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Edit: You did it elsewhere in this thread too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44840174. That's not cool, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
Fortunately, your recent comment history looks fairly free of this kind of thing (that's good), so it should be easy to fix.
Over the long run, though, sustained returns depend on fundamentals like productivity growth, population growth, and inflation. Without productivity gains, corporate profits would eventually stagnate, making it difficult to maintain a 7% annual return. Risk premiums, interest rates, and valuations also change over time, so fixed assumptions rarely hold for decades. In short, the doubling math works, but it oversimplifies the economic reality that long-term stock growth ultimately relies on productivity.
Sometimes I feel the reason for many political views presented on HN is misunderstanding of very basic of finance and economy. The whole discussion here that started with absolutely nonsense comparison (stonks go up faster than wages) is one example of that.
Edit: You did it elsewhere in this thread too - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44842213. That's not cool, regardless of how wrong someone is or you feel they are.
Fortunately, your recent comment history looks mostly free of this kind of thing (that's good), so it should be easy to fix.
Please don't harangue other users, regardless of how badly they're missing a point or you feel they are.
If you put 10 million into the S&P 500 in 2002 you would get a dividend of roughly 132k (1.32%). That's your share, as a owner, of the wealth produced that year across all the companies you own tiny parts of. Keep the money there, do absolutely nothing, and in 2025 it has grown to 70 million. Your yearly payout is roughly 925k, 7 times what it was 20 years ago.
You agree with this? And then we compare that to wages, and see that they have grown significantly less. You agree to this as well? For sake of argument, let's say they doubled.
From this I conclude:
- Income from capital grows exponentially faster than income from salaries.
- The person who invested 10 million in 2002 gets a larger fraction of what the economy produces compared to a salaried person today than 20 years ago.
- That difference will increase if the stock market continues as it has done in the past.
Please help me understand which conclusion you disagree with, and why.