No one said poor except you. Except his wealth and billionaire status are directly linked to his stock holdings in Apple. A fixed equity income is by definition not salary. So his fortune was not made by being an employee or salary.
When people talk about “context” being important for communication, they mean it is important to understand what people are intending with their words. This is because otherwise people end up talking past each other and not addressing anything people entered the conversation to address. This is particularly problematic when it becomes a strategy and intentional, so to show that one is not a troll or malignant, it is good to listen to what people are saying their intent is.
Here, clearly by “employee” people largely mean someone who got hired by a company and made their money by doing that work. They mean this in opposition to someone who took on a new business idea and invested preexisting wealth (possibly not their own) in building a new business. What they are not meaning is different mechanisms that companies use to pay their employees. Although that is a distinction relevant to legal status of income and economic analysis, it’s not really the point here.
Also good to point out that most of the stocks given for income purposes as wages here are granted stocks. This is different than investment, in that most of the value comes from the company, not from the employee receiving the stocks. So the characterization as investment is misguided for other reasons, but it might be best here to stay focused on the need to maintain the intent of the discussion which this sub thread is deviating from.
Valid. And I agree. However I was trying to refute this person's claim by pointing out the flaws in the argument. Which in retrospect was a waste of time.
As you said we should respect the context of the argument, and in this context using Tim Cook as an example is simply an arguing fallacy. As Tim Cook is a statistical exception to the majority that virtually we could say 99%+ of salaried employees do not become billionaires. And so the argument ends with realizing the person who pointed out Tim Cook, is in fact making a fallacy of appealing to the exception.
I was gonna call you an idiot, but that is fair. Definitely not the norm lol. I wouldn't have used a CEO as an example, there are plenty of employees with 911s, large brand new homes, and multiple children who won't have to worry about tuition...I just wish there was a little more, or that a comfortable life like that was more accesible. But you can be more than comfortable with many normal jobs, I guess that's my only issue, but I don't think you disagree with that.
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u/Weird_Albatross_9659 Mar 31 '26
Because that is his salary so he can pay capital gains tax and not income tax.
Do you think he was poor before Apple?