The single biggest difference between rich and middle class people
JoeUser Forums
There is an excellent book called Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money--That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not!
I highly recommend it to people. In many discussions on-line, it becomes really apparent that most people don't really understand money. They know what it does but they have no idea how it works, where it comes from, and how to make more of it.
Conceptually, it's straight forward: If I have $1 and my goal is to have more than $1 then I need to invest it in things that will generate a greater than 1.0 rate of return.
Most people make money by converting time into money -- they trade their labor for money. It is what they do with that money that determines how wealthy they are going to be.
If the average human being takes $1 and makes $1 back that means there are lots of people who take $1 and will turn it into $.50 just as there are people who can take that $1 and turn it into $2.
People who advocate higher taxes on "the rich" usually don't have much of an understanding of money. The government, at its best, will take $1 and consume it with it being transferred somewhere else. So it gets $1 in and $1 out.
That means if it is taking capital from people who take $1 and can turn it into $2 they are, in effect, decreasing the overall wealth of society. Society never realizes this is happening because they don't know what they're missing.
Of course, prior to the rise of republican government and private property rights in the 18th century, the wealth of world societies grew extremely slowly because tyrannical governments (kings, queens, emperors, whatever) ultimately controlled all the capital they could get their hands on.
Soviet Russia was the best modern example where the state had, by definition, all the capital thus its society was effectively in suspended animation while the west profited by having those who could take $1 and turn it into $2 have as much freedom as possible.
Online, you regularly see people argue that the government can take $1 from "the rich" and give it to the "needy" but that should only be done as a last resort and only short term since, by definition, the chronically poor are people who will take $1 and turn it into less than $1. They are, literally, consumers. Over the past few decades, we have increasingly become a society of consumers as most people know. But we have all still managed to benefit because thanks to technology and economic freedom, there are people who take $1 and turn it into $1000 out there.
Nothing threatens the progress our society makes, however, than when people stop realizing how all this progress occurs. It's not government that does that but free men and women. Citizens.
Governments must tax its citizens to provide basic services, security, and law enforcement. When the government moves beyond this, we all ultimately suffer because every dollar taken from citizens is a dollar that is no longer available to be invested in one form or other.
That is why, as a society overall, we are better off with the smallest government we can absolutely tolerate.
Stardock Forums
PolMach Forums
But I don't usually use wiki for everything after reading some of the comp sci stuff on there