What do you consider to be "rich people"?

Replace 'luck' with 'eagerness to exploit others'. More accurate.

For me there are two type of rich people.
1. People with lots of money and stuff (1%)
2. People With tons of kindness or stuff like that

Being rich doesn't always have to be about have millions of items/dollars.
It can also mean people who spent millions of hours really helping people who are worse off then them. If you believe that time is money then they are rich money wise as well.

Anyone can become rich as long as you put the time into it or invent an amazing product/offer a service that everyone "needs". It was how people got rich form the time cities first started and will continue to be for as long as we till live in one spot and don't just follow around a food source.

Being rich means you have all the money you need.

How much does the average american make an year? Here, the average person makes about 8400 Euros per year but food and services are often much cheaper. For instance, a dental implant costs only about 400-500 euros while in other countries it's more expensive. Games and computer components on the other hand are another thing entirely. Not only our country is poorer than the US but electronics are actually more expensive.

Paying 60$ for a game is not only considered extravagant in my country but also very geeky (not that I care) and people more often than not pirate the games. If I am going to shell out 60$ for a game, it had better be damned good and provide lots of hours of entertainment. When you live in a country like mine, paying 60$ for a 6 hour game simply doesn't make sense. Games that are worth 60$ are RPGs like The Witcher and Skyrim, World of Warcraft (150 days /played here), Battlefield 3, Doom. Steam sales are amazing though.

I do have it better than a lot of people in my country in the sense that I could afford a high end PC a 2 years ago (at a significant sacrifice though) but I am not rich.

Finally, I simply cannot understand why people in the US with 40000$/year make protests like Occupy Wall Street. US Citizens live a lot better life than countries like mine (Eastern Europe), why is it even necessary to be RICH? Isn't a relatively comfortable life enough? Like it nor not, a large percentage of the 1% did in fact fairly earn their money and some took significant risks... John Carmack and other famous game devs come to mind.

Where I live, dental implant costs 10x as much, and this isn't even the most expensive place in USA. To make matters worse, many workplace have been cutting out dental insurance completely over the past several years. And then there's all those people who work several part-time jobs (because that's all they can get) and whose jobs typically provide no insurance whatsoever (or for that matter any other benefits).

BTW you're completely wrong about OWS. It's not about jealousy, but about being fed up of the "1%" (actually a very small fraction of 1%) using their money and power to completely dick everybody else over.

DooM_RO said:

How much does the average american make an year?

That can vary quite significantly depending on where one lives as has been touched upon in this thread numerous times. 20-30k in a rural area, 100k+ in large urban areas and everything in between. Income levels are very stratified in the us, as is the cost of living.

Finally, I simply cannot understand why people in the US with 40000$/year make protests like Occupy Wall Street.

Anyone making 40k pretty much scoffed at the occupy protests.

Like it nor not, a large percentage of the 1% did in fact fairly earn their money and some took significant risks...

You are talking about the ceo's of union busting corporations doing everything they can to screw over the very people that in doing their jobs make said businesses profitable. You're talking about bankers that more-or-less took the entire economy down with them in their thirst for more (to which our government was only glad to oblige by handing them close to a trillion 'fairly earned' tax dollars). You're talking about politicians that will happily take in millions from campaign contributions and lobbyist groups all the while proposing bills and passing laws to explicitly fuck over poor people and tax cuts to fellate themselves because why not.

You're not talking about people that crawled from the bottom of the hill powered by nothing their wits and gumption. Chances are quite high in fact that people with wealth and power came from wealth and power to begin with. With that you get your private prepatory schools in youth and automatic admittance to ivy league universities because your parents and/or grandparents are alums and you get your first job working at daddies investment firm to start the whole process over again.

John Carmack and other famous game devs come to mind.

John Carmack is not even close to being a 1%er. Hell, he's probably not even a 15%er.

I was on vacation in Thailand a couple of weeks ago. While I was there I was a millionaire! Here in Norway I'm *******ely not rich, but I have no problems making a living (currently working part time and studying).

Norway is one of (if not the) richest counties in the world, so whenever we go abroad we can consider us selves rich. Just crossing the border to our neighbours Sweden, and everything is significally cheaper.

Example: when I worked full time I had $60.000 a year income, and that was a low pay job as a security guard(!). Thing is stuff is so expensive here, so 60k isnt really that much. A cup of black coffe is $5 or $6 for example, and a 0,33l box of coke from a kiosk is the same. A Big Mac menu is $17, and a 0,5l beer in a bar is like $12.

Then, just imagine going to a land like Thailand...you *******ely feel rich.

In the end though, as long as I dont have to struggle for a living, and feel happy, I consider my self as rich.

darkreaver said:

I was on vacation in Thailand a couple of weeks ago. While I was there I was a millionaire! Here in Norway I'm *******ely not rich, but I have no problems making a living (currently working part time and studying).

Norway is one of (if not the) richest counties in the world, so whenever we go abroad we can consider us selves rich. Just crossing the border to our neighbours Sweden, and everything is significally cheaper.

Example: when I worked full time I had $60.000 a year income, and that was a low pay job as a security guard(!). Thing is stuff is so expensive here, so 60k isnt really that much. A cup of black coffe is $5 or $6 for example, and a 0,33l box of coke from a kiosk is the same. A Big Mac menu is $17, and a 0,5l beer in a bar is like $12.

Then, just imagine going to a land like Thailand...you *******ely feel rich.

In the end though, as long as I dont have to struggle for a living, and feel happy, I consider my self as rich.

Holy shit man, I kept hearing stories from friends who have family working abroad and I never believed salaries were indeed so high. 5$ for a coffee, a beer for 12$?! With 5 dollars you could probably get 4 coffees here and for 12$ stuff yourself with a nice meal for a day or get drunk.

If you had that salary here, you would probably live very well in the upper class regions of any city.

It's weird how the USA have not only incomes comparable to Norway, Luxembourgh, Switzerland etc. but also significantly cheaper retail prices. Must be due to a totally different culture of economic liberalism, enterpreneurship, competition, and -definitively- practically absent state interventionism (no compulsory medicare or pension contributions, no welfare etc.)

Living in a country (Greece) where on paper there is a pension and medicare/welfare system (or its leftovers), but very few can benefit from it (Hell, I don't even know if most social security funds or country will exist 5 years from now, let alone if and how much of a pension I will ever get!) I can see the logic behind NOT forcing people and businesses to give up on a (significant) part of their income.

I'd be very glad if I could keep the 250 Euros I am FORCED to shell out to my "pension and healthcare" fund, most of which go into paying the CURRENT pensions of OLD-TIME pensioners (who still get 4-figure pensions) and re-invest them or simply burn them as I see fit, like in the USA.

Yeah yeah I know that in countries such as Norway or Finland the system might work, but here it DOESN'T, and we'd probably all be better off with an USA-type 100% liberal model. Besides, many people in Greece are cut off the social security system ANYWAY, but because it's COMPULSORY, in addition to being cut off they ALSO keep on piling "debt" for a service they cannot use, and that's 100% bullshit.

Maes said:

It's weird how the USA have not only incomes comparable to Norway, Luxembourgh, Switzerland etc. but also significantly cheaper retail prices. Must be due to a totally different culture of economic liberalism, enterpreneurship, competition, and -definitively- practically absent state interventionism (no compulsory medicare or pension contributions, no welfare etc.)

Living in a country (Greece) where on paper there is a pension and medicare/welfare system (or its leftovers), but very few can benefit from it (Hell, I don't even know if most social security funds or country will exist 5 years from now, let alone if and how much of a pension I will ever get!) I can see the logic behind NOT forcing people and businesses to give up on a (significant) part of their income.

I'd be very glad if I could keep the 250 Euros I am FORCED to shell out to my "pension and healthcare" fund, most of which go into paying the CURRENT pensions of OLD-TIME pensioners (who still get 4-figure pensions) and re-invest them or simply burn them as I see fit, like in the USA.

Yeah yeah I know that in countries such as Norway or Finland the system might work, but here it DOESN'T, and we'd probably all be better off with an USA-type 100% liberal model. Besides, many people in Greece are cut off the social security system ANYWAY, but because it's COMPULSORY, in addition to being cut off they ALSO keep on piling "debt" for a service they cannot use, and that's 100% bullshit.

I can kind of relate, because Iceland is kind of in a bit of a similar (though probably not as bad as you describe it) situation. We also have a government that taxes and forces us to maintain some kind of a "common fund" that is suppose to help everyone as they get old, but in practice the state often just ends up taking most of the money so it can use it for something else instead, and as a result the old get to eat shit and be treated like shit as well.

Some of the government run retirement homes are almost run like prisons, with some old people literally not being allowed to leave because the people that are suppose to "take care of them" just view them as a waste of tax money and thus do as much as they can to spend as little on them as possible. This means throwing them into a corner somewhere where nobody can see them and then try to hide them from the rest of society at as little cost to the government as possible.

I share your believe that while big government may work in countries like Sweden or Norway, in Iceland our government is simply too corrupt and/or stupid for it to work.

hardcore_gamer said:

I share your believe that while big government may work in countries like Sweden or Norway, in Iceland our government is simply too corrupt and/or stupid for it to work.

Which is weird, because as a country/people/model you probably have much more in common with Finland/Sweden/Denmark/Norway. But once a country goes bankrupt (either openly or covertly under creative names such as "debt restructuring") and loses control of its finances, anything goes, and "It couldn't happen here, could it?" scenarios often get proven tragically wrong.