I know several (low) millionaires and none of them exploited other people’s hard work. All of them are self-employed, and one of them is the single employee of their company.
Billionaires on the other hand. Yep, no way to get to a billion without heavy exploitation and sociopathic behavior.
One of them is a self-employed pentester, they’re very good at it. Pure income. The others are soft devs with their own product.
You can always move the goal post and say their clients are exploiting their employees, but we can keep moving it even further and claim that anyone who lives under capitalism exploits someone else down the line.
You’ve started with the premise that making money is evil, and are working backward from there.
“Oh no, you invested in index funds!!!” - yeah, so does everybody via their 401k or pension.
“Oh no, the work you did had any negative impact at all!!!” - thats basically every job. Communist agitators pollute the environment by driving cars to protests, and vegans kill field mice in their fields of soybeans. There are plenty of ways to make money that make the world better on net.
Most, sure, but Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and more are still a significant part of the world where $1M puts you firmly in the same “well-off and comfortable, but certainly not rich in the way billionaires are” territory you’d be in the US
Worldwide, I think it’s definitely safe to say most millionaires’ lifestyles are much closer to average than they are to billionaires’ (ie still having to make regular payments for housing, but mortgage rather than rent, and still having to perform most tasks for themselves rather than having PAs to do it for them)
If you have $1m, you can draw something like $30-40000 a year reasonably safely. That’s obviously a lot of money, but isn’t what most people in the mentioned countries think of as “living large” if it’s your whole income, especially for a couple/family. That puts you at about the median individual income for Japan and NZ, a bit above in Korea, and below for most of western Europe and Aus.
Obviously that’s without working, but that’s kinda the point. It’s wealth, but not enough that most people in those places would be comfortable not working if that’s how much they earned. Hell, in the US that wouldn’t even cover childcare for a few kids in many locales.
The $1m isn’t in cash… You forget that the average house price in London is around $900k, and for Sydney it’s $981k.
That means your pool for your car, furnishings, investments etc. are either minimal, or you have a mortgage, and definitely can’t live passively off $30-40k per year unless you’re living in cheaper than average housing (one would call this “not super wealthy”) and definitely not if you’re supporting a family.
I’m not saying the cost of living isn’t worse in the US, just that $1m is a comparatively tiny amount everywhere and that most millionaires (as there will a correlation between net worth and frequency) are frankly closer to the working class than they are to billionaires.
change it to billionaire and I agree, people with $1m are not obscenely wealthy these days
The difference between a billion dollars and a million dollars is about a billion dollars.
Everyone should see this if they haven’t already.
It’s like a clicker game but with scrolling and depression. I’ve attempted to get all the way through it multiple times, but never succeeded.
Depression? I got bleak suicidal rage. Which is weird; it’s not even tuesday.
Man, that graph and website is amazing. Simple, but gets the point across. I’ll share it from time to time.
I know several (low) millionaires and none of them exploited other people’s hard work. All of them are self-employed, and one of them is the single employee of their company.
Billionaires on the other hand. Yep, no way to get to a billion without heavy exploitation and sociopathic behavior.
checks under the hood
Where’d you, uh… where’d you get all that compound interest on your investments from?
“I’ve never exploited anyone!”
“Oh really, what do you do for a living?”
“Insurance defense lawyer.”
One of them is a self-employed pentester, they’re very good at it. Pure income. The others are soft devs with their own product.
You can always move the goal post and say their clients are exploiting their employees, but we can keep moving it even further and claim that anyone who lives under capitalism exploits someone else down the line.
You’ve started with the premise that making money is evil, and are working backward from there.
“Oh no, you invested in index funds!!!” - yeah, so does everybody via their 401k or pension.
“Oh no, the work you did had any negative impact at all!!!” - thats basically every job. Communist agitators pollute the environment by driving cars to protests, and vegans kill field mice in their fields of soybeans. There are plenty of ways to make money that make the world better on net.
The monetary system is a miserable way to justify homelessness, neglect, and poverty, sure.
The fact that you can’t imagine a job that improves the lives if your friends and neighbors is kinda bleak.
You seem to be acting intentionally dense to avoid changing your mind, so I’m going to stop responding.
Heavy equipment operator is more likely
I’d rather have it than not.
In USA they’re not, but most of rest of the world that’d be
Most, sure, but Europe, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and more are still a significant part of the world where $1M puts you firmly in the same “well-off and comfortable, but certainly not rich in the way billionaires are” territory you’d be in the US
Worldwide, I think it’s definitely safe to say most millionaires’ lifestyles are much closer to average than they are to billionaires’ (ie still having to make regular payments for housing, but mortgage rather than rent, and still having to perform most tasks for themselves rather than having PAs to do it for them)
If you have $1m, you can draw something like $30-40000 a year reasonably safely. That’s obviously a lot of money, but isn’t what most people in the mentioned countries think of as “living large” if it’s your whole income, especially for a couple/family. That puts you at about the median individual income for Japan and NZ, a bit above in Korea, and below for most of western Europe and Aus.
Obviously that’s without working, but that’s kinda the point. It’s wealth, but not enough that most people in those places would be comfortable not working if that’s how much they earned. Hell, in the US that wouldn’t even cover childcare for a few kids in many locales.
The $1m isn’t in cash… You forget that the average house price in London is around $900k, and for Sydney it’s $981k.
That means your pool for your car, furnishings, investments etc. are either minimal, or you have a mortgage, and definitely can’t live passively off $30-40k per year unless you’re living in cheaper than average housing (one would call this “not super wealthy”) and definitely not if you’re supporting a family.
I’m not saying the cost of living isn’t worse in the US, just that $1m is a comparatively tiny amount everywhere and that most millionaires (as there will a correlation between net worth and frequency) are frankly closer to the working class than they are to billionaires.
None of what I said is disagreeing with your point. You’re reading into my response opposition that wasn’t offered.