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I watched an interesting interview with a billionaire a while ago, who said that after you reach a given net worth it actually becomes very hard (unless you're
by capnprotonmail 7y ago
I watched an interesting interview with a billionaire a while ago, who said that after you reach a given net worth it actually becomes very hard (unless you're unlucky) to significantly diminish your wealth through consumption, and that in fact consuming more goods often just increases your net worth: Luxury cars, apartments, mansions, real estate, parks, yachts or resources like gold often appreciate in value with time (at least they did for the last 60 years), so the more of your money you spend on these goods, the richer you'll become. The words that the interviewee used were "if you're rich you can't destroy money by consumption", which is of course not 100 % true, but explains really well why the rich are getting richer.
In addition, many countries have much lower taxes on capital gains compared to other types of income, which is another factor that favors further concentration of money with those people that already have a lot of money.
- ido 7y agoI don't know if someone else also said it, but Bill Gates did too. He also said something to the effect that past $5m or so[0] wealth doesn't really affect your material quality of life & it starts becoming about what you can do with that money other than consumption (with e.g. business investment or philanthropy). [0] this may have been a couple decades ago, apply inflation but it was more or less in that order of magnitude.
- asdff 7y agoVery few things in life are priced for billionaires. Millionaires, sure, but a lot of people forget that a billionaire is literally 1000 millionaires, or the equivalent wealth of 80,000 people at the poverty line. It's pretty hard for anyone to fathom that egregious level of personal wealth.
- ryacko 7y agoMillionaires buy products, billionaires buy society.