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Very interesting article. I myself have a fairly strong ambition to become rich. Not for the money in itself but for the -- as Dennis mentions -- the making of
by Emore 17y ago
Very interesting article. I myself have a fairly strong ambition to become rich. Not for the money in itself but for the -- as Dennis mentions -- the making of the money.
"Problem" is that I'm Swedish and thus live in Sweden. Becoming rich here is almost impossible, just as it is impossible to be poor.
So, what are the geographic constraints for becoming rich? I guess it boils down to the US?
- ableal 17y agoLook up "Swedes in richest men list". Some people seem to manage. I'd even suggest that "geographic constraints" is thinking it wrong, if you re-read Dennis, or look at actual facts. Discarding the formality of money accounts, there were "rich people" in Stalin's USSR and Mao's China. The degree of unpleasantness of the process varies, of course.
- dhs 17y agoI found the claim that "you can't get rich in Sweden" quite interesting, so I looked up some data. Here's my calculation: Rank Nation Number of billionaires Population People/Billionaire (rounded) 1 Germany 54 82,210,000 1,522,407 2 Russia 32 141,950,000 4,404,687 3 UK 27 60,587,300 2,243,974 4 Turkey 13 71,517,100 5,501,315 5 Italy 12 59,337,888 4,944,824 6 Spain 12 46,157,822 3,846,485 7 France 10 64,473,140 6,447,314 8 Sweden 9 9,234,209 1,026,015 According to this, about one in a million Swedes is a billionaire, a ratio better than anywhere else in Europe. Sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number_of_billionaires#Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_the_number... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_population http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_p... Edit: For comparison, I calculated the ratio for the USA (population 306,798,000, billionaires 859, according to the Wikipedia), and found that about one in 357,147 US citizens is a billionaire. So while it's appearantly relatively easy to become a billionaire in Sweden compared to the other European countries, it seems to be even easier in the US. I guess that means you're about half right...
- DanielBMarkham 17y agoNote1: This looks great in the link view but the format sucks on the general comments page. Could be a bug? Note2: Since I'm already here for that comment, the number of billionaires is not a very good measure of how easy it is to become rich. "Becoming rich" means moving from middle class to, say, millionaire status. So the metric would be around income changes at that level, not how many super rich people decide to live somewhere or another.
- Emore 17y agoHalf right is half wrong. I didn't think of looking at the subject as you presented it, thank you!