- Is it possible to be too rich?

Richdog said:
A personal fortunate of 8 billion means that spending 87k on a bottle of champagne is like us going out and buying a chocolate bar. It's a lot to you, because you're not super rich. To her, it's pittance and pocket change.

Wealth and what's classed as expensive is all relative at the end of the day, and when you have more money than you know what to do with, relative value takes on a completely different aspect.

The more they keep "throwing it about", the more goes into the economy. The problem with threads like this is that the vast majority of people will never understand what it's like to be truly rich and free from financial burden, and so they only ever make comparisons based on their own limited perceptions of money.
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When you get that rich, you can put money in savings and funds and wise investments and make more than $87k a day in interest alone from your money. It gets to a point where you have so much money you literally couldn't spend it as fast as you earn it. You'd have to be out buying lambos every other hour or something.

This sort of wealth is the wealth that bothers me a bit. One human being having the wealth and resources for about 100,000. It's senseless and self-indulgent and the only reason we 'allow' (and even valorize) such a thing is because these individuals supposedly represent the pinnacle of the capitalist system and ideology: they are, according to the rationalisation of the markets, the most 'successful' human beings. So we don't want to take their prize away from them; indeed, they are an incentive to other business-minded people, something to look up to.

But really it is a perverse inequality. I keep coming back to the example of the steel/oil/mineral magnates that make millions of dollars a day from the dirty hard-labour of unskilled workers that are paid a pittance. What do these people do with all this wealth? They are taking something out of the earth - something that will not be replenished, from our communal planet - and making mega-billions from it. And for what? To have a giant water-feature in the front-garden of their 75-room mansion? Would it really kill someone that is making millions a week to perhaps give a nice lump sum back at the end of every working year as a 'performance bonus' to the workers that spend 8 hours a day down a mineshaft in Australia? And yet they don't... and we defend them because they've 'worked so hard for what they have'. No. It gets to a point where these people are sitting in a position where they make as much money as an average, hard-working dilligent worker makes in a lifetime in the space of a week. They have not put in a lifetime's effort in that week. They are sitting pretty.
 
Supercow said:
The question is, whether such extravagancies really fuels the economy?
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Drip-down economies is a fallacy. Neo-liberalism is predicated on the idea of drip-down economics: that the rich accruing vast wealth will eventually filter down through market mechanisms and reach the shop-clerks and manual labourers on the bottom. Of course it doesn't work. The rich only want to collect more wealth for the Forbes Top 100 ego-competition, and they rarely invest any money in anything meaningful or large-scale in their home economies. Most of it is stored in tax-havens overseas and the stuff they do buy at home is exclusive, ultra-luxury Veblen goods that only profit equally-rich companies.
 
Saundie said:
To what end, though? What possible goal could you have that wouldn't be achievable unless you had more than $288bn?
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That's the point... for rich people avarice takes over, and the money becomes an end-in-itself rather than an actual means for anything. I think someone earlier in this thread (or perhaps in the thread about happiness) said that money is only useful so long as you are using it for something that makes you happy: money has no intrinsic value. Rich people collect money as if it has an intrinsic value and will automatically make them happier/better people. And along with this, we tend to look up to rich people as highly-driven, successful, motivated ubermenschs that must surely have their lives in divine order because of how they have done. But so much of it is luck and right-place-right-time stuff.
 
InKursion said:
But really it is a perverse inequality. I keep coming back to the example of the steel/oil/mineral magnates that make millions of dollars a day from the dirty hard-labour of unskilled workers that are paid a pittance. What do these people do with all this wealth? They are taking something out of the earth - something that will not be replenished, from our communal planet - and making mega-billions from it. And for what? To have a giant water-feature in the front-garden of their 75-room mansion? Would it really kill someone that is making millions a week to perhaps give a nice lump sum back at the end of every working year as a 'performance bonus' to the workers that spend 8 hours a day down a mineshaft in Australia? And yet they don't... and we defend them because they've 'worked so hard for what they have'. No. It gets to a point where these people are sitting in a position where they make as much money as an average, hard-working dilligent worker makes in a lifetime in the space of a week. They have not put in a lifetime's effort in that week. They are sitting pretty.
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Except you're sort of wrong, guys are earning £50k+ doing even the most basic jobs with more specialized jobs earning £100k-£150k+ easily. Do you have a source about them not receiving bonuses? I work in the oil & gas industry and seeing the "bonus month" cars some drillers turn up with I suspect their counterparts down under get very healthy bonuses as well!

There's a reason Perth is such an expensive place to live and a lot of it is because of the mining boom they've had recently. So to talk about poor oppressed workers is very misleading.
 
you guys do realise that once you hit the ceiling, you can go no further?

as an example, $288 billion for a single person? at this level money is piontless, and its amount is irelevant.

once your at this point, you are liquid, never to earn again, the solid platinum card is yours forever with no limit, you finished the game as such.

money only works as individual wealth at a lower level, ie: you and me

economy is an illusion, created by the very wealthy, to give as a standard to aspire to, using monetery value.

apoligies for spelling etc, i had a migraine, and i get ditzy with spelling and typing afterwards

/off to watch zietgiest
 
I'm talking about the people at the top of these corporations, not the skilled engineers and industry people who are highly-educated (and should be paid accordingly). I don't think the CEO's and senior business people really 'earn' their huge salaries. I can't speak for every employer and whether or not bonuses are given, but the point is that the amount of hard-labour a miner puts in compared to the amount of work a CEO is not comparable in terms of salary difference.
 
soundood said:
you guys do realise that once you hit the ceiling, you can go no further?

as an example, $288 billion for a single person? at this level money is piontless, and its amount is irelevant.

once your at this point, you are liquid, never to earn again, the solid platinum card is yours forever with no limit, you finished the game as such.
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First of all let I would spend $288 billion on something that makes me happy.
Secondly I would spend this money in under few years. Thus is why am saying it is not enough for me. I need more.

Upon caring calculations I have estimated to need just under $1 trillion.

However, I do understand that some people would settle for $288 billion, which is a respectable amount.
 
arekgreenman888 said:
First of all let I would spend $288 billion on something that makes me happy.
Secondly I would spend this money in under few years. Thus is why am saying it is not enough for me. I need more.

Upon caring calculations I have estimated to need just under $1 trillion.

However, I do understand that some people would settle for $288 billion, which is a respectable amount.
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Will you spend it all on saving the environment?
 
arekgreenman888 said:
First of all let I would spend $288 billion on something that makes me happy.
Secondly I would spend this money in under few years. Thus is why am saying it is not enough for me. I need more.

Upon caring calculations I have estimated to need just under $1 trillion.

However, I do understand that some people would settle for $288 billion, which is a respectable amount.
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Are you crazy? How would you spend $300 billion?

The CEO of Amazon just bought an entire island of Hawaii for himself - the 5th or 6th largest one I believe. It cost him $600 million. About 2% of his total worth. How the hell would you spend $300 billion in a "few years". Do you have any concept of just how much money that is?
 
Well not really mate. You talked about "the dirty hard-labour of unskilled workers that are paid a pittance" and I said that they are actually paid very well.

I think a lot of people in this thread are confusing effort with value which is a common misconception. Should I pay a guy with a spade £500/day for a month to dig my foundations because he's putting in a lot of "hard-labour" or should i pay a guy with a digger £5/day to come in and do it in 2 days because it's less effort for him?

Furthermore it's simply the large numbers that make things seem so out of proportion.

Would you say it's "fair" that a guy who owns a successful 10 man company pays himself around £80k-£100k? It's not that excessive for the hard work, risk and responsibility?

So why is it excessive that someone who owns a successful 10,000 man company pays themselves £100 million? The maths is the same, it's simply multiplied by the larger company.

Additionally the difference between "worth" and "earns" is huge. The guy in the first example might be worth a couple of million but can he really go out and buy a yacht and veyron? Not really...
 
arekgreenman888 said:
First of all let I would spend $288 billion on something that makes me happy.
Secondly I would spend this money in under few years. Thus is why am saying it is not enough for me. I need more.

Upon caring calculations I have estimated to need just under $1 trillion.

However, I do understand that some people would settle for $288 billion, which is a respectable amount.
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dont worry matey, i picked up that sarcasm ;) or you truly dont understand what $288 billion is, or more importantly how much that kind of money would make you/day if invested properly.

as dificult as it is to comprehend, you would earn more than you can spend, daily, there comes a point where you have 99% of the things you want, and that 1% you dont have, wouldnt cost what you were making.

i also supsect the percentages would be lower to be honest,
 
soundood said:
dont worry matey, i picked up that sarcasm ;) or you truly dont understand what $288 billion is, or more importantly how much that kind of money would make you/day if invested properly.

as dificult as it is to comprehend, you would earn more than you can spend, daily,
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Soundood there is absolutely no way I could earn more than I can spend, daily. That is impossible. I know how to spend money, any kind of amount, and spend it well.

I just told you guys I could spend one trillion dollars (usa) in one year. Yes I am that good.

Blesses
 
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