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Around the same time this was shared to HN I Tweeted/FB/LinkedIn variations of the following >If I earned $10,000 a day it would take me 273.97 years to have e

Around the same time this was shared to HN I Tweeted/FB/LinkedIn variations of the following >If I earned $10,000 a day it would take me 273.97 years to have earned 1 billion dollars. Meanwhile, Elon was worth about 20 billion a year ago, last month he was worth an estimated $185bn. Oof. In reality, I make a little over $17 an hour His net worth increased an estimated 4.66 million times my annual gross income in the past year. I've been at my job 15 years. When you stop and think about it, it can quickly approach the territory of crippling. I'll probably have to work until the day I die, or until I physically can't, whichever comes first. My wife does a little bit better than me as a public school teacher, but she also probably logs 70-80 hours a week of work once you factor in grading/lesson plan/meetings/coaching track for an extra $1500 a year/Friday detention/etc. If someone gave me 100,000 USD, my stress level would freefall. My quality of life would drastically improve. My financial security would be able to weather any realistic event sans aggressive cancer treatment. Mr. Musk had his net worth increase 1.6 million times that amount last year. (Edit: This is an example, I'm not begging for money, so stop using it as a means of attacking my entire post) Some days I just "can't even". With my faith, my wife, my friends, I try to be upbeat and positive when it comes to the future but when I see people like Musk, Bezos, even Gates and then I start worrying about replacing the roof/well pump/affording a mower come spring/why does one spot of the kitchen floor dip a bit when I stand on it and how much is that going to cost me/how long is my wife's car going to last/how long is my car going to last/is it going to warm up anytime soon because we've already filled the propane tank twice since November/etc and I just start to want to fully disconnect from reality and wish catatonia upon myself to escape it. Then if I think about how fortunate I actually do have it, then I start getting depressed that there are people out there making 2.5x less than me in my own state, that there are homeless populations here in the U.S., and then I think but what about the people in 'third world countries', our minimum wage and homeless have it even better than many of them, then that catatonia starts sounding really nice again. If I can't even seem to improve my own situation to have even a fraction of a percent of the financial security that even some people I personally know have (people that have posted on this very forum) then how the heck am I ever going to be able to help enough even less fortunate than me to not feel like crap when I remember they exist and have it worse than me?

raiyu 6y ago
By the same token, Elon Musk is someone who succeeded, while thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs fail, end up with debt, and don't have much to show for their work. So using survivorship bias to compare yourself to Elon Musk which is an atypical result when it comes to business formation doesn't make sense. You should probably compare yourself to the average business creator and see how you fare compared to them. It's like saying I'm not that great at Basketball, but let me compare myself to Michael Jordan.
- ryanmercer 6y ago
  No, not remotely. It's like pointing out the absurdity of 1 man, over the past year, having his net worth increase 2.32 million times the annual median household income (of the U.S.) of $68,703 (2019, per census.gov). While something like 20% of the planet doesn't even have access to reliably safe drinking water and something like 800 million lack the amount of food require for an active life.
  - raiyu 6y ago
    Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water, so I'm not sure where that is coming from. Also if you look historically over the past 100 years overall rates of poverty have declined everywhere. If you look even further back in time the amount of rights that global citizens enjoy today is fundamentally a million times better than it was 100, 200, 300, 400 years ago. Humans were ruled by kings and queens, where land was inherited, there was no upward social mobility, slavery of peoples was much more rampant than it is today. Humanity was never equal, in it's history, but today if you ignore the top 1% we as a people actually enjoy fundamentally more equality than our predecessors who weren't part of the 1%. Also, while the inequality exists between the 1% and the 99% today, today actually have upward social mobility to become part of the 1%, where 400 years ago that wasn't really all that possible. I'm not saying the world is perfect, but if you look at it has actually gotten better overall. I'm also pretty sure that the implied worth of Rockefeller and some of those old guard monopolists on a inflation adjusted and power adjusted basis was probably many times higher than even Elon Musk's net worth today.

raiyu 6y ago

By the same token, Elon Musk is someone who succeeded, while thousands upon thousands of entrepreneurs fail, end up with debt, and don't have much to show for their work. So using survivorship bias to compare yourself to Elon Musk which is an atypical result when it comes to business formation doesn't make sense. You should probably compare yourself to the average business creator and see how you fare compared to them. It's like saying I'm not that great at Basketball, but let me compare myself to Michael Jordan.

ryanmercer 6y ago
No, not remotely. It's like pointing out the absurdity of 1 man, over the past year, having his net worth increase 2.32 million times the annual median household income (of the U.S.) of $68,703 (2019, per census.gov). While something like 20% of the planet doesn't even have access to reliably safe drinking water and something like 800 million lack the amount of food require for an active life.
- raiyu 6y ago
  Well the original post was someone who had access to reliable safe drinking water, so I'm not sure where that is coming from. Also if you look historically over the past 100 years overall rates of poverty have declined everywhere. If you look even further back in time the amount of rights that global citizens enjoy today is fundamentally a million times better than it was 100, 200, 300, 400 years ago. Humans were ruled by kings and queens, where land was inherited, there was no upward social mobility, slavery of peoples was much more rampant than it is today. Humanity was never equal, in it's history, but today if you ignore the top 1% we as a people actually enjoy fundamentally more equality than our predecessors who weren't part of the 1%. Also, while the inequality exists between the 1% and the 99% today, today actually have upward social mobility to become part of the 1%, where 400 years ago that wasn't really all that possible. I'm not saying the world is perfect, but if you look at it has actually gotten better overall. I'm also pretty sure that the implied worth of Rockefeller and some of those old guard monopolists on a inflation adjusted and power adjusted basis was probably many times higher than even Elon Musk's net worth today.