Exponential growth.
Like the universe itself, everything is accelerating away from every other thing.
As a fundamental law of finance, my personal wealth growth curve is following an exponential curve.
That means my high-school friends who did not sacrifice partying and travel are falling further behind with each passing minute. And it means Buffet and Gates are getting further out of my reach and sight too.
It is EXACTLY the way it should be.
I beg to differ. The international corporate rush to free and easy profits ... through exploiting the trapped slave labor of communist and "third-world" states ... has moved the middle class out of America. In their pursuit of the easiest road to profit, corporations have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs. They have sacrificed our nation to the moneygod, and we will pay for it sooner, rather than later.
They rationalize this action with the claim that our economy is switching (or has switched) to an "information and service economy", with nothing to gain from dirty, bulky, manufacturing industry. This could be true, if only we were simultaneously educating our populace to give them the tools to participate in the "information economy". It is woefully difficult to participate in an "information economy", when you have no information. Regarding the "service" component of our economy, our nation is evolving into a new economic situation: a society divided between those with very significant holdings, and the rest of the folks, a vast majority (who will not remain silent for long) ... the vast majority will spend their lives flipping hamburgers for minimum wage so that the wealthy 1% may eat any time and any place they wish.
The next thing you know you'll be saying how employers should be able to pay their employees whatever they want, and people should be able to install any kind kind of toilet (like a none "low-flush") they want, or buy a washing machine that let's you rise as well as wash in hot water. (Oh no you can't. Gov't regs.)
That means my high-school friends who did not sacrificepartying and travel[children and private schools] are falling further behind ....
Family formation, and finance charges and interest, knock the hell out of net worth.
Of course, an adept investor, huddled in his candle-lit basement out in the woods with his copies of The Chartist and The Prudent Speculator like Silas Marner is probably saving and making money faster. But is he actually accomplishing more actual "good"?
It isn't all just arithmetic.