Charles Whelan
Former correspondent for The Economist, columnist for leading American publications, author of Naked Statistics
When Bill Gates had children, he, like many, realized that the house was too small. In 1997, the software mogul moved into a $ 100 million mansion; shortly thereafter, the house had to be slightly modified. The mansion with an area of more than 11 thousand square meters has a cinema for twenty seats, a hall for receiving guests, parking for twenty-eight cars, a covered area with a trampoline and, of course, a variety of computer gadgets such as telephones that ring only when the person who is called, is nearby. But this house was not big enough either. According to documents filed with the Medina, Washington Zoning Commission, Mr. Gates and his wife would like to add another bedroom and equip additional areas for children to play and study.
Based on how Bill Gates approaches changing his home, one could draw a number of different conclusions, but one of them is quite obvious: he lives very, very well. If you have about $ 50 billion, the world becomes a terrific playground. This raises other, more important questions: why do some people have indoor trampolines and private jets, while others have to sleep in toilets at bus stations? How is it that roughly 13 percent of Americans are poor, and this situation can certainly be considered some progress from the recent peak of 15 percent in 1993, albeit not very noticeable compared to any year in the 1970 decade. NS? At the same time, one in five American children and - a staggering figure! - 35 percent of black children live in poverty. Of course, America is one of the rich countries, but today, at the dawn of the third millennium, a huge part of the world's population - about three billion people - lives in extreme poverty.
Economists have studied poverty and income inequality for many years. They want to understand who the poor are, why they are poor and whether their situation can be changed. Any discussion about why Bill Gates is immeasurably richer than men and women who are forced to sleep on heating mains must begin with an examination of a concept economists call human capital. Human capital is the sum of knowledge and skills embodied in a particular person: his education, intelligence, charisma, creativity, work experience, entrepreneurial spirit, even the ability to throw a baseball forcefully and accurately. This is what you will be left with if you suddenly lose all your assets - work, money, home, property - and find yourself on the street in one shirt. How would Bill Gates feel in such a situation? Yes very good. Even if all of his wealth were confiscated, there would be plenty of companies willing to hire him as a consultant, board member, CEO, or motivational speaker. (When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he founded, he created Pixar; later Apple invited him to return.) How would Tiger Woods feel? Also very good. If someone had lent him a golf club, he would have won a tournament by the next weekend.
What about Bubba, the kid who dropped out of school in the tenth grade, and also a meth addict? That would have been very difficult for him. It's all about human capital, and Bubba's is small. (Curiously, some very wealthy people, like the Sultan of Brunei, might not have succeeded either; the sultan is rich only because his country has huge oil reserves.) The labor market is no different from any other market: some talents are used on it is in great demand than others. The more unique the set of knowledge and skills, the more generously their owner will be paid. Alex Rodriguez will make $ 275 million in ten years of playing baseball for the New York Yankees because he can hit a ball that travels at 150 kilometers per hour harder and more accurately than the vast majority of people. He helps his team to win on the field, which in turn helps them to build stadiums, sell various related products and make huge profits from broadcasting matches on television. In fact, no one on our planet can perform this task better than Rodriguez.
As with other aspects of the market economy, the cost of a certain skill is not related to its social value, it is related only to its lack. I once interviewed Robert Solow, the 1987 Nobel laureate in economics and a famous baseball fan. I asked Robert if he was annoyed by the fact that winning a prestigious science award made him less money than Roger Clemens, then a Red Sox pitcher, made in a single season. “Not at all,” Solow told me. "There are many good economists in the world, but only Roger Clemens." Here's a prime example of how economists think.
Who in the United States is living richly, or at least comfortably? Programmers, hand surgeons, nuclear engineers, writers, accountants, bankers, university professors. Sometimes these people are naturally talented, but more often they simply acquired their skills through specialized training. In other words, at one time they made significant investments in their human capital. As with any type of investment, whether it is building a factory or buying bonds, money invested in human capital today will bring profit in the future. And a very good profit, believe me. A college education is estimated to have a roughly 10 percent return on investment, which means that if you invested in college today, you can expect to get that amount back, plus about 10 percent a year in higher earnings. ... Few on Wall Street invest more profitably, especially systematically.
Human capital is a kind of economic passport, in some cases literally. In the late 1980s, as a senior student, I met a young Palestinian named Gamal Abuali. Gamal's family, who lived in Kuwait, insisted that his son receive his diploma in three years instead of four. Obviously, this required additional classes from the guy every semester, and even in the summer, which at that time seemed quite extreme to me. And what about without internship and foreign studies? How can you not go skiing in Colorado in winter? Once I had lunch with Gamal's father - and he explained to me that life in Palestine is extremely unstable. Mr. Abuali was an accountant; he could do this business in almost any country in the world, and, as he explained to me, this is exactly what can happen to him. Before moving to Kuwait, their family lived in Canada; in another five years, they could be in a different place, he said.
Gamal studied at the Faculty of Engineering; engineering is also a versatile professional skill. The sooner Gamal received his diploma, his father insisted, the more secure his position would be. The diploma will allow the son not only to earn a living, but also to find his own home. In some developed countries, the right to immigration is based on skills and education, that is, on human capital.
I must say, the words of Mr. Abuali turned out to be surprisingly prophetic. After Saddam Hussein's retreat from Kuwait in 1990, most of the Palestinians living in that country, including the Gamal family, were expelled from Kuwait because the Kuwaiti authorities believed that the Palestinians sympathized with the Iraqi aggressors. One day, Abuali's daughter brought him the first edition of this book. After reading the previous section, he exclaimed: "You see, I was right!"
Publisher "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", Moscow, 2017, per. O. Bear
Take a traditional Hollywood movie script. The main character is a brave altruist who wants to help the whole world. He has an inheritance, which the hero decided to distribute to all the poor by creating a charity fund. The hero is good, the poor are happy and grateful, but the rich people, who are evil swindlers, do not agree with the fact that the usual order of things will be violated.
Of course, it is the rich people who create charitable foundations, but they donate only a certain amount, without giving away all their fortune. Thus, they maintain the usual order in the world: rich people pay off from the faceless crowd for general peace and muffling of general envy.
Why do charitable foundations and donations exist, but the poor are not diminishing?
Why is the modern film industry promoting the old idea of the world: the poor are good and deprived, and the rich are bad and greedy?
Why is this world not changing?
Donations are a bridge between two polar worlds. The rich supposedly owe the poor because they are more fortunate or have achieved more. Don't you feel that this principle is perverted?
Let's use the fishing example. Three people by the river. One has a full outfit and a lot of experience under his belt. He will surely catch a lot of fish, because, besides relying on luck, he still knows and knows a lot. Even if he is unlucky now, the fisherman will take note of his mistake and next time catch even more fish than usual.
The second person has a simple fishing rod and some experience from his father. For example, his father once told him that all these sophisticated fishing rods cost nothing and fishing in fact is not tricky, there is nothing complicated in it, only do not deviate from your grandfather's principles and do as your ancestors said. It doesn't matter that there has been no bite in this place for 10 years, you sit and fish, because that is what the forefathers taught. This second fisherman will only grin when the first, with his expensive but completely useless tackle, looks for a new fishing spot. The second fisherman hopes for God and luck. There will be a bite - there will be food. There will be no bite, well, lucky next time.
When such freeloaders attack in numbers, accusing the fisherman of inhumanity, then he has to defend his interests and the interests of his children. The poor think: after all, he has so many fish, he is so rich and sits on an expensive boat and has already turned up his nose, is arrogant.
In an amicable way, a poor man may ask for a fish one day when he is in absolute need. And he should thank the other for the help. And then ask how he catches his fish. After all, than to ask and humiliate yourself, swimming with envy and hatred of others, you can learn to fish yourself. Even if there is no fishing rod, you can either borrow it or make it yourself. When a person wants to do something, there are always opportunities..
And with a little effort, practice, experience - each day will have its own piece of bread. True, for this you need to do something.
You can also act like a second fisherman. Despise the poor, who come in droves and demand alms from you, but at the same time envy the rich. Because they are engaged in nonsense, and their boats are steeper, and the catch is greater. The philosophy of the second fisherman-worker: honestly work for a piece of bread and not stick out, so that they would not be laughed at. You can follow these principles, in the end, so to live more calmly and less demand.
Looking at the dominance of the river by such neighbors, the first fisherman will surely seem to the other greedy. And sometimes it doesn't seem like it, because those who were once poor and used to take and take everything, only now not from their kind, into whose ranks he stepped, also fall into the ranks of such fishermen. There are also fishermen who come from the second stratum of hard workers. These retain their anger and contempt. And some fishermen are simply embittered by so much gray mass around.
Even if it seems to you that fate did the wrong thing with you, you can always ask others for help. But you need to realize that no one will constantly stretch out your hand to you. People have their own worries too. See how someone else's fishing rod works. You will be surprised how the people adapt: nets, tackle, various types of fishing rods ... It may seem that there are few fish, the river is shallow, and there are many fishermen. But everyone finds their place, catches their fish with their own tackle and follows one very important rule: let the small fish go back into the river.
Thus, you can find your niche. Yes, at least attach a fishing line to a branch, if there is no fishing rod, just start with something and the result will be. Not immediately, but it will be! And then do not look at the gray mass, do not be afraid to go against the current, fall and rise again, if you do not want to vegetate all your life, if you strive for creativity and solid ground under your feet.
And when you achieve results, share your experience with others. Don't turn your back on dummies, laugh at their awkward attempts, or fear for your niche.
Man is not a vulture, not a scavenger, not a predator, not a reptile. Man is able to create. That's all it takes to change the world.
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It is believed that money sticks to money… Don't you think this statement is a bit strange? It seems to me that this "excuse" was invented by the poor, because this way they can once again justify themselves ... Well, I have no money, so it doesn't appear anymore ... But they themselves continue to lie on the couch ...
But the rich also use this expression to hide important information on receiving and increasing money from prying eyes ... After all, it is much easier to shrug it off than to explain why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer ...
In my opinion, money does not stick, but it comes exactly where there is already money for only one simple reason: People who have money know how to make it again and again. They just know certain rules that most people don't.
Why is it so much easier for a rich person to make a million than for a poor person 10,000 rubles? The answer is simple, because a rich man knows how to make millions. The key word here is "HOW". So why don't the poor have this information? It's simple: important information is always worth something ...
But how does the poor man reason? Since he wants to take money from me, it means he just wants to make money on me ... And the fact that the offered information can teach him "HOW" to earn much more than he will pay at the moment, he absolutely does not think about it ...
Have you ever noticed the conversations of the rich? When one person tells another that he has something valuable for the other, including important information, the rich one always asks one question: “HOW MUCH? "
And a poor person in such situations often asks: “Where can I get it? How to download? And from whom to take? »Do you feel the difference? The rich is willing to pay right away and rid himself of hemorrhoids by searching. And the poor want to save money and burden themselves with problems in finding this information.
An excerpt from the book "Naked Economy"
Charles Whelan's Naked Economy is published by Mann, Ivanov and Ferber, a popular exposition of what the market is, how the US Federal Reserve System works, and what does the state have to do with it. Afisha Daily publishes an excerpt from Chapter 6, "Productivity and Human Capital." 
When Bill Gates had children, he, like many, realized that the house was too small. In 1997, the software mogul moved into a $ 100 million mansion; shortly thereafter, the house had to be slightly modified. The mansion with an area of more than 11 thousand square meters has a cinema for twenty seats, a hall for receiving guests, parking for twenty-eight cars, a covered area with a trampoline and, of course, a variety of computer gadgets such as telephones that ring only when the person who is called, is nearby. But this house was not big enough either. According to documents filed with the Medina, Washington Zoning Commission, Mr. Gates and his wife would like to add another bedroom and equip additional areas for children to play and study.
Based on how Bill Gates approaches changing his home, one could draw a number of different conclusions, but one of them is quite obvious: he lives very, very well. If you have about $ 50 billion, the world becomes a terrific playground. This raises other, more important questions: why do some people have indoor trampolines and private jets, while others have to sleep in toilets at bus stations? How is it that roughly 13 percent of Americans are poor, and this situation can certainly be considered some progress from the recent peak of 15 percent in 1993, albeit not very noticeable compared to any year in the 1970 decade. NS? At the same time, one in five American children and - a staggering figure! - 35 percent of black children live in poverty. Of course, America is one of the rich countries, but today, at the dawn of the third millennium, a huge part of the world's population - about three billion people - lives in extreme poverty.
Economists have studied poverty and income inequality for many years. They want to understand who the poor are, why they are poor and whether their situation can be changed. Any discussion about why Bill Gates is immeasurably richer than men and women who are forced to sleep on heating mains must begin with an examination of a concept economists call human capital. Human capital is the sum of knowledge and skills embodied in a particular person: his education, intelligence, charisma, creativity, work experience, entrepreneurial spirit, even the ability to throw a baseball forcefully and accurately. This is what you will be left with if you suddenly lose all your assets - work, money, home, property - and find yourself on the street in one shirt. How would Bill Gates feel in such a situation? Yes very good. Even if all of his wealth were confiscated, there would be plenty of companies willing to hire him as a consultant, board member, CEO, or motivational speaker. (When Steve Jobs was fired from Apple, the company he founded, he created Pixar; later Apple invited him to return.) How would Tiger Woods feel? Also very good. If someone had lent him a golf club, he would have won a tournament by the next weekend.
What about Bubba, the kid who dropped out of school in the tenth grade, and also a meth addict? That would have been very difficult for him. It's all about human capital, and Bubba's is small. (Curiously, some very wealthy people, like the Sultan of Brunei, might not have succeeded either; the sultan is rich only because his country has huge oil reserves.) The labor market is no different from any other market: some talents are used on it is in great demand than others. The more unique the set of knowledge and skills, the more generously their owner will be paid. Alex Rodriguez will make $ 275 million in ten years of playing baseball for the New York Yankees because he can hit a ball that travels at 150 kilometers per hour harder and more accurately than the vast majority of people. He helps his team to win on the field, which in turn helps them to build stadiums, sell various related products and make huge profits from broadcasting matches on television. In fact, no one on our planet can perform this task better than Rodriguez.
As with other aspects of the market economy, the cost of a certain skill is not related to its social value, it is related only to its lack. I once interviewed Robert Solow, the 1987 Nobel laureate in economics and a famous baseball fan. I asked Robert if he was annoyed by the fact that winning a prestigious science award made him less money than Roger Clemens, then a Red Sox pitcher, made in a single season. “Not at all,” Solow told me. "There are many good economists in the world, but only Roger Clemens." Here's a prime example of how economists think.
Who in the United States is living richly, or at least comfortably? Programmers, hand surgeons, nuclear engineers, writers, accountants, bankers, university professors. Sometimes these people are naturally talented, but more often they simply acquired their skills through specialized training. In other words, at one time they made significant investments in their human capital. As with any type of investment, whether it is building a factory or buying bonds, money invested in human capital today will bring profit in the future. And a very good profit, believe me. A college education is estimated to have a roughly 10 percent return on investment, which means that if you invested in college today, you can expect to get that amount back, plus about 10 percent a year in higher earnings. ... Few on Wall Street invest more profitably, especially systematically.
Human capital is a kind of economic passport, in some cases literally. In the late 1980s, as a senior student, I met a young Palestinian named Gamal Abuali. Gamal's family, who lived in Kuwait, insisted that his son receive his diploma in three years instead of four. Obviously, this required additional classes from the guy every semester, and even in the summer, which at that time seemed quite extreme to me. And what about without internship and foreign studies? How can you not go skiing in Colorado in winter? Once I had lunch with Gamal's father - and he explained to me that life in Palestine is extremely unstable. Mr. Abuali was an accountant; he could do this business in almost any country in the world, and, as he explained to me, this is exactly what can happen to him. Before moving to Kuwait, their family lived in Canada; in another five years, they could be in a different place, he said.
Gamal studied at the Faculty of Engineering; engineering is also a versatile professional skill. The sooner Gamal received his diploma, his father insisted, the more secure his position would be. The diploma will allow the son not only to earn a living, but also to find his own home. In some developed countries, the right to immigration is based on skills and education, that is, on human capital.
I must say, the words of Mr. Abuali turned out to be surprisingly prophetic. After Saddam Hussein's retreat from Kuwait in 1990, most of the Palestinians living in that country, including the Gamal family, were expelled from Kuwait because the Kuwaiti authorities believed that the Palestinians sympathized with the Iraqi aggressors. One day, Abuali's daughter brought him the first edition of this book. After reading the previous section, he exclaimed: "You see, I was right!"
Publishing house "Mann, Ivanov and Ferber", Moscow, 2017, per. O. Bear
Why is this happening: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer ?! This is not-fair-ved-li-wooo !!!
It was like this before and it will always be like this. You will, of course, say that this is a great injustice. And you will be ... wrong. Why? Because the concept of "justice" was invented by weak and poor people and exists exclusively for them.
The unwritten law: a strong man does not need justice - he can get whatever he wants; justice is needed by the weak.
No matter how offensive or offensive it may sound to you, it is a fact. And only if you accept this, you will have a chance to change something for the better in your life.
The fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is a pattern. More precisely, it is the Law of the Universe. And the laws of the Universe, in contrast to the laws invented and established by people, work flawlessly and regardless of whether we accept them or not. Therefore, it is for your benefit to accept these laws and live by them. And then you can really manage your life, keep your health in excellent shape. And, of course, your finances will go up too.
Who do you think or what determines whether you will be rich tomorrow or not, and, if so, how rich? Many will answer that it depends on the policy of the state, the system, laws, etc., and so on. They will not consider only one person responsible for their well-being - themselves. And this is the main reason for all the failures in their lives.
The law of the universe says: how rich you are now and how rich you will be tomorrow depends only on you. Yes, yes, the fact that you are now poor or not rich enough is your own fault! To some extent, the parents are to blame, because they could not give you what they themselves did not have. If your parents have a poor mentality, then they could not teach you how to be rich, no matter how much they wanted you to.
Education is largely to blame - you were not taught to be rich, you were not taught to think the way rich people think. And the worst thing is that poverty has always been praised and praised as a virtue. After all, many people justify their failures or unwillingness to take responsibility with a hackneyed phrase: poor, but with a clear conscience.
Our trouble is that we have always been taught that rich people are unfair, greedy, they earned their big money dishonestly. In general, the image of a rich person, as a bad and immoral person, was and continue to be laid in us. Unfortunately, this image is confirmed in the post-Soviet countries, where, against the background of general poverty, millionaires and billionaires grew up very quickly, like mushrooms after rain.
But admit it: in spite of all that has been said, wouldn't you like your salary to increase several times? Haven't you ever dreamed that a free million (rubles, hryvnias, dollars, tugriks) would suddenly fall on you?
And yet there are many rich people in the world who have earned and continue to earn thousands, tens of thousands and even millions of dollars in an honest way. Another question: how do they do it?
And indeed, how do these people manage to earn hundreds and thousands of dollars in the same 24 hours a day, while most people earn 10-20 dollars in the same 24 hours? After all, any person who is accustomed to standing at the machine or gluing bags for cat litter will tell you: how can you earn at least two or three times more money if you do not increase the prices? Yes, you can increase the working day, you can work faster. But in any case, there is a limit to human capabilities.
Most people just don't understand how you can make thousands of dollars a day in an honest way. They just don't know how to think differently. I would say they think on the same plane, not wanting or afraid to go beyond the usual. Of course, elementary human laziness plays a significant role here. Laziness not only to do something, but even to think.
But it is with thinking that everything begins - your poverty and your wealth. As I said above, your thoughts, your way of thinking, your worldview determine your entire being - the circle of your friends and acquaintances, the set of your chronic diseases and your poverty or your wealth.
If you change your mindset, your whole life will change.
It's that simple, you say? Yes, it's that simple. All ingenious is simple. But everything simple is complicated. Paradox? No. Just behind the seeming simplicity is persistent, painstaking daily work on oneself.
Many who teach to be successful say: convince your subconscious that you are already rich, and soon you will really become rich. And indeed it is. The experience of many people who have managed to achieve their goals confirms this. But this is not a matter of one day or even one month.
Someone manages to change their lives in a few months, while others will need years for this. It all depends on how deeply the image of poverty is sewn into your subconscious. No matter how long it takes to work on yourself, the one who firmly and systematically begins to walk in the right direction, he inevitably comes to the destination. This is the Law. This is inevitable.
For those who do not sail anywhere, there is no tailwind.
And the one who has chosen a goal and persistently goes to it, will use the headwind for his own good.
And one more Law: like attracts like. Poverty attracts poverty; wealth attracts wealth to itself. It's like a snowball: as soon as you start rolling a small snowball, the size of a chicken egg, on the snow, more and more snow starts to stick to it. And the larger the snowball becomes, the more snow sticks to it and the faster it turns into a large snowball.
You just need to start - bend over, pick up some snow and make this little snowball. And start rolling it in the snow. Until you start doing this, there will be nothing for new snow to stick to.
So it is with wealth. If you accept the fact that your success and your financial condition are entirely dependent on you and your thoughts, and begin to change your attitude towards wealth and rich people, start thinking like rich people, then your life will begin to change dramatically.
If you do not change your outlook, then no amount of effort, even if you decide to open your own business, will not change your real situation. Even with your own business, you will remain a poor person. Because deeds should be related to thinking. Thinking should even be ahead of deeds. Only then is your success inevitable.
Summary. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer, because: like attracts like; the outlook of a poor person will never allow him to become rich; the worldview of a rich person will help him gain wealth even when he loses everything; the laws of the universe work regardless of whether we accept them or not.
