Small-time landlords are an example, as would be anyone who owns a small business and draws cash from profits rather than taking a salary.
anything you can do thats useful to society counts as labor (but not vice versa, you can work as a robber or corporate lobbyist). from line cooks to wall street ceos to open source volunteers and stay at home moms who dont get paid but still work. landlords and executives count because management is labor too.
if your income comes from a trust fund or owning properties that you dont manage thats a passive reward for doing nothing. you are not productive. you are a parasite living on the back of everyone else and expecting indefinite rewards for a fixed amount of work you or your parents did years ago.
What if it's a robot lawnmower instead of a push mower?
What if you and your neighbors pooled in some money to buy the robot lawnmowers?
What level of indirect management is unethical?
No one should start a business and pay salaries to their employees instead of themselves?
What if I see that a biotech startup is working on mRNA cancer vaccines, and I want to invest in that? And then it pays off and I make money off of it?
> landlord
If you think these two things are compatible you need to talk to more people outside of your bubble.
These gains might be realized at any point if they're willing to pay taxes for them.
Having lots of money but choosing not to spend it doesn't make you any less wealthy.
My bubble of... not-ultra-wealthy people? Are you saying I need to talk to more ultra-wealthy people? This makes no sense.
being born into money is not a requirement to own several houses before 30.
Buying a fixer-upper outside of town with high-school and early 20s grinding, renting out 3+ rooms to cover the mortgage for painful years, working 80 hour weeks, refinancing against that first house into another under-maintained property where you live in half while upgrading the other, ending up with a rental duplex and drastically reduced living cost, is viable by 30. Maximizing youth savings, first house programs, and primary residence rules create less punitive economics.
It sucks and will let one learn why landlord is a pain in the ass job, and relies on sweat equity and modest lifestyle, wanting to commit to real estate, and non-ideal properties. Trade school or skipping college for early income and low debt make the numbers crunch easier.
Investing consistently into the market in your 20s probably out performs it by 65, and a young bankers lifestyle is a joy of its own, but: owning property young is achievable for electricians, security guards, and janitors.
owning property young is achievable for electricians, security guards, and janitors.
A non-landlord janitor saddled with student loans losing 30%+ of income to housing versus a landlord whose housing is covered that works as a janitor from the get-go have wildly different leverage opportunities and savings potential at 20 and 5 years down the road. Committing to property ownership instead of school and maximally exploiting living at home gets the down payment, committing to property improvement instead of lifestyle is what gears the investment.
That massive monthly rental savings snowballs into a down payment in the 5 year picture, the first assets improvements and cash flow support lending for the subsequent property purchase, upgrades to which support refinancing and correcting cash flow in the original property. Backed by those assets and cash flow: multi-tenant properties, incorporation, or more aggressive flipping are straight shots backed by the appreciating assets and ongoing work income.
Janitors can clean on the side, work in corporate chains, work in secure facilities, make overtime, juggle multiple jobs, or snowball their hustle into a cleaning company. A landlord-janitor can be creating a crew of live-together like-minded grinders and be building business wealth in parallel to their rental business in a synergistic loop.
It is very possible, I know several people who done it, and know of numerous successful businesses structured around the same. A group of immigrants in a house with a cleaning van out front can be a respectable business. Five such houses could be an early retirement.
The conceptual breakdown tends to be in willingness to sacrifice, and do hard unglamorous work.
“Janitors of all things” can be smart entrepreneurs who grow wealth, just like how programmers, of all things, can misunderstand basic financial calculus.
As such, when comparing income tax and capital gains, you should add the impact of corporate taxes. Incidentally, corporate taxes are why many small business owners pay themselves wage income, rather than doing stock buybacks or dividends.
You've been sold some BS. Usually this is because you're required to take a "reasonable" wage for your role in a company. Otherwise I guarantee you every independent contractor out there (among others) would be operating in a way that made 100% of their income business profit, rather than wages, as it has enormous tax advantages. Approximately everybody tries to find out the least they can take as wage income without pissing off the IRS, and sets their "wage" to whatever that is.
Do the math for yourself. Paying corporate taxes on profits, then dividend taxes on what gets paid out is not a savings versus paying income+payroll tax (which comes from money that is treated as an expense at the corporate level).
Sure, the stock price should somehow be tied to the actual value of the company, but for a while now it's been mostly indistinguishable from a Ponzi scheme other than a few companies that do sometimes decide to buy back some stock, which makes it slightly less sketchy but if the value is from the company buying it back, it's a lot closer to debt or a bond, which is not at all how anyone treats it.
Silicon Valley Is Obsessed with 'Trust Stacking,' and the IRS Doesn't Like It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48727963 - June 2026
"Spending for the public benefit" has a lot of latitude.
It has nothing to do with the IRS or taxes.
Without data, it just sounds like "my social circle is more indicative of reality than yours". Maybe it is! But maybe not, so it's not particularly convincing
The middle class (especially upper middle) saw their share of income drop, but the bottom 50% increased.
https://equitablegrowth.org/u-s-income-data-for-2024-shows-t...
If people are saying they feel the squeeze, even in social media comments, they are probably being honest.
"The Census Bureau measure overstates current income inequality between the highest and lowest 20% of earners by more than 300% and claims that income inequality has risen by 21% since 1967, when in fact it has fallen by 3% ... In 2017, among working-age households, the bottom 20% earned only $6,941 on average, and only 36% were employed. But after transfer payments and taxes, those households had an average income of $48,806. The average working-age household in the second quintile earned $31,811 and 85% of them were employed. But after transfers and taxes, they had income of $50,492, a mere 3.5% more than the bottom quintile."
[1] https://www.wsj.com/opinion/income-equality-not-inequality-i...
It's ambiguous in several way, no time scale, "ultra wealthy" isn't defined, and "income" somewhat ambiguous.
Bottom 50% is increasing income with the top 10%, it's the middle class that's declining in the last 5 years. This was a quick google search, so I'll ask you to provide a source that's contrary else your comment was purely rhetorical and made in bad faith.
Not people then.
If I was talking about "ultra obese" people, you wouldn't assume I was talking about everybody who has a couple of extra pounds?