Poverty is Not An Accident

Robert Kiyosaki presents us with a tale of poor versus rich and the habits that determine what path a person travels. This material appears they are trying to sell something, but I didn't really go past this first video as I enjoyed the message.



There are 3 types of income: Earned, Portfolio and Passive. The truly wealthy occupy mostly the last class, Passive. They considered earned and to some extent portfolio income to be subpar and inferior. Their source of wealth is passive, like owning things, having assets. Through this strategy they pay little to no taxes. From the video 'McDonalds isn't a food business, it is a reality business'. In this environment of governments being able to print money out of thin air, it is insane to think that the way to wealth is to save.

We are specifically not taught these monetary truths in school.

I wonder, if it weren't for the people who earned their way through life, would passive incomes even be possible? If that were the case, wouldn't these passive earners be parasites?

This video does appear to support and encourage the life of a passive earner, but I suspect they are simply trying to sell something. That does not change the information presented. I just try to look at it from another angle. Is passive income healthy for a society as a whole or only beneficial for the select group of people that operate that way? This video seems to indicate passive income isn't really taxed, taxes are only for the earners and portfolios.

Is there a possibility this is a vampiric action on society? Is it good or bad, maybe neither? Would society be better off to find a way to tax the passive income or possibly discourage the accumulation of wealth through these strategies?

Been reading his books since the very first rich dad poor Dad book. Learned some important lessons From it. At this point, he is mostly selling books that appeal to folks who want to get rich quick by way of "this is not a get quick rich" book. Anyone with a decent financial education understand this concept. But this man does not sell millions of books to the financially literate, it's people believing they will find some secret formula to build wealth of knowledge easy who ke p bug my up his work. Few teachers and professors have introduced it in classes to get the newbies in the know.

I would say his books are good reading for highschool students and graduates and such, but responsible adults will already know most of what he writes about, assuming they have bothered to research anything on their own.

a reply to: worldstarcountry

You are a lot more optimistic on the capabilities of society as a whole than I am in stating that the majority of adult already know this information. In fact, I would put it under 10% of the population that understands the concept of the 3 types of obtaining wealth presented in this video.

So the author is really trying to sell something and make money, or do you get the sense that they are trying to help through education?

Do you think passive income is the source of any of our current troubles in society....homelessness, needing 3 jobs to simply provide food and shelter, needing 2 earner families, etc....

a reply to: ClovenSky

Is there a possibility this is a vampiric action on society? Is it good or bad, maybe neither?

It depends on whether that wealth is hoarded or introduced back into the economy. Hoarded wealth is the basis for a lot of social problems.

When the richest 3 people in a nation have as much money as the entire rest of the country, something is broken.

a reply to: ClovenSky

Do you think passive income is the source of any of our current troubles in society....homelessness, needing 3 jobs to simply provide food and shelter, needing 2 earner families, etc....

It is possible. Rich people who rely primarily on passive income garner that income by way of investments in stocks and bonds that produce that passive income. Those investment dollars are "Capital" that would ordinarily have been invested in new business start-ups that provided new jobs. New business start-ups these days are typically funded by Venture Capital firms. So its possible that the vast proliferation of wealthy people living off passive income is contributing to wealth disparities.

Something seems to be radically out of kilter at the moment. The US economy is at near full employment yet wages are still relatively stagnant and inflation is near non-existent. Weird that.

a reply to: underwerks

But maybe the method of extraction could be toxic to a society as well, not just the way the final accumulation is put to use?

Or is this just simply the way of life? The winners, the losers and the neutral. Should there be no consideration on how wealth/assets are gained?

originally posted by: underwerks
a reply to: ClovenSky

Is there a possibility this is a vampiric action on society? Is it good or bad, maybe neither?

It depends on whether that wealth is hoarded or introduced back into the economy. Hoarded wealth is the basis for a lot of social problems.

When the richest 3 people in a nation have as much money as the entire rest of the country, something is broken.

Wealth is not hoarded. To get passive income it is reinvested which ultimately trickles down in the form loans and other investments that other people use.

The wealthiest people dont keep a keep a lot of cash.

a reply to: TonyS

Wages are stagnant because some sectors of the economy have an over abundance of available workers. Sectors where skills are at a premium have rising wages. The more people that can do a job, the lower the wages.

This is why immigration is so hurtful to the lower classes.

a reply to: TonyS

I think the author separates stock market/bond gains as another income class versus passive income. They refer to is as portfolio income and disparage it as taxes are still assessed on the gains, like capital gains tax.

He maybe suggests that people who truly understand true passive incomes treat debt as money. That passive income seekers treat debt as a source of funding, which I don't really understand but I am trying to wrap my head around.

a reply to: ClovenSky
I said most responsible adults. Prudent to acknowledge every word in a sentence, or the conversation would go in a different direction. The knowledge he sells is very valuable, but is also available for free on the internet to anybody who wants to learn.

My opinion on passive I come is this, it takes a lot of hard work to get to a point where you are earning passive income, but once you have it your life can become easier over time.

People who have e to work three jobs are victims of one thing and one thing only: the choices they personally made in life. Whether it be get pregnant in highschool and struggle for ten years borrowing their working grandparent for free babysitting or earning a criminal record to being caught with drugs reducing their hiring potential etc.. etc..

Being a naive ignorant youth does not excuse th fact that the overwhelming majority of people in poverty in the USA is a result of their own choices starting at a time when they have been explained in school how to be successful, how to avoid trouble, and expectation for proper behavior.

Like I said, this is great reading for young adults and regular adults who are just cruising through life burning their money. Many or most responsible adults are mostly aware of these concepts though.

So Rob K. Is doing both, making money selling books while educating the readers. Most of his readers do not take much or any action though after having read it. Just more talking points for a future dialogue or conversation is what the average reader will take from this

a reply to: Edumakated

But I don't think the demand vs. supply rules are in full effect anymore. There is some major distortion out there somewhere. I was talking with a restaurant owner the other day and he was lamenting on how hard it was to get and retain staff help. That if someone quit or was fired, they would be able to find another place of employment before the day was over regardless if was a server position or waiter, cook, busboys or even host.

Maybe it is just unique to this specific area, but I have a feeling it is becoming country wide. I ventured to ask maybe it was what he was paying and to his credit, he didn't get too pissed off at the question. Interesting he didn't really answer.

Maybe it could also be that having a job doesn't pay the bills anymore, the person of lower caste employment doesn't really get ahead and will still be in the red even after 60+ work weeks. If you can't get ahead, why even bother? Or if your welfare pays more to be unemployed, why search for a job?

originally posted by: ClovenSky
a reply to: Edumakated

But I don't think the demand vs. supply rules are in full effect anymore. There is some major distortion out there somewhere. I was talking with a restaurant owner the other day and he was lamenting on how hard it was to get and retain staff help. That if someone quit or was fired, they would be able to find another place of employment before the day was over regardless if was a server position or waiter, cook, busboys or even host.

Maybe it is just unique to this specific area, but I have a feeling it is becoming country wide. I ventured to ask maybe it was what he was paying and to his credit, he didn't get too pissed off at the question. Interesting he didn't really answer.

Maybe it could also be that having a job doesn't pay the bills anymore, the person of lower caste employment doesn't really get ahead and will still be in the red even after 60+ work weeks. If you can't get ahead, why even bother? Or if your welfare pays more to be unemployed, why search for a job?

There is always supply and demand unless govt regulations are distorting the market.

Restaurants tend to under pay and thus have a hard time keeping employees. Maybe if he paid more he'd actually lower costs in the long run with less turnover. Many businesses employ this strategy.

Financial illiteracy is the biggest issue facing our country. Most people dont understand money and how it works. The live in the short term and dont invest for their futures.

I did a thread where I showed if someone saved 1 dollar a day from birth, they'd have almost 4 million by retirement. I'm on my phone, but there are recent articles laying out the math.

a reply to: Edumakated

My wife works in banking.
She hears some good ones...

Earlier this week a lady asked her how she could avoid overdraft fees......

Um... dont spend money dont have...

If gaining wealth was simply a matter of education, could we all be part of the passive income/earning class?

Would that even work? If not, why not?

Does the passive income sector exist off of the other 2 listed classes of earners?

a reply to: ClovenSky

Yea, that is hard to understand and what I'm seeing from Investopedia is that there seems to be some overlap between Passive Income and Portfolio income.
www.investopedia.com...

Colloquially, it’s been used to define money being earned regularly with little or no effort on the part of the person receiving it. Popular types of passive income include real estate, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and dividend stocks. Proponents of earning passive income tend to be boosters of a work-from-home and be-your-own-boss professional lifestyle. The type of earnings people usually associate with this are gains on stocks, interest, retirement pay, lottery winnings, online work and capital gains.

Passive income, when used as a technical term, is defined as either "net rental income" or "income from a business in which the taxpayer does not materially participate," and in some cases can include self-charged interest. It goes on to say that passive income "does not include salaries, portfolio, or investment income."

So I've made the mistake I guess, of thinking of Dividends as passive income when in fact, technically speaking, Dividends are, technically speaking, Portfolio Income.

www.investopedia.com...

Ways to Increase Portfolio Income Purchase High-Paying Dividend Stocks: Investors can increase their portfolio income by buying stocks that pay an above-average dividend. Companies may raise their dividend payments as revenue and profit increase. Dividend payments can be paid directly to the shareholder or used to purchase additional shares in the company, referred to as a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP).

I don't know, that almost seems like a distinction without much difference.

In talking about "debt" as an asset, I guess he's referring to peer to peer lending.

a reply to: ClovenSky

There is some major distortion out there somewhere.

My thoughts exactly! And I'll be damned if I can figure out just what the distortion is. Yea, welfare payments may be part of the problem. I've talked to many people, including my daughter for a while when she was abandoned with three small children, that she couldn't afford to make too much money because she'd be dropped from some benefit or the other. She did manage at some point to get out of that hole.

But there's something else at work in this equation that I can't put my finger on. One thought has been that maybe its the case that as the Boomers retire, their jobs are filled with new workers the employer can pay far less?

Another obvious problem is housing construction. In recessions past, the recoveries were marked by a serious uptick in new home construction. Typically tract housing. That hasn't occurred in this recovery and the millions laid off in 2008 from the construction industries have never been rehired.

Then, as you point out, I'm aware of many who simply refuse to work! There's work to be done, but not by them! But that would seem to exacerbate the worker shortage...............I don't know, but something's seriously "off".

I read his books and played his game. In the game, you have to be able to pay all your bills or you are not even in the rat race and you get knocked out of the game.

The problem many of the people who read his books even me can't even make it on the board.

My husband and I took his information with the little money we had and tried to invest in the stock market. Our stock had a reverse split and we lost the investment money.

When we got a little more money, we tried real estate investing. Lost a whole lot on courses that didn't pan out. He did get one house under contract, but it got sold out from under him.

We went to a rich dad real estate conference. We didn't have the money to buy into the next level. Later we were able to get into a couple of other courses. That is when the house got sold out from under him.

It really all seems to be rigged for those who know how to play the system. The crooks line up to teach you just enough to get into trouble. If you don't have the money until you finally figure it out, or personally have a good friend to show you the ropes, your drowing and loosing money fast never to see it again.

It seems like he puts just enough in his books to get you in trouble, but somehow never puts all the pieces together. Maybe I'm missing something. Maybe he isn't showing us the entire picture.

originally posted by: TonyS
a reply to: ClovenSky

Yea, that is hard to understand and what I'm seeing from Investopedia is that there seems to be some overlap between Passive Income and Portfolio income.
www.investopedia.com...

Colloquially, it’s been used to define money being earned regularly with little or no effort on the part of the person receiving it. Popular types of passive income include real estate, peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and dividend stocks. Proponents of earning passive income tend to be boosters of a work-from-home and be-your-own-boss professional lifestyle. The type of earnings people usually associate with this are gains on stocks, interest, retirement pay, lottery winnings, online work and capital gains.

Passive income, when used as a technical term, is defined as either "net rental income" or "income from a business in which the taxpayer does not materially participate," and in some cases can include self-charged interest. It goes on to say that passive income "does not include salaries, portfolio, or investment income."

So I've made the mistake I guess, of thinking of Dividends as passive income when in fact, technically speaking, Dividends are, technically speaking, Portfolio Income.

www.investopedia.com...

Ways to Increase Portfolio Income Purchase High-Paying Dividend Stocks: Investors can increase their portfolio income by buying stocks that pay an above-average dividend. Companies may raise their dividend payments as revenue and profit increase. Dividend payments can be paid directly to the shareholder or used to purchase additional shares in the company, referred to as a dividend reinvestment plan (DRIP).

I don't know, that almost seems like a distinction without much difference.

In talking about "debt" as an asset, I guess he's referring to peer to peer lending.

Debt is an asset to the person making the loan. It is a liability to the borrower.

If I lend you money, that note is an asset to me. In fact, I could sell that note to another investor that wants that stream of payments. That same loan is a liability for the borrower. So the same note is either an asset or liability does depending on what side of the transaction you are...

Your mortgage is a liability but it is an asset to the bank.