On 3/28/2011 10:10 AM, Ignoramus7104 wrote:
On 2011-03-28, Steve wrote:

"Jim wrote in message
...
On Mar 28, 9:20 am, wrote:
...

The rich are the most attentive to the loopholes congress creates to
dodge their own taxes.

And rich people didn't get rich by being stupid. Some attain richness as a
temporary thing, and then blow it. As in some lottery winners, and some
business successes. A friend of mine in Las Vegas was a HUGE success in the
construction boom ten to twenty years ago. Had all the toys. Three
Hummers, fantastic infinity pool, lodge (defined as 10,000 sf cabin) in the
woods of Utah. Now, he's back to a 2500 sf house and used cars dodging
creditors.

Point is, rich people as you say, pay attention to the pennies, and the
dollars just take care of themselves.

It is possible that your friend never was truly rich, he just had a
big balance sheet.

i


Most people don't understand what it means to be rich in America. They
think if you have a few million you're rich. If you're worth 25 million
or so you're really rich. But the people who make up the rich are really
those 300,000 people at the top of the pyramid. They make up about 1% of
the population. Their wealth is estimated to be equal to that held by
150 million families. Their combined wealth is so much that they have
unbelievable political influence, which explains why they get so many
tax loopholes just for them.

More than half of these people never earned a dime of their wealth. For
them it's all inherited. Then you have the nuvo rich who have made
millions and billions by getting lucky in business. People like Bill
Gates and Paul Allen come to mind. Also numerous hedge fund managers and
a few entertainers get filthy rich too. But it's only 300,000 people.
Those are the real rich. Everybody else is not even close and they are
subject to the ups and downs of life that can cause them to lose
everything. But you don't hear of the 1% losing everything. That's
nearly impossible to do.

So when bandying around the term rich it's good to understand who you
really mean. The well off millionaire you know in your local area
probably isn't really rich. If he was he'd live in Beverly Hills or the
Hamptons. In America these days rich means really, really, really, rich.
Anything less than hundreds of millions doesn't even cut it.

Hawke