• betelgeuse [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      22·
      10 months ago

      He’s an Ur Boomer. Born in '47. Spent time in the military where he claims to have learned how international trade works. Then bought a condo in Hawaii on credit for $10,000. Flipped the condo, made money. Got into real estate. Got rich. He started writing self-help get rich books. His most famous book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, is about how his poor dad’s frame of mind kept him poor. His poor dad was a liberal academic who worked for other people. His rich dad was a self-made man and shunned higher education for the hard-knock life in self employment.

      He’s totally a product of the mid-20th century and the post WWII economic boom but he confuses it for his personal decisions that made him wealthy. Of course most of his money comes from selling books and giving lectures. He’s currently in a lot of debt and not very rich because those macroeconomic conditions deteriorated decades ago.

      • CTHlurker [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        12·
        10 months ago

        I’d actually argue that the debt thing isn’t a sign of poverty, since from what I recall from his talks on Youtube, he is mostly just abusing the absolute shit out of the US tax system, and the fact that he has a decent sized cash-flow from all his books, rental properties and speaking gigs. The fact that he loans a whole lot of money (which isn’t taxed, because loans aren’t taxable) and uses it to fund whatever dumb shit he wants to spend money on, is in fact the same thing that gave Donald Trump the infamous 0-dollar tax return. Taxes are only paid on income when you “earn” it, and since all of his money is techinically other people’s money, he doesn’t have to pay taxes on it when it gets transferred to him. It also means that he is exceptionally vulnerable to anything that might shake this cash-flow, since he is leveraged out the wazoo, but up until it goes horribly wrong, he is going to be just fine.