alt Hacker NewsFirst question: why? Why should I (or anyone) earn a billion dollars? PG made it seem like that's the ultimate goal somehow. Also, why only a billion dollars, PG? You see your infinite cancerous growth machine doesn't stop?
This article did not sit well with me. I have found myself rereading Beyond Smart, How to Write Usefully, The Need to Read, Life is Short. But this one is harmful; nobody needs a billion dollars.
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Why do many Americans feel like they need SUVs? Or huge 3000+ sq. ft. houses? Or five-star luxury vacations to impoverished countries where they barely have to lift a finger?
My take: they don't; nobody does. But when you aren't successful and don't have a lot, and when "success" is marketed to you as "big SUV; fancy big ass house; private jet; fancy vacations", you get trained into think you need much more than you actually do to be happy.
Certainly, $1B is a lot of money...
But you probably need >$10M to not HAVE to work and live a low-risk comfortable life in even modestly expensive parts of the US.
The funny thing about money is, it's really hard to save $1M and $10M, but once you get there, it's pretty easy to grow that substantially.
The fundamental problem in the West, IMO, is that we make it so hard to save even small amounts of money, and so easy to compound huge amounts of money (and no the EU is not much better on this front than the US).
It should be the opposite.