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I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need". Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.
by nancyminusone 1y ago
I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need".
Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.
- atonse 1y agoMaybe I'm not creative enough but I've tried this thought exercise with friends and it's a fun one. The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn. And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible. I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory. At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?
- stronglikedan 1y ago> try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. High end audio equipment. Done. Next!
- tempestn 1y agoRemember you need enough left over to throw off an income to maintain your yacht and private jet. Those things aren't cheap.
- qaq 1y agoArt
- atonse 1y agoYeah but doesn't art and similar collectors items usually make you MORE money?
- FergusArgyll 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis
- oinfoalgo 1y agoPeople don't talk about their losing art trades or the art they over paid for and are trying to sell in a completely illiquid market. We were in a huge fine art bubble up to covid. This decade has been a much different story. It is a boring news story though compared to a Ken Griffin balling out last decade buying his favorite paintings for incredible sums of money.
- FuriouslyAdrift 1y agoHigh dollar art is primarily used as a way to hide wealth. Most of it sits in warehouses at duty-free ports. https://www.ams-tax.com/blog/post/the-secret-world-of-art-tax-havens-how-billionaires-use-freeports-to-avoid-taxes https://www.ams-tax.com/blog/post/the-secret-world-of-art-ta...
- azinman2 1y ago$10M being enough depends on a lot of things: 1. Do you have children, and if so, are they going to expensive private schools or have other expensive hobbies 2. Are you planning on stopping working, and how many years do you need to support at what lifestyle 3. Debt 4. Do you support others, like parents, etc 5. Do you have health issues, or will you, that will be expensive to support There are more factors but these are just some that prevent 10M from being enough.
- dbingham 1y agoIt also matters whether we are considering it a static $10 million or considering reality. In reality, if you have $10 million, you put it in the S&P500 and make an average of 10% ($1 million) per year. Far more than inflation and more than enough to cover those things you're talking about unless you have a pretty extreme medical condition or very expensive hobbies.
- phkahler 1y agoExcept the market is a bubble. It's going to pop within 10 years as the boomers retire and die. Thats assuming low inflation. With significant inflation the younger folks might afford to prop it up.
- dkural 1y agoI agree with this directionally, however I think you'll make more like 7.2% per year, and inflation will be about 2.5% per year. You'll also likely pay about 30% in federal and local taxes in the USA on it since you're actually selling it to live on it (more on taxes later). So you'll pay 2.2% in taxes. So on average you'll get 7.2 - (2.5 + 2.2) = 2.5% of income. If you have $10M, you can withdraw about 250K a year in today's dollars every year. i.e next year you can withdraw 256.3K or so, and keep doing this to keep your current standard of living. In down years you may want to adjust / tighten belt a tiny bit to not veer off track too much. And you can get cute with taxes but not recommended. That loan interest will add up over time, and when it's time to actually pay those loans, you'll still sell stock and pay taxes on it, unless your offspring inherit both.. and who knows what the laws will be then.
- ethersteeds 1y agoI'm of the "only way to win is not to play" mind with this exercise. I would peel off 10-20 million to eliminate lifetime financial concerns for my circle, and immediately go MacKenzie Scott on the rest, trying to put it towards maximum societal benefit. Need to get that set up before the yacht brochures start arriving in the mail. Before the dark whispers take hold...
- onlypassingthru 1y ago... and, hopefully, before the professional arm candy starts "accidentally" bumping into you in line at the coffee shop.
- sitkack 1y agoWhat a shallow, dismissive and sexist thing to say.
- hactually 1y agohow so?
- onlypassingthru 1y agoDo you think athletes and musicians are the only ones with groupies? Your assumption about gender reveals your bias.
- sitkack 1y agoInform me about my assumption of gender.
- achenet 1y agoNot GP, but I suspect it's the part where you call them "sexist" - It seems like in your head "professional arm candy" must be female. "Boy-toys" are a thing, and people from the Kardashian mother to the local gay nightlife empresario have them :) By assuming that "professional arm candy" must be of one gender... You've kinda accidentally made a sexist remark, ironically enough ^^"
- sseagull 1y agoThis made an impression on me: https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/ https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/ Buying all this stuff that seems expensive, but then seeing that it barely makes a dent in a truly wealthy person’s fortune. Of course, he wants even more…
- orthoxerox 1y agoI wanted to buy a thousand tanks for my own private army, but it's a pain to buy them one by one.
- artursapek 1y agoIt's a clear sign of a simpleton when a person thinks of Nintendos and other stupid gadgets as "how you would spend Elon's money"
- dcminter 1y agoI've always been given to understand that making a small fortune (out of a large one) was the main goal of owning a bookshop. I'd try that :)
- danschuller 1y agoI don't know if you intended this to be only spent selfishly. But if you look to how the old robber barons spent their money they did things like giving the US a large portion of it's public library system. I don't think it would be hard find things to do like this that make everyones lives better.
- paulryanrogers 1y agoCharity washing is a thing. And you get more control than just paying those pesky takes and letting the leasers choose that happens to it. I'm still a fan of libraries. Just not private philanthropy displacing what should be public utilities and institutions.
- thrance 1y agoThe fact you were able to get >$1B already made a lot of people's lives significantly worse. Charity is just a way to whitewash hoarding and exploitation.
- kleiba 1y agoNice house, nice car, allowance for everyday stuff (food, bills, etc.) and travel, and a little bit of money for retirement. The rest: charities.
- whywhywhywhy 1y agoSo you just make some charity execs rich instead of you?
- kleiba 1y agoThat's quite a cynical point of view, and while all charities certainly have overhead to account for, and not all charities are created equal in that respect, organizations like Charity Watch can tell you a long list of organizations that use donations very efficiently - in the sense that almost all of the money actually goes towards the cause, not the people running the charity. https://www.charitywatch.org/our-charity-rating-process https://www.charitywatch.org/our-charity-rating-process
- ryandrake 1y agoThere was a long Reddit thread[1] a while ago that describes what people in various wealth tranches spend their money on. It's very long, but the TLDR is: They don't buy "things" so much as they buy Experiences, Access, Influence, Time, Political Power, and so on. 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/comment/cnnmca8 https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/comment/c...
- xyst 1y ago> Maybe I'm not creative enough > So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house) You answered your own question. Very boring and selfish answer, and just serving yourself (ie, greed). Your son has more creativity than you. If you are given $1B in hard cash, and the first thing you do is spend it on yourself. You are probably the worst person to ever get a windfall.
- jama211 1y agoThat was an example - not what they’d choose to pick themselves. You misread their comment and then came down hatefully upon them for it. Shame on you.
- Natsu 1y ago> The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. That gets a lot easier to spend if you decide you want to explore space or something.
- saclark11 1y agoSounds like you'll love "Spend Bill Gates' Money" [1] [1]: https://neal.fun/spend https://neal.fun/spend
- which 1y agoIt would seem that accumulating stuff is a waste of time at a point much lower than one billion. On the other hand, giving every Debian maintainer $500 a month is ~$5M a year. Add in Gentoo, Alpine, and other things I like and you're looking at probably double that total. Ivy admission for kids is a few million a year for 5-10 years... Retaking Artsakh would be north of $3 billion
- jama211 1y agoNot to be that guy as I think your point is fantastic, but 1bn dollar yachts exist, probably just to break your question! Haha
- jp57 1y agoThe best part of this game is that it takes time to spend the money, if you can't manage to spend more than 4-5%/year then your wealth will actually be growing. For reference, on $1bn that's $40M/year or about $100k/day in earnings if you just have the cash in a money market account.
- ponector 1y agoThat is not so hard. Try to buy/build something really big and price tag easily goes to 1bn. A skyscraper. An eco-friendly village. A ship. A spacecraft.
- simonebrunozzi 1y agoThe "number" is always part of a big debate. There's no right or wrong. Usually, they say that you can maintain your wealth (adjusted for inflation) indefinitely by using the so-called "safe withdrawal rate" [0], which people put between 1% and 4%. So, say that you have $1M in wealth, and you pick your SWR at 2%. It means that you can use 2% of that, or $20,000, every year, knowing that your wealth will keep growing at least by the inflation rate, for a long time (30 years, or 100, or whatever). If you have $10M, you can spend $200,000/year. Clearly, it depends on your lifestyle how much you need to have saved in order to FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early). All of this assumes that for the next 30, 40 years, we will not see any catastrophic or monumental changes in how the financial system works. [0]: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Safe_withdrawal_rates
- randlet 1y ago2% is quite low. Most of the FIRE community would consider even 3% quite conservative.
- insane_dreamer 1y agoWhen you have that much money, you're not interesting in buying things anymore, you're interested in buying power, people. You want to buy a social network. Or see if you can swing an election to your favor. That's what you do with $Bs. It's usually not very good.
- deepsun 1y ago> try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. https://neal.fun/spend/ https://neal.fun/spend/
- missedthecue 1y agoHmm. Doesn't include ongoing costs. The yacht for example will cost $1-4m a year simply to own it, and that's ongoing cost forever. The jet will have a similar figure. A $45m mansion isn't cheap to keep running either. Purchase these things and suddenly you're on an unsustainable financial path with a $1b completely liquid net worth. Forget about charitable giving. $20m of gifts annually put you deep in the red.
- magicmicah85 1y agoBought 10 million cats, 10 million dogs and 10 million acres of land and have $40 billion leftover for food.
- vanderZwan 1y agoAlso: https://direkris.itch.io/you-are-jeff-bezos https://direkris.itch.io/you-are-jeff-bezos ... which even has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Jeff_Bezos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Are_Jeff_Bezos
- deepsun 1y agoToo much hate in there.
- CGMthrowaway 1y ago>try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. I'll bite. Private island, superyacht, G7, prime mansions in LA, NYC, London, Singapore, collection of old masters, part owner in an NFL team, establish a foundation and trusts for the kids/grandkids, trip to space. Easy
- eps 1y ago> try to spend $1bn on stuff Buy an election. If not, buy a newspaper, a TV network or a media outlet with a good outreach. Then you can get you 1B back tenfold.
- thaumaturgy 1y agoI mean, can I not just spend the money to buy a better society in which to live? Museums. I love museums. They all need more support. Kids need more places to do field trips. Libraries ... they are experiencing budget cuts everywhere now as cities prioritize police spending. Parks. Homes for people that can't afford them. Seriously, one of the most effective possible cures for homelessness is to set up a program that helps people cover their rent for a month or two if they get into trouble. Health care. Like, there's got to be a pile of people that need urgent health care and can't afford it, right? Education. Adult education, too. Science and research. And most, maybe all of these, aren't even things that necessarily need an entirely new organization to spearhead them, or some kind of dramatic social change. They are all things that exist right now and need more funding than anything else. You could hire a small team to just look up all kinds of programs all day long and write checks for them and it would be enormously impactful. I just... the answer to this seems so blindingly obvious to me, and then I read the rest of the comments, and I really wonder when exactly the hacker ethos got co-opted by the crab mentality.
- bearl 1y agoIt seems like a lot then I think about how California’s EDD department gave 50 billion to criminals in 2020/2021 and then it feels less ginormous. My answer because I don’t see it: climate change research. A billion isn’t much but if it can help save the planet that would be worth it to me personally.
- renewiltord 1y agoThis is crazy. I could easily spend a billion dollars without even thinking. That doesn't even get you a novel drug. Like, if I made $100b I have a shit ton of things I could attack with that. Even a trillion dollars I could probably spend. I like sailboats so a yacht sounds nice, but I cannot believe it even a fraction of the satisfaction of developing some research, or of having the fundamental research itself done.
- jppope 1y agoI hear what you are saying: consumables and normal luxury items are hard to spend a lot of money on (houses, cars, boats, planes, clothes, food, etc)... if you however were to choose to spend a lot of money on the R&D required to reducing human suffering you'll find that the money will go like its on fire. Build a new drug, create novel ai tech, driverless cars... $1B would feel like you need to clip coupons for the grocery store.
- artursapek 1y agoThat's only if you spend your money on stuff. I wouldn't spend it on stuff, I would fund things like ambitious art and architecture projects. If you can't think of ways to allocate $1B you're probably a very boring person, and if your first thought is "yachts" then you're definitely one.
- anon191928 1y agoor just look at how many big yatcht Gabe newell owns and try to calculate cost of maintaining them for a year. That alone easily requires $1billion invested in somewhere so returns can maintain the ownership + trips. Also now he now owns shipyard too.
- codedokode 1y agoWhat's the point of having several yachts? You cannot be on board several of them at the same time anyway.
- prawn 1y agoFaster to fly between yachts stashed in different parts of the world than it is to move one around. If it were just for your own use, you could have it moved while you were elsewhere occupied between trips, but I assume people would make them available to family and friends also.
- kragen 1y agoYachts and houses are boring. Can't you think of anything you'd rather do with your life than live in a house and go sailing? You can do that without money! A million dollars is, roughly speaking, a person-year of dedicated professional services from a world-class professional of almost any profession. There are a few exceptions, like stockbrokers, surgeons, and some kinds of lawyers. But a billion dollars buys you, say, 1000 person-years of the best professionals. For millions of dollars, you could have your own vaccination program, your own particle accelerator, your own web browser, your own steel mill, your own religious cult, your own pyramid, your own AI research lab, your own permaculture experiment station, your own rare book collection (which you could digitize), and so on. That's leaving aside personal consumption of things like a diplomatic passport from a foreign country, a private doctor, a comfortable apartment in a former missile silo, and a helicopter to get to it with. Your yacht isn't going to do you much good if you get arrested in a foreign country on trumped-up charges because you unintentionally insulted the wrong guy's daughter, or if your cancer goes undiagnosed until stage 4.
- atonse 1y agoThis guy knows how to billionaire.
- kragen 1y agoI had the best mentors. All I lack is the wealth! Not all hope is lost; Zhu Yuanzhang was born a peasant and was iliterut before becoming an orphan and a homeless beggar. On top of that, his oldest friend tried to murder him! And that worked out brilliantly in the end.
- jonas21 1y agoThere was a movie from the 80s with this premise. When I mention this to people, I'm usually surprised to find out that I'm the only one in the group who's seen it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_fi...
- spauldo 1y agoExcellent movie. I haven't seen it in a couple decades, I should watch it again.
- calf 1y agoI assume people with $1bn are playing Civilization IRL, they aren't "spending" the way consumers think of goods.
- bornfreddy 1y ago> The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. Genie: I’ll give you one billion dollars if you can spend 100M in a month. There are 3 rules: No gifting, no gambling, no throwing it away SRE: Can I use AWS? Genie: There are 4 rules
- paulryanrogers 1y agoCan I train AI models? Can I mine crypto?
- UltraSane 1y agoThe only real way to spend billions is to build many huge houses all over the world or ONE really big house. To spend hundreds of billions you would have to build something ridiculous like a mile high pyramid with a 1 square mile base.
- x-complexity 1y ago> The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. Easy: The largest ship in the world by area. (Goal - either 500m x 500m, or at least 0.25km^2 with the breadth >= 300m) The current status quo for bulk carriers are the Valemax ships (360m x 65m), with each one costing around $100 million. (actual figure wildly varies, but sticks around that number) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax#Sale_of_ships https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax#Sale_of_ships https://www.tradewindsnews.com/containerships/evergreen-adds-trio-worth-550m-to-orders-for-giant-a-class-container-ships/2-1-1185959 https://www.tradewindsnews.com/containerships/evergreen-adds... (500 * 500) / (360 * 65) = 10.683760683760683 10.68 * $100 million = $1.068 billion Even just going with 5 Valemax ships side-by-side (360m x 325m) costs half a billion.
- TheAceOfHearts 1y agoPosts like these seem a bit silly to me because it's incredibly easy to spend billions of dollars as soon as you get away from a consumer mindset. The value in a billion dollars comes from being able to shape the future in whichever direction you want. I'm not interested in spending money just to make my own life marginally more comfortable, but in elevating the quality of life and overall experience of everyone around me. Here's a few random frustrations I have: Most modern hardware appliances are not easily repaired or hackable. I'd love to manufacture and sell open hardware appliances which prioritize repairability and maintainability, including sharing the CAD models and opening up the firmware. Despite the years of effort that have gone into the Linux Desktop Experience, it still often lacks polish in various areas. You could afford to hire world class engineers and designers to fix up every minor annoyance and really provide the most deluxe desktop experience possible without compromising on the slightest detail. Not only that, you could contract companies to add Linux support for any essential tools and applications which aren't already supported. And that's not even getting into the ability to fund the creation of really outstanding media. Most modern kid's entertainment treats them like morons while slapping them in the face with basic lessons. You could create some truly delightful kid shows without having to skimp on any aspect, and really lay the foundations for creating a brighter future. Embed lessons of every major topic as part of the show without being hamfisted about it, and when they start to encounter those challenging topics in school they will have some foundational models on which to build upon. A basic example: you can teach a kid the fundamentals of calculus from an intuitive perspective, and when they actually learn proper calculus in school it'll be much easier to ramp up. Heck, you could fund the modernization of a ton of college level educational content with enough money. Buy the rights to any important textbooks, rewrite as needed, then make them freely available. Hire a team of world class artists, animators, and builders to help create supporting materials / content that cover any topic. Pair that with world class educators and experts. You put that all together and create the most powerful repository of high quality educational content that the world has ever seen. By doing this you're laying the foundations for the development of future generations and setting them up for success! Those are just some quick thoughts which I'm willing to write up here... If I thought about it longer I'd probably be able to come up with more significant quality of life improvements that could be spread out if someone was willing to spend a few billion dollars into making them into a reality. Oh here's a final quick one: funding maker spaces across the country. It's not clear how much potential could be unlocked if we had widely available maker spaces where people can ask for help with their projects and ideas. Sometimes all it takes is having someone who can point you to the right tools or people.
- strken 1y agoMaybe I'm missing the point, but all that stuff is personal spending on luxury goods, which is probably the least useful thing money can do. If your goal is something like "solve supply-side housing in my city" then you might need to build hundreds of high-rise apartment blocks, at which point you'll be able to burn through $1bn pretty quickly. And yeah, you'll eventually make your money back, but that's a side benefit.
- thrance 1y ago50 billion cheeseburgers. https://neal.fun/spend/ https://neal.fun/spend/
- user_7832 1y ago> The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go. Try to reduce stray animal suffering across a single city here in India. Or if you somehow are successful, extend that to the country. If you think that leaves you with a lot of funds, maybe provide a few villages with healthcare checkups for a few days.
- gdubs 1y agoBuy a sports team :)
- fragmede 1y agoComing up with a list of things to buy isn't an interesting use of the money. Starting companies, using that money to pay people to do things, for, say, 10 years, for all industries you want to get involved in. A billion dollars, over ten years, for 1,000 people, is 100k. Which is fairly decent salary. Make it 500 people and give them housing. What to use those people for is left as an exercise for the reader.
- threatofrain 1y agoI'd like to build something interesting so I want more. Some people want to buy homes, happiness, and family prosperity with their wealth. If that's the case then $10M is too much. That's multiple homes territory. But if you want to build something for society and not die doing it then you might need more than $10M.
- qaq 1y agoDepends on where person wants to live
- threatofrain 1y agoYou can live in the Bay Area.
- qzw 1y agoIsn’t that backwards? Most people need to build a business to make the $10M+ in the first place. Are you talking about a nonprofit or an airplane/movie business (both famous for turning large fortunes into small ones). Otherwise you probably should follow the advice from the “Producers”: never put your own money in the show.
- elliotto 1y agoI think you have conflated 'build something for society' with 'build a business' which is very hacker-news-core. My mind immediately went to building infrastructure and schools in rural Nepal, not building a b2b saas that raises customer acquisition rates by 8 %.
- qzw 1y agoYou might be right, but somehow GP’s comment didn’t come across that way to me. Does it take more than $10M in wealth before someone can build a school in rural Nepal? It just seemed like a convenient rationale for wanting to accumulate a lot of wealth, which is also very hacker-news-core.
- 1y ago
- gota 1y agoActual numbers aside - I couldn't posssibly respect and admire Woz's statement more than I did. My English may not be enough to express it but above all else it exhudes a "clarity of purpose" that is remarkable
- dfee 1y agoAnd a couple of homes. In the Bay Area, that’s another $10MM
- stonemetal12 1y agoWould buying a good chunk of land make you a "hoarder"? Depending on where you are 20 acres can be more than $10 million even before you build a house etc.
- zarzavat 1y agoDefinitions of wealth often exclude primary residence for this reason, it depends a lot on where you live, and it's also not very liquid. There are poor people who own large houses (but can't sell for whatever reason), and there are rich people who don't own any house at all.
- delusional 1y agoThere's an argument to be had about how if that was viewed as hoarding and taxed appropriately, land would probably be a lot cheaper.
- kube-system 1y agoEarth has about 3 acres of habitable land per person.
- carlosjobim 1y agoOur lord and savior already answered your question 2000 years ago in Matthew 21:33-46 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A33-46&version=NLT https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A33...
- vitaflo 1y agoSpending $10m to buy 20 acres is hardly a "need". I think people here are missing the point of the quote by throwing out a bunch of absurd technicalities.
- dismalaf 1y agoI agree. With $10 million I'd immediately buy a decent chunk of land in the middle of nowhere, build a modest home + a guest home or two, have a hobby farm, and retire with a solid $8 million or so left. Invest, live off interest, done.
- csallen 1y agoMost rich people don't "hoard" money like Scrooge McDuck. They're generally spending it on: 1. Equity in companies or loans to the government. 2. Expensive food, homes, clothes, hotel stays, travel, child care, etc.
- skeaker 1y agoCitation needed, but also buying homes (that you don't intend to live in or actually use) is still hoarding, and is arguably even worse than hoarding wealth.
- nicbou 1y agoI would measure it in multiples of the median income. At 5-6x I imagine that you can buy anything you want but not everything. You are still somewhat price sensitive but rarely bothered by a setback or an expensive meal.
- socalgal2 1y agoThere's lots of things I'd like to do that would cost more than $10 million. Maybe if you're saying I personally only have $10m but control $1t? Things I'd do if I didn't have to raise money, find investors, etc. Bribe/payoff whoever I had to and then build a real transit system in LA,SF,Seattle as one example. Consider making a museum/expo-center that's like the Lucas Museum (https://www.lucasmuseum.org/ https://www.lucasmuseum.org/) but centered around Video Games and/or Interactive Digital Art.
- carlosjobim 1y agoHaving more money than that is not for your personal expenses and comfort, but to finance projects at a large scale. That's why they need more than $10 million for space exploration, or for setting up giant factories to make any kind of goods, for developing massive infrastructure, for warfare, etc etc.
- teaearlgraycold 1y agoMore than that should be taxed at a 100% marginal tax rate. Eliminate endless greed as a motivator.
- alchemist1e9 1y agoIt’s so disappointing to constantly see this type of evil envy driven nonsense posted on HN. Capitalism has delivered humanity unbelievable prosperity and improvements in living conditions. Anyone finding themselves agreeing with ideas like 100% marginal taxes needs to look deep into their own soul and understand where it originates from and then go back and learn history and read authors like Hayek, Mises, and Sowell. Sowell - “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
- teaearlgraycold 1y agoDepends how you define Capitalism. I’m not opposed to money and markets. And I don’t need anyone else’s money. I’m doing fine. I think other people need the rich’s money.
- alchemist1e9 1y ago> I think other people need the rich’s money. There’s not enough rich people with enough money/assets/wealth to actually make a difference and even worse nobody will be rich once you try take from them. That experiment has literally been tried dozens and dozens of times with 100% failure rate. Economies are organic organisms and your type of ideas as cyanide. Please educate yourself and stop believing in fairy tales. Socialism is also extremely unethical and even evil from religious perspectives. If you need a quick starter guide you can read https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-that-never-dies/ https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-th... to get some basics. I’d be curious what educational system you went through that failed to teach the dark evil and catastrophic consequences of your 100% marginal tax rate type ideas.
- 1y ago
- latchkey 1y agoReminds me of this old post. Once you get to a certain level of wealth, it isn't about money, it is about power. https://www.reddit.com/r/ifiwonthelottery/comments/9qv4e1/post_on_the_different_levels_of_wealth_that_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ifiwonthelottery/comments/9qv4e1/po...
- lutusp 1y ago> I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need". Years ago I lived on $40 per month, after building my own cabin in Oregon -- wood heat, kerosene lanterns. Then I bought an Apple II and things got more complicated (https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programming.php https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm...). But basically I agree with you. Most people will never have that much, or need it.
- tmendez 1y agoFlight delayed for a couple hours at SFO; this was a great read, thank you!
- blendo 1y agoYes. With $10 million in the bank, earning 4%, you'll see $400,000 a year, less taxes. Whereas with $10 billion, you'll get $400 million a year, or about $7.5 million PER WEEK! I think guys like Musk and Andreesen (&SBF) might have gone insane just trying to spend their money.
- supriyo-biswas 1y agoMost of a typical billionaire’s net worth is a lot of equity though.
- dehrmann 1y ago> With $10 million in the bank, earning 4%, you'll see $400,000 a year, less taxes. This isn't your point, but $400k puts you in a top tax bracket, so figure 30% of that goes to taxes. that brings your return down to 2.8%. The Fed wants to keep inflation at 2%, but it's usually a bit higher, leaving your real return at 0.3%. That's $30k per year.