> This trend has been running for a long time. IBM, founded in 1896, took 45 years to reach a billion 2020 dollars in revenue. Hewlett-Packard, founded in 1939, took 25 years. Microsoft, founded in 1975, took 13 years. Now the norm for fast-growing companies is 7 or 8 years.
How much of this can be directly attributed to actions of the federal reserver?
Besides, when the federal government passes a $2T spending bill, isn't that basically guaranteed to create more billion dollar companies?
Okay yeah, but that's like "Forbes 400" level rich, which is almost nobody. What about "acquire $10M by 50 years old" level of wealth? To me, that seems like a much more interesting story because it captures many more people.
How many consultants & I-bankers do you know? You sound like you come from a remarkably entrepreneurial subset of the world. Where I come from, everyone wants to make MD/Partner, ether in law, finance, or consulting. More generally, MBA applications to top schools have been rising for years. Besides, if 10x the median individual income isn't enough outside of SF/NYC, you got bigger problems.
I used to work in investment research in NYC. So I know those types, but the vibe was the same. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but a lot of people I know actually have had startup success. I know a few people that ended up making over 25 million by 30. None of them made it in law or finance, and none of them ever wanted to continue their finance career. 10x the median income just isn’t that much. If you have three kids, mone…
> 10x the median income just isn’t that much. If you have three kids
You are taking home (in California; approximately) net 7.4 times what people with three kids on the median income are taking home.
If you choose to live a median lifestyle, you can save 86% of your net income and therefore retire on it within 4 years.
I think some of this depends on the area. Even in an average area, a $200k salary with a family could give the option for early retirement. I make less than $100k and support my family in an average area. It does feel like I'll work until I die. If I were making double that, it would be a huge difference.
Yeah, also making under 100k if I made 200k even for a year it would absolutely let me pay for my wife's college out of pocket rather than co-signing on debt, and then let me either buff my retirement IRA or pay down a chunk the mortgage... Located in the Midwest USA
I know, right? Even $100-120k would make a huge difference. I see people talk about maxing out their 401k, but who has $20k per year to save? I mean, I've done everything right - good grades, stay out of trouble, got an ok job, worked hard (not so much now after being screwed multiple times, went to night school for a masters, 9 years in, and still a not very successful intermediate developer. Kind of depressing.
So, "start your own company". Or, trickle down wealth from VCs.
To be honest, a lot of people don't WANT to run a business. Business ventures are expensive in terms of time and money. I wish there was a quicker, more passive answer to "how people get rich now" than "invest in VTSAX and let it compound". A lot of people want the money to do the work for them.
It's an interesting read, and not entirely new information, but I find this leap pretty unconvincing: > So it's not 2020 that's the anomaly here, but 1982. The real question is why so few people had gotten rich from starting companies in 1982. It seems more likely to me that industrialization and mass-production in the late 19th century, and information technology in the late 20th century were inflection points at wh…
But that is the government inflation, which is considered by some to be fake. Shadowstats [1] says inflation would be about 5%/year if we use the same methodology as in 1990, which gives about 60% over 10 years, i.e. you'd have to make 320k now. I'm just eyeballing the chart but if we use the 1980 method (~7% a year) it's almost 100% (i.e. you'd have to make 400k now). For another example, Dow Jones with dividends re…
Well, yes, if you accept some official-inflation-is-fake conspiracy theory as a premise you can reach many interesting conclusions.
It's not conspiracy, but an observation that hamburgers, cars, houses and yachts inflate at different rates. The gov inflation concerns hamburgers, but someone's making 200k really needs housing and that inflates much faster.
Paul Graham's articles always shoot immediately up to the top of HN, but I agree with you, they're generally cursory and pithy thoughts which don't convince my skeptical mind. I don't know, can someone explain why his work is so popular? Think of all the amazing writers across our civilization whose work is linkable, and we're worshipping these decent but not amazing blog posts?
PG's recent articles have changed from what they used to be. Recently (last few years) there is a dramatic change towards defending riches, logical fallacies to explain why being rich is okay, a lot of focus on wealth and how to get it and why it's okay. A lot less technically interesting than he used to post. I used to send Startup=Growth to everyone I knew. I think people are used to high-quality content from PG an…
The political messaging has also changed from “people in poverty have specific material needs that we need money to fix” (war on poverty) to “actually, people having or making different amounts of money is inherently wrong” (war on inequality).
The war on poverty can be waged with a modest tax on the PGs of the world. The war on inequality is different. Venture capital always seeks to create wealth that will flow to some more than others; a very efficient way to fight inequality is to simply abolish venture capital. Along with anything else that facilitates creation of personal (rather than societal) wealth.