three years to a millionaire, unless you live for free. taxes ain’t your only expense.
Comment on the only thing that never trickles down is the money
Telorand@reddthat.com 5 days ago
If I made $500k USD a year tax-free, it would take me
- 2 years to become a millionaire
- 2000 years to become a billionaire
There’s no way what billionaires contribute to the world is worth 2000 times more than someone making $500k. It is not possible that their “”“labor”“” is that valuable. And most of the billionaires have multiple billions, so their “value” is orders of magnitude more. The system is and has always been broken.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Telorand@reddthat.com 5 days ago
Sure. The point isn’t to detail out a budget or a guide of how to get there (you can’t), it’s to demonstrate that billionaires are thousands of times richer than what most people might consider “rich.” It’s simple on purpose.
Everybody currently has to pay bills, including billionaires, so it’s moot; bogging the example down with unnecessary details needlessly obfuscates the core point.
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 days ago
If I made $500k USD a year tax-free, it would take me
2 years to become a millionaire
2000 years to become a billionaire
This is a very simplistic way of looking at personal income, as it doesn’t consider the value of money. You really want to look at PPP (Purchasing Price Parity).
Consider, for instance, the impact that a high rate of inflation has on income and wealth. If you’re living in Chile right now, with an 11% inflation rate, and your income scales with that inflation rate, then you can become a billionaire in 67 years.
Now consider that we’ve seen the US Stock Market doing an average 14% return over the last 10 years. So that $500k of recurring principle gets you to billionaire status in a mere 58 years. Some of these billionaires are getting ROI at much higher than 14%, thanks to their access to low-interest loans, government contracts, and below-market capital.
There’s no way what billionaires contribute to the world is worth 2000 times more than someone making $500k.
It isn’t a question of contribution but of access to large pools of credit, interest accruing materials, and high return labor. What we have is a new kind of socio-economic enclosure, by which a select few people gain special privileges through social networking. Getting that explosive rate of return on a relatively meager upfront investment propels you into the billionaire class in a short amount of time.
But to get that access, you need social connections. Which is why folks like Sam Bankman-Fried and Elizabeth Holmes and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg could catapult themselves into the billionaire class while you’re still sitting around with your genitals in your hands.
Soup@lemmy.world 5 days ago
They’ll argue that it’s because of risk and because of their “ideas” but it takes about thirty seconds to see that there’s never a real risk and that there ideas are verifiably awful.
boonhet@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
The risk is what gets you started, once you’re already a billionaire, it’s as safe as can be.
Soup@lemmy.world 3 days ago
And let’s be honest, most of these people are not taking actual risks. Generational wealth and what they’re willing to do to other people make it a lot easier than they want to let on.