Comment by JumpCrisscross
1 day ago
It’s incredibly difficult to structure these rules in a way that doesn’t discriminate against small businesses while not opening a giant loophole for the rich.
1 day ago
It’s incredibly difficult to structure these rules in a way that doesn’t discriminate against small businesses while not opening a giant loophole for the rich.
The reason is because small business owners are often, by any measure that doesn’t explicitly discount ownership of the business, actually rich.
How so? I know a guy who has literally millions of dollars tied up in shit that moves dirt and rocks and another mil tied up in some gravel pits.
The free cash he has, the house he lives in, the lifestyle he can afford is on par with "normal" white collar professionals (i.e. not people who get a bajillion monopoly bucks to implement linked list traversals for faang). He works 60hr weeks during construction season and has government agencies up his ass regularly (MHSA regulates him like he's running a pit mine, it's a huge f-ing farce). If you don't place insane value on being your own boss it's kind of a shitty life.
> MHSA regulates him like he's running a pit mine, it's a huge f-ing farce
Not as much of a farce as getting silicosis and dying at 50 because your idiot gravel pit boss refuses to maintain a sprinkler system.
> How so? I know a guy who has literally millions of dollars tied up in shit that moves dirt and rocks and another mil tied up in some gravel pits
Having literally millions of dollars in productive assets is rich by any reasonable standard.
> The free cash he has, the house he lives in, the lifestyle he can afford is on par with "normal" white collar professionals
And he has decades of support at that level of wealth in and realizable from the assets. Choosing to use it to generate a a “normal white collar professional” (i.e., reasonably well off to start with) income doesn't change that it is an enormous store of value that he owns.
> another mil tied up in some gravel pits
> MHSA regulates him like he's running a pit mine
Sounds like he does? As per your own comment.
A few million bucks is all you need to immediately retire with the expectation of being able to draw a us median income from your investments in perpetuity.
He could probably sell that business to the right buyer for a few million dollars and walk away. Just go sit on a beach somewhere, drinking Mai Tai s for a year, and then get bored of not working and then go back to working.
That you don't envy his current lifestyle doesn't mean he's not rich.
Why is the price you have to pay for something dependent on how much money your parents make? Feels so unfair
Because it is really a discount to the parents, not the student. It is understood that few 17 year olds have saved enough money to pay MIT's tuition of $85k/year for 4 years and parents are usually footing the bill.
Yes, students who's parents have money but choose not to spend it get a rough deal. You can make a pretty strong case that it is their parents screwing them over, not the school. The school doesn't owe a discount to prospective students.
> Yes, students who's parents have money but choose not to spend it get a rough deal. You can make a pretty strong case that it is their parents screwing them over, not the school.
No you can't. The school is the one choosing to set their prices based on the parents, who might or might not have anything to do with the student's school budget. That is the school's faulty assumption, and they, not the parents, are the ones screwing over those students.
1 reply →
You can't make that case at all. The price these name-brand schools ask is pretty much "how much do you(r parents) have?", and your kids could instead go to state school (if they can get into MIT, they probably qualify for a full ride scholarship or at least close) and have that tuition go to an ~80% down payment on their first house.
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In my opinion, you're reasoning about it incorrectly.
What if I said: the price is the same for everyone, but people with less access to money get proportionally more assistance paying that price?
still seems weird to me. is there any other product for 18-22 year olds where the price changes depending on their parents wealth?
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So there is an upper limit, which is the real price?
There really aren't that many rich people, relatively speaking, so who cares? That's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
At an upper end college? Yeah I guess it has to be like definitely below 90% of the population. Basically zero!