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While true to some degree that people don't prepare sufficiently, many simply cannot prepare. Taking aside the U.S. which bankrupts hundreds of thousands a year through an insane health care system (providing both highest cost and one of the lowest outcome on the quality side across the developed world), most people in most xountries have not much svsing possibilities to begin with. The best use of money is most often to invest in your housing, or your kids' education, not to mention food, regular healthcare, and basic amenities (1/10 of the world population can barely afford shoes or a toothbrush...).

Where more wisdom could come in is for much of the lower and the increasingly nonexistant upper middle class. But this is a fraction of the population.

If you want to tell a family with two adults working in lower wage jobs and two kids, and renting an apartment, to "save" there is usually not much margin, and their saving amounts to building up a small emergeny reserve which is eaten up by any family emergency or damage to car or housing. Little chance to save for old age ..

Agree. I think education is part of the answer, I don't know what the rest of the answer is unfortunately. I think its too easy to just point at the rich and blame them but I don't know if that is a productive solution.

Things getting more expensive over time is inflation, things getting bigger over time is the market responding to consumer desires...someone making so much money the interest eats the entire monitary supply is consumed is an extinction event.

The mind isn't great at groking just how much money we're talking about here. The people making the money are a combination of things: Not doing it for the money, doing it to rack up a high score, doing other things while the money does it's thing.

But the big takeaway is that money is effectively removed from the economy. When you can afford 200 100M yachts...you're not GOING TO BUY 200 100M yachts, so the yacht builders aren't going to use that money to further stimulate the economy.

"Hey man, I made a company that pays me $200B"

No, you didn't, you got in front of a money hose that shunted a crazy amount of money into your coffers due to gaming a market. You got lucky, and you can't DO anything with 99% of those funds, you just can't use it fast enough.

>Maybe I look at history with rose tinted glasses but my experience tells me people are spending more and more money.

They are... On rent. And food (even the exact same food). And everything else. Wages haven't kept up with housing for some 30 years and we're seeing the consequences now. The housing crash didn't help either.

Likewise, stuff got more expensive over the pandemic. Gas is triple the price now, streaming services is starting to approach cable prices once again, Dollar menu fast food isn't a thing anymore. The best coupons I could find is $4 for 2 burgers. And a typical combo can easily cost $15 by itself. $20k new cars aren't a thing anymore, and the used car market also inflated. The $3500 used Nissan with 140k miles bought in 2018 is seeing 9-10k on Craigslist.

I'm seeing the opposite effect you are. People aren't going out anymore: they can't even afford a monthly bar crawl where what used to be weekly or multiple times a week outing. Much less traveling happening. People who used to live alone are rooming up again because rent keeps increasing. Spending power and QoL is going down.

Me not buying avocado toast won't suddenly make me rich.

Define rich. Not buying $10 slices of avocado toast daily and investing the money instead into an index fund will definitely create some wealth over time.

I could do that a lifetime and still be about a billion away from a billion dollars.

Whats your point? It would help instead of being sarcastic to get to an idea. Thanks.

His point, I’m sure, is that the common criticism of the middle class wasting money on avocado toast is somehow stopping them saving that money and being super wealthy.

But, in reality, that amount of money, while non-trivial (~$3500/year) over a lifetime (not counting inflation) saved is still a fraction of a running error on a billionaire’s wealth. Over 40 years at current 5% is <$500,000.

Personally, I’d have the avocado toast.

Endlessly avocado for personal austerity while the super wealthy consume in ever increasing amounts is nonsense.

And I agree on most of these points. I did a poor job but what I was getting at in my original post was

1)We need education or something similar to help the poor from getting poorer.

2)I am not opposed to the idea of transferring wealth but I believe it is easier said than done. I don’t believe it’s something that would happen anytime soon in America and I get the feeling it’s the same in the UK. Because of that, I like to explore other solutions.

I agree, the billionaires have better lawyers and accountants than the governments. They also have far more flexibility.

The UK has been such a finance powerhouse for a long time because it ignores all the issues and foibles of the super wealthy customers it serves.

As soon as they start punishing them with taxes and rules they’ll just move. It would only work with a global alliance which would never happen. You’d end up with even more wealth moving to small specialized off shore jurisdictions.

I largely agree with what you mean, just not the way it was expressed.

I actually think something closer to name and shame, or setting better examples would work better. Trying to get Musk to emulate Carnegie setting up the libraries, Guggenheim and his art. Encourage and reward the behavior that sees the wealthy spending money to create great and lasting public institutions, rather than great and lasting private wealth.

All coupled with an insane inheritance tax without loopholes.

Thanks for the discourse. I think my tone changed when I saw the sarcasm with avocado toast because I grow tired too quickly when people just dismiss discussions and ideas so quickly.

The current economic system would collapse if people started saving their money significantly more. Money isn't a resource like canned food or barrels of oil that can be stored to prepare for the future. You can't eat money.

Money is a claim for resources that mostly don't yet even exist. To make use of money somebody has to do the labor and extract the resources to produce something useful.