Posted on 10/04/2022 12:21:40 AM PDT by Jonty30
If Joe Smith, a McDonald's worker decided to start investing. He invests whatever he could and he teaches his children everything he learns and charges them to add to their knowledge and that their children continue, and so on.
While there is no guarantee, but is there a point in time this family might be join the ranks of the Rockefellers or Gates?
Aside from the Third Generation curse, where they would rather live a life of luxury than work hard, is there anything that might stop this if it could be controlled?
I don’t think so.
You’d have to really wrap your head around the vast numbers involved.
Investment won’t do it.
Invention would.
Invention does it quickly.
I agree with the mass numbers.
For commodities, for example, there are seasons to that investment as there are times when everybody wants it and other times when nobody wants it.
Each generation has a more lucrative set of careers than the previous (fast food then retail then tradesmen then engineers then doctors/lawyers, etc.) They save and invest savings conservatively. Over time they can purchase real estate or become major stockholders in particular companies. Slow and steady.
This way the wealth accumulates rather than being constantly divided and redivided.
In my little fantasy, I would probably opt for a numbered company, where as the complexity grows each brach of the family would specialize in a type of investment and we would operate like a large investment firm but everything in-house.
Be like a Royal family, where own nothing but are allowed to use the firm’s property like houses.
I remember reading a study on families in England and France from the 11th century. They found that for most, like 90%, social mobility didn’t happen.
The Norman knights and gentry were rich and so are their descendants.
The serfs descendents are lower class or the poor today.
Bill Gates father was a millionaire.
I don’t think it’s genetics but the social group.
Take American ghettos. You put a white or Asian person there and the odds are they are poor criminals. Take a ghetto kid, black, and he is adopted into a Korean family in a richer part of town. That kid will be well to do.
Culture breeds success, including family culture
Wealth is a generational and most people don’t know how to accumulate wealth. I could work two jobs, 12 hours a day for life and accumulate $60,000 net worth. But my end point is my kid’s mid-point, if they learned to do the same thing. Their end point is their children’s mid-point.
I definitely agree that environment is a factor.
Nobody owns the world except God.
As far as investment strategies go I no longer think its about having people with a deep understanding of particular markets. I think it's now about quants programming sophisticated AI algorithms into computers that are located as close as possible to a particular exchange. They make very good guesses and make the corresponding trades nanoseconds before their competitors.
For my part, I'd rather have 10,000 modestly wealthy descendants instead of one or two fabulously wealthy ones.
The money, itself, does not have any "self-interest."
Regards,
Joseph Smith? He and his descendants own a hotel chain already.
I agree with you.
I’m also aware that the billionaire class is about to trash the world economy in order to bring the world under subjugation.
This is just a discussion whether somebody could work themselves and their descendants into the upper echelon of the world, given enough time.
Depends on what your purpose is. Jesus warned against gaining the whole world but losing one’s soul, after all.
John D. Rockefeller did it.
There are very few like him. Edison, Ford.
True giants who were extraordinary.
I agree with you emotionally.
But the research showed that very few descendents changed their social class.
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