Ah, in that case I wasted my time reading about how to get rich. I am already rich! :) But if you include all people living in past times wouldn't it be consistent to include all people who will live in the future? Compared to them we might all be very poor and there is no way for anyone to become rich.
Right now the only thing that somewhat limits the accumulation of wealth by the wealthiest in our society is that they eventually die. Even if they pass it on to their offspring, those offspring are often ill-equipped to run their parent's business empire. Eventually the dynastic wealth fades away and others can take their place. If people could live forever there would be no limits on how much wealth individuals could concentrate in their hands. It would be like the meths in Altered Carbon. I don't want to live in a world where Jeff Bezos possesses more wealth than the bottom 90% of the planet.
Our laws and economic system currently lead to extreme inequality. That would have to seriously change to allow for immortality.
because no-one will ever be able to make enough money to challenge the position of the super wealthy. The super wealthy, barring extreme inflation and unavoidable estate taxes, would become the permanently super wealthy.
To all those players who became billionaires, and also to those financial advisors that show how anyone with modest income can become a multimillionaire in a 50-year working lifespan through the miracle of compound interest:
People have been investing in property, stocks, and in interest-earning bank accounts for centuries. Someone starting with $38,000 in 17th or 18th century would be worth trillions or quadrillions today[1], or at least their descendants would be.
So where are those trillionaires and quadrillionaires?
The problem is that over long spans of time (50+ years), there are wars, revolutions, devaluations, confiscations, hyperinflationary periods, and other economic disasters that have wiped out all savings.
There's no reason to assume that these things won't happen again when projecting over long periods.
If this was true about wealth creation, intergenerational wealth would eventually outcompete everything else, while it looks like the opposite is true.
Unless the people with money are the ones that made it themselves, they will keep buying bad watches like everyone else.
The what they invest it in, is the whole point. If you spend your life and wealth playing 20% of your bankroll with zero expected value - you should completely expect not to be wealthy, and if you do become wealthy it will be completely by chance, against the odds.
Today the rich control money supply. There's no chance for the poor. They cab increase their gains by 10%, but it will be taken out from them with little effort.
Whoever actually serves society and earns coins for their service will keep their value in the long run. In one generation, or less, it will be possible to ascend from a poor level.
Just like it was possibke and happened all the time earlier, when currencies were pegged to non-inflationary assets, like the gold.
After a certain point, personal wealth is nothing more than a highscore showing how good you are at the capitalism game. There is no need to accumulate an ever-growing pile of money - you could just spend it on stuff and let trickle-down economics do its job. It's not like you are going to need it when you inevitably die.
You can't stop some people from working harder or smarter than others, or saving money instead of spending everything they make. Those people will accumulate wealth far faster over time.
I think the issue is we are all mortals. No matter how much wealth we have we will all die. Sorry to crash the party. But wealth can prolong life and make it more enjoyable. People will never have enough so they will work more even when they don't have shortage of food.
Even if you are rich and think you have more than enough, you SHOULD think you want to earn more just to be able to give it away to the less fortunate.
Nobody is worth this kind of money, nobody can produce this much wealth, and nobody should control an amount of wealth larger than the gdp of at least 120 countries.
Only the rich are allowed to get richer. We poor people wouldn't know what to do with money if we had it, we can't possibly be trusted with what little we have.
Investments work by building on top of something you earned in the past and so on.
If there is no incentive to get rich, or benefit by making money over a long term for you or your descendants the very motivation to contribute something valuable and make money along the way, goes away. So after a time you will be left wondering why a few capable people aren't sacrificing their lives making up for every body else.
Death is already the Great Equalizer. There is no need to invent one. Yet people still accumulate wealth, so desperately, unaware that they do not know how to use it after death.
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