As other commenters have pointed out, both here and on the blog itself, the blog post assumes that a dollar taken out in fees in 2010 is worth the same as a dol

As other commenters have pointed out, both here and on the blog itself, the blog post assumes that a dollar taken out in fees in 2010 is worth the same as a dollar taken out in 2160. Depending on how you want to look at that, it's either ignoring inflation or ignoring the possibility of investing the fees, or both. If you start with the client's $300, deliver 10% return a year, take 1% in fees per year, reinvest the fees in your own fund, then after 150 years Client's fund: 123E+6 Fees: 362E+6 Huh? How is it possible that the fees are more than the client's fund? It turns out that the fees Bernie puts in his own fund don't get hit with the 1% fee themselves, so they're getting a return of 10% per year instead of 9%. After about 75 years, that makes the fees fund come out ahead. With 2% fees, the results after 150 years are Client: 31E+6 Fees: 454E+6 I.e., Bernie makes more on a 2% fee than a 1% fee, reason is restored. With a bit of luck, I haven't made a mistake. It'd be nice if someone confirmed or contradicted my numbers. Here's what I did: -module(bernie). -export([loop/5]). loop(Year, End_year, Capital, Fees, _Fee_percent) when Year == End_year -> io:fwrite("year: ~p Capital: ~g Fees: ~g\n", [Year, Capital, Fees]); loop(Year, End_year, Capital, Fees, Fee_percent) -> loop(Year + 1, End_year, Capital * (1.10 - Fee_percent), Fees * 1.10 + Capital * Fee_percent, Fee_percent). Edit: indented code to try and stop it from getting mangled.