I think the idea to evaluate yourself or other people as Millionaire or Billionaire is crap.
Being middle class has value, being upper class has value, being rich has value, having a degree has value, having provided a meaningful recognisable addition to human development has value. It's so easy to have such a number drop to 50% or to zero even, without changing anything about your value, your opportunities etc. For instance if Elon Musk lost all his money tomorrow you bet he would still be able to attempt another huge project next week. But if I give you one billion dollar, you might still not be able to start a project of the same size, because you miss the skill, connections, track record etc.
The most important thing to worry about is actually doing something valuable for the people around you. The more people you can influence positively the better your life will become as well.
Example: In my country there's a start-up that tries to revolutionize the train system. All they achieved was to repair one second-hand train, rent the railway slots to drive once up south to north and once down north to south, a few days a week. Then they ran out of money.
But! It really influenced a lot of people positively, made great press, showed strong customer engagement. So even after going broke they were able to continue after a short break, because someone bought them. No money, no profit, loads of way-too-hard-work nobody else wants to do. And still they are able to get this working, because they provide something provably valuable.
This is non sense, the life for the rich is far better than for the poor. If you don't believe that is true, then you haven't been exposed to it enough. Having high status in any society can have massive advantages. More leisure time, better mates, ability to purchase expensive health care and therapy, organic food, the freedom to go anywhere in the world, the list goes on and on
I totally agree. But the set of rich people and the set of billionaires are only overlapping. They are not the same. And funnily it's not even true that one would be a subset of the other. It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death. But at least I personally would say if you are starving you are certainly not rich. Rich means having the ability to get what you need and a lot of things you want, including things that are unavailable to most. Would you agree?
It can be considered a subtle difference, but it's the point I'm trying to make. Stop worrying about the number "one billion US dollars" and instead start worrying about becoming rich.
> It's possible to be a billionaire on paper and starve to death.
While "possible", the kinds of scenarios that lead to a starving billionaire are the kinds in which _everyone_ starves (ie widespread famine). If one's paper is actually worth $1B there are some sane people who would pay a large sum to buy it for a discount. Say $500M. I would argue that billionaires are able to live fundamentally easier lives than non-billionaires and most difficulties they face can be solved by 1) paying money or 2) accepting sub optimal outcomes (eg, not working on their business to make it outperform the S&P 500).
I do agree with a good chunk of your sentiment about socialized skills that allow the elite to recognize and interact with each other and the basic idea that managing large amounts of money is not fraught with perils (scammers, sales people, poor advice, open hands wanting "their share"). A simple example of that is lottery winners. They know how to spend millions, but not now how to make it last or make it work.
I disagree. I've grown up with people from both rich and poor ends. The poor struggle with trying to pay their bills. The rich may be running an operation that makes $20,000 a day, paying $17,000 in daily operating costs. They don't sleep at night, worried about when these costs get too high. While they don't worry about starving, they carry heavy burdens. They can go on more expensive vacations, but they may be too stressed to even start.
And the more power you hold, the more people want it. Competitors, colleagues, employees, spouses and children. I have seen many rich people have their wealth ripped apart with years of family squabbling.
The optimum to tweak for is freedom, not wealth. You want the freedom to not work, but with great power comes great responsibility. The optimum may be a little less than being a millionaire. Billionaires possibly push far beyond the optimum. Many wake at 4, lacking the freedom to have a lazy Sunday or to just diss Zuckerberg on Twitter without it being sensationalized.
Classic example is doing a startup (and failing to take off). You have a very large nominal wealth, but you practically bankrupted yourself, because as a founder you probably spent all your money to try to raise more funds, or on sales, or on product development.
Yes, the Forbes list is different.
And yes, erikb's point about being a billionare is strange, because not many people would consider anyone a billionare just because someone funded a company with nominal value 1B$.
However, erikb is right, that rich people have cheap access to enormously powerful success multipliers. (They can very realistically - almost literally - get a cheap loan from any of their dad's neighbour, or get in touch with anyone, and so on.)
It's also hard for me to see where our experiences diverge so much that we can't understand each other. Maybe you don't know that billionaires are not having this billion dollars on their bank account, but instead it's a calculation of assumed ownership of stock, houses, derivates etc?
If you have a billion dollar on a bank account with a bank that would cash that amount of money, then I'd say yes you are rich. But the Forbes list is mostly guessed values that are used in calculations, based on real but unknown values that may change a lot between one day and another.
I hope that was the point. If not give me some hints or explain your point of view more detailed. I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that we actually share the same view but express it differently.
Please tell me how many on the Forbes list are starving. Hell, give me an example of any billionaire ever that ended up starving. The point you’re trying to make has no basis in reality.
What about health problems? Stress? Happiness? Money can only go so far to alleviate problems in these and other areas. When it comes to the biggest problems people have, I would agree that most cannot be solved with money.
If it did, I wouldn't find rich people who have more problems than I do. Definitely would not swap places with some of them.
Sure: If you take the same two people with the same intelligence, skills, and problems, having more money likely helps. But that's not the reality.
Given any random two people - one in the upper middle class and one very rich - perhaps on average the richer one will be a bit happier. But if you give me any random rich person, it'll be trivial for me to find a happier upper middle class person.
The difference in happiness is not huge, and the variance is high.
Being middle class has value, being upper class has value, being rich has value, having a degree has value, having provided a meaningful recognisable addition to human development has value. It's so easy to have such a number drop to 50% or to zero even, without changing anything about your value, your opportunities etc. For instance if Elon Musk lost all his money tomorrow you bet he would still be able to attempt another huge project next week. But if I give you one billion dollar, you might still not be able to start a project of the same size, because you miss the skill, connections, track record etc.
The most important thing to worry about is actually doing something valuable for the people around you. The more people you can influence positively the better your life will become as well.
Example: In my country there's a start-up that tries to revolutionize the train system. All they achieved was to repair one second-hand train, rent the railway slots to drive once up south to north and once down north to south, a few days a week. Then they ran out of money.
But! It really influenced a lot of people positively, made great press, showed strong customer engagement. So even after going broke they were able to continue after a short break, because someone bought them. No money, no profit, loads of way-too-hard-work nobody else wants to do. And still they are able to get this working, because they provide something provably valuable.