There’s an old saying…”you have to have money, to make money.”
I certainly saw this to be true over the two years that I worked in a casino as roulette and blackjack dealer. If a person had a large enough bankroll, then he or she had the ability to ride out almost any losses. When strategically viable…these people could even double or triple their betting amounts. And when they won…the amounts they won would be significant.
Take, as an example: a blackjack table with ten people seated at it (I know that standard blackjack tables seat five…new ones seven…but bear with me). Nine of the people at the table have one hundred dollars. The last person…has ten thousand dollars.
The nine, well, the most they can really bet and stay in the game for a while is five dollars a hand. When they win – they win five dollars. But they are certainly not going to win all the time so sometimes they lose five dollars. Occasionally an opportunity to double their bets comes along (by doubling down, or splitting a hand) but they have to be careful, because when you only have one hundred dollars to start with…losing ten dollars is a big deal. They play in this fashion, winning a little, losing a little, until they run out of money…break even…or make a modest gain.
However, the guy with ten thousand dollars has more options. He can bet FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS a hand and each time he wins, he wins exponentially more that the other players. If times are hard, he can cut back to betting two hundred and fifty dollars a hand and still make a tidy sum. His bankroll protects him from being knocked out quickly…and when a good opportunity arises, he can drop down another five hundred and really clean up. He risks more money each hand, but he can afford to, and he has more options to increase wins and minimize losses.
Try this sometime (maybe with a handheld blackjack game, or just as a numbers exercise)…every time you lose: double your bet. If you can afford to do this for long enough, you will always eventually get a winning hand and get back any losses. Always.
My point: America works the same way. For every nine people scrambling over 1% of the wealth…there is one person who holds 99% of it. Take the houses, cars, savings, and investments of any nine people, add those together, they add up to 1% of the assets and holdings of one of the wealthy few in America. Now go back to my original premise: it takes money, to make money. Without capital, how do you start a business…invest in the market…develop your invention? America’s answer: you borrow money from the wealthy. You get loans, grants, and so on, from the wealthy in America…so that they can get a little wealthier while you take your shot at getting a larger piece. Meanwhile, their money can sit in a savings account and generate more money in interest than you make in a year.
It’s a rigged game. Unless the average person wins the lottery, invents a better widget, cures cancer, or is in the absolute right place at the absolute right time…their chance at joining the 1% club is slim to none and slim just left town.
Let’s face it: the “something from nothing” story doesn’t happen too often. Most people of wealth got it from rich Grandpa Fred, or Daddy bankrolled their initial entrepreneurial adventures, or they married into it, or they were able to get loans and turn that money into a lot more (but we all know, that not just anybody can get the loans to make this happen…you have to HAVE SOME to BORROW SOME). Some just got lucky. For the rest of Americans, it’s subsistence living or trying to grab up an extra percentage point or two.
Now, I’m not arguing for socialism. I’m arguing against the position taken by the rich in the recent election (and on their behalf by the millions of middle-class people who mistakenly think they are rich) that taking the rich people’s tax dollars to try to increase the opportunities of other Americans is somehow WRONG. They try to tell us that everybody has the “same chances”…the same opportunities…while knowing that their own wealth is nearly “self-perpetuating” and that the chance for others to “break in” is non-existent. Anyone arguing “same opportunities” has not spent enough time on the south side of Chicago, the east side of Nashville, the west side of Detroit, the north side of Minneapolis…the poorer side of any city. You can’t grab at chances that AREN’T THERE…and you’ll never even try to look for them if nobody bothers to tell you that they EXIST, and nobody teaches you WHAT IT TAKES to get them.
Because really…my example of the blackjack table is not quite accurate. If I were to fine tune it to better reflect the statistical realities in America…two people aren’t even allowed to the table. They have no money and nobody has ever taught them how to play the game. Three people at the table are “working poor” and can’t afford the risk to play from their small stacks of chips…they are just sitting there, enjoying the free drinks from the casino. Two people (lower-middle class) are betting five dollars a hand, one person (middle class) is betting ten dollars a hand, and one person (upper-middle class) is betting twenty. Most of them will only last about an hour before they’re not able to play any longer. But the guy betting five hundred dollars a hand…oh, he’ll be there all night…they’ll probably comp him a room.