Rich Dad/Poor Dad Duality

I have a lot of experience with poverty so I guess I can give advise on what not to do! One thing that I've learned is that most regular/unsuccessful people have one kind of mentality and most successful people have a different mentality. This is well explained in the best selling book "Rich Dad/Poor Dad".  Robert Kiyosaki (the author) has certainly milked this franchise for as much money as he can get and wrote a lot of books that basically reiterate the same points found in his other books, but his work is definitely worth reading. 

http://www.amazon.com/Rich-Dad-Poor-Teach-Middle/dp/1612680011/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371952817&sr=8-1&keywords=rich+dad+poor+dad

To avoid excessive redundancy I wouldn't recommend buying and reading all of his books unless you are a really big fan, but I did find the book he co-wrote with Donald Trump to have some additional insight:

http://www.amazon.com/Why-We-Want-You-Rich/dp/B003BVK3B6/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1371953030&sr=8-2&keywords=robert+kiyosaki+donald+trump

The one thing I have been told is to work hard to get ahead and this really seems to be a sham. Primarily other people are out to exploit you. The main way people get ahead is by having connections and working together. If you work for a boss at some job most of them are just going to take what they can get from you, so if you work twice as hard it's just their good luck. A lot of businesses (especially ones involving low skill workers) are run poorly anyway. It's just more productive to focus on a community of high quality people (or family if you have a good family) and work together with them and start your own business. Also getting a college degree will elevate you to a slightly higher class of people. So if you do work hard at all it should be to work hard to increase your status. Work hard at degrees, accreditation, building up social networks, building up your own business etc. If you just try to go out and work your butt off you'll find yourself surrounding by lazy and incompetent people that just want to take advantage of you. The key is to rise above the low lifes and work on a better team and achieve greater status within any given group.

Beyond that, it is easier to generate income through investments rather than working. United States tax code certainly benefits investors at the expense of workers. For us poor folk the initial money to invest is often an obstacle. We can get around this simply by working together on business ventures. But first to work together you need to develop relationships, establish trust and demonstrate your own competency. Again a college degree often isn't about what you learned in college, but rather demonstrating a minimal level of competency, intelligence and work ethic that got you the degree, although a degree isn't the most important thing. To an elite minded person there is little difference between business and pleasure so we should use our energy establishing relationships that ultimately lead to better work and business opportunities. Keep a keen eye out for users, abusers and parasites, those people who should be excluded from any network, business deal or opportunity, as they are only good at consuming and causing problems. Attitude is everything and we often pick up this attitude from leisure and socialization. So let's establish relationships and opportunities within the network.