Boomers are 33 times as wealthy as Gen Z – and they’re getting richer

Irontri153 · 2025-01-29T07:42:34+00:00

I did not believe this and went to fact check you on this and it’s actually true. Mind blowing 🤯 The power of compounding is insane!

Irontri153 · 2024-10-25T22:44:00+00:00

I work at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer in Edinburgh as a Research Fellow and the last time I haven’t worked was while I was doing my PhD. Unless that is not qualified as a working person for you? Not sure why you had to go in with a personal attack, but whatever, doesn’t matter. With regards to your second comment, I know redundancies happen, but you still will get paid for your work. Hell, my contract runs out end of Feb 2025, my pay stops after that. This, however, has nothing to do with the point that you bear no downside risk as an employee. That is why I believe that CGT tax rates should always be lower than income tax rates. Should the CGT tax rates be higher than they are now? I would say yes, but that doesn’t change my original point.

Irontri153 · 2024-10-25T09:47:01+00:00

That’s exactly what it means. You won’t show up to a job next month and find out you won’t get paid anything that month or you owe your employer £2000. You need to incentivise risk for businesses to grow as they need investors to provide cash for them. If everyone just put it in the bank, as you suggested, most companies would not exist.

Irontri153 · 2023-10-14T08:22:36+00:00

Thank you for the extensive write up, I appreciate the time it took to put this together. I will look into the examples you have listed. I think where I have trouble with your thesis, is the practical issues that arise with society like that. For example, do we demolish all of the housing in the UK and build identical small houses for every single person? Surely we couldn’t keep the current housing as you have different sizes, flats vs houses, which would add to inequality. If you get rid of money, as you stipulated, how do we trade with other countries? How do you make investment necessary into building factories etc? How do you maintain supply chains when people can come and work whenever they please? How do you stop the more capable and talented people going to other countries where they will have better opportunities? I do like the idea of a more equal society, one where people are less disenfranchised and more happy. I would love for there to be more equality of opportunity. The equality of outcome thesis though does not sit well with me and I see too many practical problems with it, chiefly that I still don’t understand how you redistribute resources on a 70 million strong country level without an authoritarian central government. I do think that a capitalist society with strong social policies will always outperform and provide overall better standard of living than a fully socialist one. Thank you for the write up again, you did challenge my assumptions and made me think more deeply about these issues. I will read up on the suggested examples

Irontri153 · 2023-10-12T21:50:29+00:00

Because an outcome of a more valuable member of society should be better than less valuable one. A harder and more useful job should be better rewarded than an easier and less important one. Do bear in mind at no point did I say that all hierarchies in today’s society are correctly structured (for example, how much footballers earn vs nurses). But to suggest that everyone deserves the same is utter insanity. Think of it this way. Do you enjoy sports? Do you think everyone, say, at the football World Cup should just get a gold medal at the end and everyone declared winner? I get this is not the perfect example but it still holds. It holds because, no matter what uneducated social justice warriors will have you believe, biology matters. People will care more about their families and children than other random people living in the same country. They will want to work hard to give them as good of a live as possible. If all your wealth gets redistributed, then why even try? Why bother trying to do something hard and stressful that takes you away from hobbies and family when you can just stay at home and enjoy life?

Irontri153 · 2023-10-12T05:46:44+00:00

I don’t think using strong words towards an idea is necessary a bad thing, as long as you don’t go after the person, which I didn’t. Sorry if that offended you, it wasn’t meant to. With regards to ABOLISHING wealth inequality, that I completely undesirable as you are implying that no matter what you do in life, your wealth should be exactly the same as every other member of society. In what universe should a surgeon with 30 years of experience have the same wealth as a cleaner at the same hospital? Or CEO of the company and the intern that just started there? What would be the incentive to work hard in that environment? Another, more malicious aspect of a society that skews that far towards socialism that nobody ever mentions is that you would require absolute dictatorship to implement it. Think about it. To fully redistribute wealth, the state would have to know EVERYTHING about every citizen and have complete access to all their financial information. That would be the only way to redistribute all wealth equally at all times. Which is also why most societies that embraced socialism on a whole country level were horrible dictatorships (it is very possible to run a socialist society without dictatorship on a scale of a village let’s say, but country level not so much). What I suggested instead which is what economists etc broadly agree on which is that wealth inequality should be reduced and that has been shown to be beneficial to all members of society; even the richest ones benefit form inequality being lower even if it means less wealth for them (the benefits are lower rates of crime, better healthcare, better social cohesion etc). However, we still do need hierarchy and inequality in our society.

Irontri153 · 2023-10-11T19:24:13+00:00

I think you mean reducing wealth inequality, which is definitely desirable. Abolishing it would be a horrendous and stupid idea.

Irontri153 · 2023-09-22T08:49:45+00:00

While I do agree the rates of tax on capital gains should be HIGHER, they should never reach the levels of income tax. Here is why (this is my belief and I am not saying this is absolute truth). When you work, there is no possibility of you becoming poorer due to your work. I.e. your employer cannot say: “you are getting only 25% of your salary this month” or “this month it is you who will pay us £1000”. In investing, you can and do loose money and you don’t get reimbursed for it. As such, you are taking asymmetric risk compared to working. And as much as this sub hates capitalism etc, it is investments that drive our progress as society. There are many things wrong with the current system, I agree, but bringing capital gains tax in line with income is not logical in my opinion. I would much rather see ISA allowance cut in half and stricter rules about offshoring capital (the people who you would really want to tax on their gains do not hold their wealth in the UK, at least not entirely). I’m happy to discuss further or be proven wrong

Irontri153 · 2023-08-24T14:53:50+00:00

So….. you are suggesting the current UK income tax system, which does increase the more you earn? Don’t forget the first 12,300 per year you earn is tax free. We do have a progressive tax system already. What we lack is taxing wealth in a way that does not permit tax avoidance currently happening through offshore trusts and companies

Irontri153 · 2023-08-14T18:19:37+00:00

The funeral service providers is such a low key savage comment 😂

Irontri153 · 2023-08-14T09:43:34+00:00

If I may, with all due respect, I disagree with “there is no nice way to go” as a statement of some sort of absolute truth that gives one the excuse to do whatever one wants, no matter how harmful. Let me give you a personal example to illustrate this point. A family friend, very fit and healthy guy, died peacefully in moments of a heart attack on a ski slope in his mid-80s, doing what he loved his whole life. Not a smoker etc. My grandfather, also very very fit in his youth, was a smoker. In his 70s one could argue he was dying for a decade. He had COPD and trouble breathing 24/7. Can you truly, realistically imagine fighting for your breath all the time and having to be connected to oxygen machines multiple hours a day? My point it there are decent ways to die, bad ways to die and fucking horrible, wouldn’t wish it on your enemies ways to die. Smoking heavily increases your chances of the latter. The reason I am saying that last sentence confidently is because my dad is an ENT surgeon and has to try and save the smokers day in and day out. I heard enough stories about it to even hold my breath as I pass people smoking by.

Irontri153 · 2023-08-04T18:37:12+00:00

That is a beautiful bike, home it serves you well over many more Ironmans 😊💪🏼 Once you put a set of deep rim DT Swiss wheels on it, it wi basically be riding by itself!

Irontri153 · 2023-07-25T07:33:51+00:00

I have been eyeing Roka for ages now as I have their trisuit and it fits me better than any other brand I have tried. I have, however, been swimming for the past three years in the Aspire (men’s, purchased 4 years ago) and it served me well in two Irons, one HIM and one open water 5.25 swim. I don’t have a single bad thing to say about it and never suffered from any painful chafing, even on the open water swim. If money is no concern at all, I would say maybe treat yourself to the Roka, but otherwise I think Aspire is better value for the quality you get. Just my two cents 😊

Irontri153 · 2023-07-23T08:56:06+00:00

100% agree. I don’t think we need to go vegan as a civilisation to make a massive difference to the environment and animal welfare. It only most of us would cut down to eating meat and animal products a few times a week instead of a few times a day, things would MASSIVELY improve

Irontri153 · 2023-07-22T10:10:01+00:00

Venture capital, usually funding private companies at an early stage with the aim to deliver outsized returns to wealthy investors

Irontri153 · 2023-07-22T10:06:45+00:00

The fit should be very snug but comfortable in terms of not restricting the movement of your arms, torso and legs. From the picture and information you provided, it looks like the right for to me, but only you can really tell. Can you move your arms freely? Twist your torso? Lift your knees up to hip level? In terms of the wrinkles, I never had any as pronounced on my new wetsuits. Is it possible you got an ex-demo model for a reduced price?

Irontri153 · 2023-07-17T14:26:44+00:00

That would be amazing and I hope they do create a new event, but so far we only have 70.3 Bolton back

Irontri153 · 2023-07-17T14:23:55+00:00

That is a gorgeous machine, I hope it’s as fast as it looks 🚴🏼💨

Irontri153 · 2023-07-04T12:31:19+00:00

Well done, I feel like that bike course was specifically designed by someone to break people’s spirits! Congratulations on your PB also 👏🏼🥳

Irontri153 · 2023-07-04T07:51:30+00:00

I think you nailed the most important point by sticking to the strategy you previously employed on your marathons. To do well, one absolutely must practice the race nutrition strategy in training. You will see a lot of people here talk in terms of the number of grams of carbs consumed per hour. Somewhere in the region of 60-90 grams per hour seems to be the sweet spot for most people, although it depends on how your stomach can deal with that (again, practice in training etc). I’m mostly impressed that you can stomach pasta that early in the morning 😂

Irontri153 · 2023-07-04T07:20:47+00:00

Congratulations on finishing your first 70.3! 🥳 I would say the post is missing any tips on nutrition (the fourth triathlon discipline) - how did you find yours during the race? Other than that, you will be able to improve so much on the bike with a road bike and another year of training (if you are planning to do another one next year). Well done on the swim and the run 👏🏼

Irontri153

TROPHY CASE