard definition in academia. It just seems very pigeonholed in what it decides is important. When Apple earns my $750, it could be argued that Google is also losing that same $750. There's an opportunity cost for everything. You seem dead set on painting the financial sector as this cancerous thing that doesn't help anyone, but my perspective is that if my money isn't directly going towards something that helps reduce inequality, it's equally as frivolous. I don't really have a right to complain about wealthier people doing the same frivolous shit with their money just because they have more of it than I do.
Why don't we just print more money, that's gonna boost the economy great!
This is a really weird way of looking at things (and not the normal way people use the term opportunity cost, but whatever, let's not get bogged further with terminology). You honestly don't see the difference between productive and unproductive economic activities?
But you know what, you don't want to do it on macro, let's go micro, what this hedge fund aimed to do was to get rich people richer, and to give them income without them having to work. I think this is bad. I'm sorry that I have to resort loaded and poorly defined terms, but I donno, if I can't use economics terminology or frameworks I'm kinda left with this.
Really man, you don't see any difference between me buying a product and this?
I really don't. Both are frivolous activities that don't need to happen. I don't need half the shit I buy. Rich guy with money in a hedge fund doesn't need more money. We're both doing meaningless shit that only helps ourselves and doesn't combat income inequality on any meaningful level.
It's a pretty decent ad absurdum illustration to why money isn't a product.
But that's the thing, our laws and institutions not only allow for such things to exist, it encourage them. And seeing that we agree that this is, for lack of a better term, "not good", maybe we can do something about it.
That I'm on board with. Demonizing wealthy people for acting in their own best interest within the confines of the law, not so much. I don't hate this hedge fund manager for being a hedge fund manager. I'd be a damn hedge fund manager myself if I could. Even with my meager access to capital, I do invest myself, because I'd be an idiot not to.
I generally don't hate anyone personally for trying make money in a country like the US, the difference in outcomes and quality of life is so dramatic that on a moral level, most things can be justified. So I'm definitely in the hate the game camp, not the player. But I do hate the game, and I think it's important to recognize that it's not something that came about "naturally" and it's important not buy into the idea that any change to the current system is an unfair intervention in the natural order.
I mean, look at hedging. Hedging is important, productive companies use it to protect themselves against external shocks that they can't control or easily predict But we built that system in such way that allowed some actors to come in and make money out of nothing (but again, more accurately, it allowed them to siphon money out of the system without contributing anything to it). We can patch it, we have done it many times, fuck, as recently as 2008 we pretty much banned naked short selling.
Or at the very fucking least, we can stop taxing investment income at a lower rate than labor.
p.s.
One thing I will say to the credit of hedge funds is that most of them are terrible at doing their shitty job. On a macro level, one can argue (and quite a few people did) that hedge funds are scamming money from rich people, and I guess that's not the worst thing in the world.