I saw this going viral, “Andrew Tate exaggerates and did not own supercars in photos, his lawyers say.”
This is the biggest nothing-burger ever. The media are so desperate to paint him as bankrupt or his success as illusory. The envy couldn’t be more obvious in the coverage. I correctly predicted in 2022 in the post “Taleb vs. Andrew Tate” that he would not go bankrupt and that his wealth is real, not merely “performance art” or “a front”. 4 years later, I was right and Taleb was wrong, being the sore loser he is. Tate’s business is thriving, with tens of thousand of customers paying monthly on a recurring basis for his various online courses and Discord rooms. Just do the math–there is no possible world where he is poor. It’s a simple calculation.
This is why the claims of Tate’s wealth being fake did not hold up, and why I was right. There are cases where people indeed are lying about their wealth, especially if the assets are illiquid or there is no way to know where the money is coming from, but in his case, it’s pretty obvious.
The media are so desperate to create this narrative that the rich are not actually rich. People take comfort in the belief or myth that behind every person who projects or flaunts wealth that there is secretly a poor person underneath. Sometimes a rich person is actually rich. And denying this is another form of coping, as we saw with discourse surrounding the Elon Musk Space-X IPO a few months ago. Larry Ellison has been buying mega-yachts forever; does this mean he’s not actually wealthy. Of course not: his wealth is literally the number of Cisco shares he owns times the price…this is all public, per SEC disclosures.
As for the cars being rented, how is this a surprise? He hardly ever uses the cars except as a prop. Much of his time is spent recording podcasts and videos, and running his businesses and social media accounts, leaving little time for recreational driving. Also, sports cars are a high-liability (easy prey for creditors), rapidly-depreciating asset. Given how infrequently he uses his cars and the liability, it makes much better sense to rent them. This is what the wealthy do: they rent stuff that loses value, and buy things that gain value, like homes and stocks. Of course, there are exceptions for things which see heavy use, like clothes or computers, where renting is either illogical or not worth it. Today’s gen-z are very savvy when it comes to this stuff, and despite flaunting wealth, are smart about not attaching their names to it.