this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2024
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[–] elrik@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Not really with that amount of time. Suppose you put away $1,000 a year for 532 years, at 3% you still end up with $225 billion.

The deposits are completely dwarfed by the compounding interest. If you only start with $1,000 and add nothing else but let that original $1,000 compound at 4% you'll have over $1 trillion.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Where are you getting 4% annual compound returns, though? That's faster than the historical growth in global GDP over the equivalent time period.

[–] elrik@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes, it's equally as unrealistic as leaving money idle for 532 yrs.

The only point I was making was that multiplying $5,000 a day by so many years is a silly comparison as it ignores the dominating factors to building wealth.

Billionaires shouldn't exist but also they don't exist because they stuff X dollars under their mattress every day.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

multiplying $5,000 a day by so many years is a silly comparison

Sure.

it ignores the dominating factors to building wealth

It ignores the existence of wealth by focusing on income. And it neglects where income comes from.

Billionaires shouldn’t exist but also they don’t exist because they stuff X dollars under their mattress every day.

Something of a joke about the modern billionaire is how much debt they're carrying around. You don't become a billionaire by having a high salary. You become a billionaire by getting access to enormous volumes of low interest credit, in order to monopolize a limited stock of productive capital. It isn't like being an employee with a sky-high salary so much as it is a member of an elite club with access to amenities nobody else is allowed to use.