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21 Ways Rich People Think Differently:

Narong Wongwan

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Average people want to marry the girl they love....rich people learn to love the girl they marry because of the father in law connection - LKY
 

Narong Wongwan

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
22. Average people blame others for their problems and when they screwed up. Rich people learned from their mistakes and move on knowing that they are now steps closer to solving their problems and reaching their dreams.

The masses always blame others i.e. the government, the rich, their employers, FTs, etc. except themselves when their lives are screwed up. The blame game leads to inaction and their lives going nowhere.

Blaming the govt is valid in sinkieland coz pap wants to play nanny all the time.
And the employers here are in bed with the white scums without any labour unions.
These are all unique to sinkie govt.
 

tanwahtiu

Alfrescian
Loyal
You just don't grasp the idea, you are out of this world.

Talking your nonsense again.

It is a matter of time before the tens of millions unemployed Europeans will go after the rich. The rich thinks that they have no responsibility to society. They are smug and spit on the average. Well, the average will hunt them down. Society won't be normal with 25 percent unemployment. Either you kill off the 25 percent or you do something to help them or the 25 percent will go after the establishment. People don't choose to be unemployed.
 

tanwahtiu

Alfrescian
Loyal
good article, bro.

ups you.

21 Ways Rich People Think Differently:

(Article from http://finance.yahoo.com/news/21-ways-rich-people-think-differently.html?page=all)

21. Average people believe they must choose between a great family and being rich. Rich people know you can have it all.

The idea the wealth must come at the expense of family time is nothing but a "cop-out", Siebold says.

"The masses have been brainwashed to believe it's an either/or equation," he writes. "The rich know you can have anything you want if you approach the challenge with a mindset rooted in love and abundance."

From Steve Siebold, author of "How Rich People Think."
 

winnipegjets

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
You just don't grasp the idea, you are out of this world.

Talking your nonsense again.

I don't take things in wholesale. Think before you shoot. PAP is in powers because of people like you ...you don't think.

Look at the whole picture, not just about yourself.
 
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tanwahtiu

Alfrescian
Loyal
on the contrary, the PM is incompetent to lead and he is the cause of the problem.

A good leader will not say 'sorry' or 'could have done better'. He know he must get it right the first time.

Singapore is indeed a small place to accommodate 7M people and also PAP selfish agenda to hold the power.

Something got to give.

22. Average people blame others for their problems and when they screwed up. Rich people learned from their mistakes and move on knowing that they are now steps closer to solving their problems and reaching their dreams.

The masses always blame others i.e. the government, the rich, their employers, FTs, etc. except themselves when their lives are screwed up. The blame game leads to inaction and their lives going nowhere.
 

biondi

Alfrescian
Loyal
Competition is a zero-sum game. There is a winner and a loser. Let's take the EU for example. Based on your logic, you would conclude that Greece, Italy & Spain didn't pull its own weight and are the free loaders. Germany was competitive and thus the winner. If you look at the data, you will see a different picture. Germany gained at the expense of Greece & Spain. If not for the EU, Germany would be enjoying the growth in the last two decades.

Why should Germany be blamed for the fiscal mess that EU is in? Germany is a nation of savers and is committed to a balanced budget. They export more than the USA. They spend more money on R&D by percentage of gdp than Spain and Greece. The other euro nations were free to do the same but they didn't.
 

Froggy

Alfrescian (InfP) + Mod
Moderator
Generous Asset
I always tell my staff, "Stop spending time to cut costs, spend more time to sell more, spend more time to spend more"
 

winnipegjets

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Why should Germany be blamed for the fiscal mess that EU is in? Germany is a nation of savers and is committed to a balanced budget. They export more than the USA. They spend more money on R&D by percentage of gdp than Spain and Greece. The other euro nations were free to do the same but they didn't.

Goodness me ...if there is no market, you can't sell. If the Americans were to shut their doors to the emerging economies, you think China would have grown? Or Sinkapore for that matter. Please read this. Hopefully, you can see beyond the common perception which is so superficial.

http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1219987--germany-re-surfaces-as-europe-s-imperial-power

BERLIN—On a recent June evening, the annual music festival had overtaken Berlin, and the early summer blossoming of the ever-present linden trees had filled the streets with perfume. Hence the city, always alight with throngs of streetside young people drinking 60-cent beer, seemed especially alive. Happy. Distanced, let’s say, from the eurozone debt crisis — insolvency in one country, the bailout of another, stratospheric bond yields across the way.

In Friedrichshain, a hip neighbourhood in the former East Berlin, Hannah Horeis could be found enjoying a beer and a hand-rolled cigarette, chatting with her friend, Anna Enge, whose 3-month-old son, Conrad, was nestled into a baby Snugli and a deep sleep. The mise en scène screamed young intellectuals, especially Horeis, with her cool demeanour and serious gaze, that cigarette poised in mid-air.

Horeis is in her final year of economics. Enge is an economics graduate who works for an American consumer products company. And Germany, a decade after an initial 12 countries adopted a new-fangled currency called the euro, has emerged, in the words of billionaire investor George Soros, as a near Imperial power. In an interview with Spiegel Online last week, Soros said that Germany is at risk of being “hated and resisted” if it doesn’t swiftly bend to effective accommodations of the eurozone’s debtor countries, most urgently Spain and Italy.

In Brussels this past Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel did, if not bend, at least tilt. The European Stability Mechanism, which is scheduled to come into effect this month, is the 500-billion-euro bailout fund designed, according to the original treaty language, “to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro as a whole.” It is those funds that will be tapped to stabilize banks in both Spain and Italy, but only under the supervision of a financial sector overseer that does not yet exist, a reminder that one of the many flaws in the structure of the monetary union was the absence of a centralized banking regulator.

The sense on the street is that Germany has not suffered any serious aftershocks from the financial instability in the eurozone — “It hasn’t really arrived here yet,” says Horeis. The young women see the unfolding drama academically as opposed to personally. For Horeis, “this huge eagerness to get this new currency” should have been a red flag for the mistakes that were subsequently made. She taps the inclusion of Greece as a case in point.

“Greece is a huge bureaucratic country with a lot of corruption where nothing gets paid,” she says.

So who can be surprised that without broad centralized controls the country would end up underwater?

Standing and swaying in the baby-lulling manner of young mothers everywhere, Enge adds that the shared currency resulted in an obvious constraint.

“There were problems with countries not being able to write down their currencies,” she says, meaning that without the ability to devaluate, the southern countries were stripped of their standard methods of re-stabilizing their own economies.

Two obvious questions: What do the two young people see as the chief benefit or benefits gained by Germany’s inclusion in the euro?

“It’s hard to say,” says Horeis. “Life is easier. Travelling around Europe.”

So there’s that.

A decade ago, 70 per cent of Germans said they didn’t want to give up the Deutschemark. Today, 70 per cent of Germans want it back. Given the opportunity, would these women vote in favour of the euro today?

Horeis: “Yes.”

“I wouldn’t, no,” adds Enge. “We had a strong currency before.”

The street view, engaging as it is, can’t capture the harder realities that define Germany’s role in the ongoing euro debt crisis. Chancellor Merkel’s appearance on the world stage tends to be defined in terms of rectitude and financial conservatism, a ceaseless stern lecture to the seemingly freewheeling countries of the south to adopt strict reforms.

Fair enough, as far as it goes.

But Germany’s full role is fabulously complex.

In May, the country’s largest bank, Deutsche Bank AG, reached a $200-million (U.S.) settlement with the U.S. government over the practices of a wholly owned U.S. mortgage provider, MortgageIT, which it acquired in 2007. According to the lawsuit filed in the spring of 2011, the subsidiary knowingly misled HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, by falsely certifying the quality of subprime and so-called “Alt-A” mortgages for insurance purposes.

Commerzbank AG, Germany’s second-largest bank, started writing down its exposure to U.S. subprime assets in 2008, was later rescued by German taxpayers, and today continues to push through a restructuring that recently saw its announced exit out of commercial property lending.

Meanwhile, Dresdner Bank, the country’s third largest, was gobbled up by Commerzbank after massive losses of its own, while Germany’s own financial stabilization fund worked at siphoning bad assets from the fragile balance sheets of smaller lenders, not to mention the nationalization of the country’s largest real estate lender.

The profile of Germany’s banking sector has historically been one of broad conservatism, says Trevor Evans, professor of economics at the Berlin School of Economics and Law. Approximately one-third of the banking sector is comprised of profit-making institutions — Deutsche Bank et al. — with state-owned savings banks accounting for a further third. But even there trouble blossomed in the regional savings banks, known as Landesbanks, which went seeking high-yield assets.

“And what were they?” asks Evans. “Collateralized debt obligations. So the Landesbanks, these regional savings banks, set up subsidiaries in Dublin and started buying these securities, which they understood absolutely nothing about and made big losses. It’s tragic.”

That bit about Dublin refers to the parking of offshore assets against which banks were not obligated to hold capital.

In Europe, there was one country that proved the exception to such high-risk practices. It’s likely that the right answer wouldn’t readily leap to mind: Spain.

“It’s the only central bank in Europe that prohibited its bank from setting up special investment vehicles and parking collateralized debt obligations,” Evans says. “In Spain, banks were not allowed to do that.”

Here the stories diverge. Unlike Spain, Germany didn’t experience a housing bubble.

“Bank lending practices are very cautious,” Evans says.

And home ownership in Germany has historically been among the lowest of OECD countries at about 40 per cent, versus Spain, which has the highest at twice that number. (Home ownership in Berlin, where rents until recently were fantastically cheap, was about 14 per cent in 2011.)

Concurrently, Germany did adopt a program of reform measures, particularly in the labour market, Evans notes.

“There was a serious revision of the unemployment benefit system and that, together with various other measures, resulted in real wages not rising at all between 1999 and 2007,” he says.

Domestic demand was flat.

The southern European economies, with inflows of money from northern Europe, grew quickly, as did wages and, logically, consumer demand.

“As a result of this imbalance, Germany under the euro built up a bigger and bigger trade surplus,” says Evans, rising from a surplus of $50 billion (U.S.) a year in 2000 to a high of $200 billion in 2007, just before the crash. About half of that was a surplus with other eurozone countries.

“Germany benefitted very, very directly from the euro,” Evans says. “Without the euro, its currency would have appreciated and made it virtually impossible to have generated that sort of trade surplus.”

“You have a model,” he continues, “where there’s a lack of demand in Germany because wages aren’t rising, so the German banks lent money to Spain, Portugal, Greece so they could buy German exports. In that chain, which is an unsustainable chain, Greece was the weakest link, and the crisis broke there first. But it was the weakest link in a polarized relationship between northern Europe, particularly Germany, and southern Europe.”

Explaining to Germans that Germany has benefitted disproportionately than any other country is, says Evans, “an uphill task.”

In his interview with Spiegel Online, George Soros phrased it thusly: “No country has benefitted more from the euro than Germany, both politically and economically. Therefore, what has happened as a result of the introduction of the euro is largely Germany’s Schuld — its responsibility.”

As an understatement, last week’s meeting of euro leaders in Brussels didn’t convey the message that Germany accepts this responsibility. Not at all. Germany is merely willing to back a capital-injection plan that will bring short-term relief to Italy and Spain. A finger in the dike in a series of endless meetings, each of which, Evans notes wryly, is habitually described as “decisive.”

Sitting in his office on Badensche Strasse, the professor expresses clear exasperation at what he sees as a misunderstanding of government deficits.

“There was no problem of deficits up to 2007,” he says firmly. Greece was the only country in the eurozone that exceeded the 3 per cent of GDP limit imposed in the early euro framework. Spain had a surplus. “The important point is that the deficits were the result of the financial crisis, not the other way round.”

Bank bailouts, expansive macroeconomic programs, an economic slump, diminishing tax revenues: the narrative for Evans is straightforward, the outcome predetermined.

The fix: illusive.

Last year, the European Commission introduced the so-called “six pack” of measures aimed at restricting government debts and budget deficits. “The key problem is that it puts all the adjustment on the deficit countries,” Evans says. “So countries that have a trade deficit are required to eliminate their trade deficit. But there’s no pressure on Germany to eliminate its trade surplus, but they’re two sides of the same coin.”

By example, allowing wages to rise, thereby increasing demand within Germany and encouraging imports from southern Europe.

The subsequent fiscal compact, Germany’s insistence that each country introduce a constitutional provision that bans deficits altogether, is in Evans’ view simply crazy.

“It is an absurd rule to restrict governments in that way,” he says. “If a crisis like this hits again, which it will at some point, governments will have to find a way around it. Governments have to react with expansive fiscal policy if the economy is facing a slump.”

Could the euro fail? Evans believes it could. But then he grabs a full-page newspaper advertisement from a nearby bookshelf. The ad appeared in all the major German papers this time last year. “Der Euro ist notwending,” is the boldfaced headline. (The euro is necessary.) The ad is signed by such corporate heavyweights as Siemens and Thyssen. “Big German capital sees its future absolutely tied up with the euro,” Evans says.

In many parts of Berlin, there’s no sense of big German capital. Shoppers flock the Turkish market at Maybachufer, where young musicians with the look of tireless travellers have taken over the embankment of the Landwehrkanal. At the East Side Gallery in Friedrichshain, which is not a gallery in the conventional sense, but 1.3 kilometres of the Berlin Wall, young lovers kiss in front of original artworks that reimagine Checkpoint Charlie and East-West relations pre-1989. Berlin is cool. They say it’s the best place to be unemployed.

Germany doesn’t have any great worries in that regard. Not yet. Facing its role in the euro responsibly is perhaps the greatest test the country has met in the past half century.



 

Leongsam

High Order Twit / Low SES subject
Admin
Asset
Here is my question to the OP - Are rich people superior beings? If you think they are, I rest my case.

There is no "yes" or "no" answer to that one because there are so many way of getting rich and there are just as many definitions of "superior".
 

Leongsam

High Order Twit / Low SES subject
Admin
Asset
More on the subject while we're about it....

http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/10-secrets-to-success/

What is it that makes people successful and I mean really successful compared to you or me? Are they smarter or do they work harder? Are they risk takers or have powerful and influential friends?

The financial newspaper Investors Business Daily (IBD) asked these same questions a few years ago and started a multi-year search for the answer. They studied industry leaders, investors and entrepreneurs to understand the traits they all had in common that contributed to their success. Reproduced here is their list of 10 Secrets to Success along with my commentary on each no-so-secret, ‘secret’.

I decided to reproduce the list here and comment on each of the traits in hopes of motivating you and myself in the process. It’s time for me to take my own advice and start on the path to my dreams. I hope to motivate you, by using myself as an example.

I originally came across this list when I was staring at some papers on a refrigerator owned by someone who was very successful – both personally and financially. My family and I had just spent the night as a guest in a great house in the suburbs of Boston. We were living life large as we played pool in the rec room, drank wine from the wine cellar, and enjoyed a dip in the hot tub. The problem was, neither of the couples in the house owned the property or the life we were pretending to have. You see, my friends were house sitting for the original owner and they had invited us to stay for the weekend.

It wasn’t until the morning after our little ‘party’ that I noticed something taped to the refrigerator – something that impacts me each time I read it. It was the IBD 10 Secrets to Success. Once my head cleared, I quickly copied them down and read them over and over again. After our vacation I made copies and posted them in my home office and inside a journal I decided to keep.

The problem was, after a couple of months I forgot about the secrets and they fell by the wayside. And so did my actions towards my goals. At the time the articles 7 Ways to Grow the Action Habit or How To Motivate Yourself – Self Motivation didn’t exist and I lost my motivation. Well, I re-discovered the list and want to share it with you now. I hope you take these not-so-secret, secrets to heart and realize your dreams – whatever they may be.

1. How You Think is Everything.

Always be positive. Think Success, not Failure. Beware of a negative environment.

This trait has to be one of the most important in the entire list. Your belief that you can accomplish your goals has to be unwavering. The moment you say to yourself “I can’t…”, then you won’t. I was always given the advice “never say I can’t” and I’d like to strike those words from the dictionary.
I’ve found that from time-to-time my attitude waivers. A mentor of mine once said “it’s ok to visit pity city, but you can’t stay and there comes a time when you need to leave”. Positive things happen to positive people.

2. Decide upon Your True Dreams and Goals: Write down your specific goals and develop a plan to reach them.

Write down my dreams and goals? Develop a plan to reach them? You mean like a project plan? Yes, that’s exactly what this means. You may have heard the old adage: A New Years resolution that isn’t written down is just a dream, and dreams are not goals.

Goals are those concrete, measurable stepping stones of achievement that track your progress towards your dreams. My goal is to start a second career as a freelance writer – what are your goals?

3. Take Action. Goals are nothing without action.

Be like Nike and “Just do it”. I took action by reaching out and started writing. Every day I try to take some action towards my goals. It may be small, but it’s still an action. Have you taken action towards your goals?

4. Never Stop Learning: Go back to school or read books. Get training & acquire skills.

Becoming a life long learner would benefit us all and is something we should instill in our kids. It’s funny that once you’re out of school you realize how enjoyable learning can be. What have you learned today?

5. Be Persistent and Work Hard: Success is a marathon, not a sprint. Never give up.

I think every story of success I read entails long hard hours of work. There is no getting around this and there is no free lunch. But, if you’re working towards something that you’re passionate about, something you love – then is it really work?

6. Learn to Analyze Details: Get all the facts, all the input. Learn from your mistakes.

I think you have to strike a balance between getting all the facts and making a decision with incomplete data – both are traits of successful people. Spend time gathering details, but don’t catch ‘analysis paralysis’.

7. Focus Your Time And Money: Don’t let other people or things distract you.

Remain laser focused on your goals and surround yourself with positive people that believe in you. Don’t be distracted by the naysayer’s or tasks that are not helping you achieve your goals.

8. Don’t Be Afraid To Innovate: Be different. Following the herd is a sure way to mediocrity.

Follow through on that break-out idea you have. Ask yourself “What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?”

9. Deal And Communicate With People Effectively: No person is an island. Learn to understand and motivate others.

Successful people develop and nurture a network and they only do that by treating people openly, fairly and many times firmly. There is nothing wrong about being firm – just don’t cross the a-hole line. How do you deal with people?

10. Be Honest And Dependable: Take responsibility, otherwise numbers 1 – 9 won’t matter.

Enough said.
 

Thick Face Black Heart

Alfrescian (InfP)
Generous Asset
Competition is a zero-sum game. There is a winner and a loser. Let's take the EU for example. Based on your logic, you would conclude that Greece, Italy & Spain didn't pull its own weight and are the free loaders. Germany was competitive and thus the winner. If you look at the data, you will see a different picture. Germany gained at the expense of Greece & Spain. If not for the EU, Germany would be enjoying the growth in the last two decades. The EU enable Germany to gain a one-up against the other European countries because now those countries with lower productivity had the same cost structure as the Germans. I recognize that those southern European countries have lots of structural problems as well.


That's hardly a fair assessment. Competition is at the heart of modern capitalism. Unless you want to go back to feudalism where peasants work for landowners who take half their produce.

As for Germany and EU, you're totally off. Germany played the game better - both in internal governance as well as geopolitics. The PIIGS drowned themselves in welfare and deficit spending. The Germans focussed on productivity.
 

Sinkie

Alfrescian (Inf)
Asset
Another question to the OP - Is wealth = success? If you say yes, I rest my case.

Yes, if one equates success with wealth. But the more important question to ask is "Are you happy?" to anyone, rich or poor.

If the answer is Yes, then that is success. Your life is a success. If the answer is No, then you're a failure in life, regardless if you're rich or poor, it does not matter.
 
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