How should most people become wealthy?

[bankside]

Wages?
Investments?
Luck?
Inheritance?

I am deliberately assuming everyone should attempt to become wealthy. (i.e. safe, secure, well-fed, can ride through a patch of bad health with proper care and no worries about livelihood, able to buy things not just out of necessity but for pleasure, able to save, and grow savings or investments or accumulate real property...)

And I am assuming that most people should be able to reach that level. By "should" I mean "ethically entitled to..."

What I want to know is how should that happen?

 

[Benvolio]

In 1996 was published The Millionaire Next Door. The author did an extensive study and found that most millionaires became such by living very frugally and saving. Most started small businesses but not all. The drove older autos and had modest homes.
It is easier to become rich in America than any other place in the world or in all time. This is because of our huge market. We are the third most populous country and the richest. Beyond that we are part of the wold wide English speaking culture. The result is that if you can develop something that people want, even if small, you can become enormously rich very quickly, by receiving a small amount from a huge number of people.
This is clearly apparent in entertainment and sports. The example I have given is Oprah. She is said to be worth a billion or 2. But if she had done exactly the same thing in, say, Sweden, also rich, she would have made only a small fraction of what she did, simply because the Swedish language market is so small and the English so large.
Justin Bieber is said to be worth 20 Million, Leonardo DiCaprio 200 million etc. The writer of the Harry Potter books quickly became the riches woman in Britain. The winner of the latest heavyweight boxing match was said to be winning 200 million, all as a function of the size of the market.
The same dynamic works for inventors, and for entrepreneurs who start retail chains.
Many huge American fortunes were made by being in this country and first in Internet companies. The founder of Facebook is worth several billions. The size of the market also make the founding of new companies more likely to succeed and less risky, thus easier to obtain financing.

 

[White Eagle]

Oh boy................................

 

[xbuzzerx]

The writer of the Harry Potter books quickly became the riches woman in Britain.

I'm so glad you brought her up. I love her.

I chose to remain a domiciled taxpayer for a couple of reasons. The main one was that I wanted my children to grow up where I grew up, to have proper roots in a culture as old and magnificent as Britain’s; to be citizens, with everything that implies, of a real country, not free-floating ex-pats, living in the limbo of some tax haven and associating only with the children of similarly greedy tax exiles.

A second reason, however, was that I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major’s Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism.

J.K. Rowling

 

[bankside]

Ohay then. Let's get back to how to accomplish this.

 

[TickTockMan]

I went the wages route. Before I got hurt I was on track to retire a multi millionaire.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

I'm so glad you brought her up. I love her.

I don't love La Rowling. I've seen her on television lamenting the so-called destitute state she was in after her divorce. She showed the viewers around an appartment that was better than many a Briton had available to them.

 

[opinterph]

Luck?
Inheritance?

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Inheritance should be limited to monetary transfers initiated while the benefactor is yet alive. Hoarded assets that remain undistributed at the time of a person’s death should revert to the State.

 

[chrisrobin]

You could join the lucky sperm club. As Christie Hefner (Hugh Hefner's daughter) once said, "choose your parents wisely."

 

[racer2438]

one does not need money to be wealthy

 

[otters]

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Inheritance should be limited to monetary transfers initiated while the benefactor is yet alive. Hoarded assets that remain undistributed at the time of a person’s death should revert to the State.

I second that, it's time to revive "escheat", or "ius aperturae"

 

[Telstra]

By always keep your mind open for opportunity and take chances when things come your way.

 

[bankside]

Inheritance should be limited to monetary transfers initiated while the benefactor is yet alive. Hoarded assets that remain undistributed at the time of a person’s death should revert to the State.

I second that, it's time to revive "escheat", or "ius aperturae"

How will that help most people to become wealthy?

 

[Benvolio]

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Inheritance should be limited to monetary transfers initiated while the benefactor is yet alive. Hoarded assets that remain undistributed at the time of a person’s death should revert to the State.

Communism really does not work. And, yes, yours is a prescription for all businesses and farms to eventually fall into state ownership. A man builds a business and dies young, and it is gone. Or he gives it to his son who dies young, and it is lost while the father lives.
Worse, it destroys much of the incentive to invent and build. Why work when you can live on welfare? Why work, save, invent, build or invest only to have the liberals confiscate it.
You evil notion is based on the false stereotype that wealthy people are hoarding, when, in fact, the money is invested and working in one way or another, and creating jobs.
Ours has been the greatest, most inventive economy in the history iof the world with unparalleled advances in technology, electronics, medicine, science ets. But you liberals are so eaten up with envy, that you want to destroy it. And, yes, you are rapidly succeeding. You will die in a much poorer country with much less freedom.

 

[luckynumbah7]

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/12/23/mincome-in-dauphin-manitoba_n_6335682.html

I'm afraid I don't have the raw data.

 

[luckynumbah7]

How will that help most people to become wealthy?

If the state receives what wasn't given away they'd have more monetary resources for programs. Course, that's assuming people working for the state are being honest and not discriminating during distribution. Better schools, properly kept roads, sidewalks and building maintenance would help get rid of poverty, for a start. I've been in several state and federal buildings that weren't in the least accessible - I had to ditch the walker and hop on one foot down a flight of stars in the ssi office a few months ago since the ramp was in the back and went to a football sized parking lot and it wasn't possible for me to go around the building after exiting since I wasn't supposed to put weight on the foot. For some reason they think a ramp in the back of the building and a couple elevators are the totality needed. Oh god, and the front enterance, where I originally came through, had a door set off to the side for wheelchair users - and after you entered through the door there was the set of steps you had to use to get to the rest of the building.

Kinda difficult to participate in society when there's blockage everywhere you go.

 

[luckynumbah7]

Well, football sized was a bit hyperbolic but I was told it was pretty big. Which is a problem in itself, having disabled people go around the bloody building to the back and walk through a parking lot to enter the building, the entrance which is apparently located in the middle. Great way to get hit, parking lots are a menace. More you use them the higher the chance gets. When the boot comes off and I can ditch the walker I'm going to go investigate and complain.

 

[evanrick]

political revolution, steal it back from the rich.

 

[bankside]

If the state receives what wasn't given away they'd have more monetary resources for programs. Course, that's assuming people working for the state are being honest and not discriminating during distribution. Better schools, properly kept roads, sidewalks and building maintenance would help get rid of poverty, for a start. I've been in several state and federal buildings that weren't in the least accessible - I had to ditch the walker and hop on one foot down a flight of stars in the ssi office a few months ago since the ramp was in the back and went to a football sized parking lot and it wasn't possible for me to go around the building after exiting since I wasn't supposed to put weight on the foot. For some reason they think a ramp in the back of the building and a couple elevators are the totality needed. Oh god, and the front enterance, where I originally came through, had a door set off to the side for wheelchair users - and after you entered through the door there was the set of steps you had to use to get to the rest of the building.

Kinda difficult to participate in society when there's blockage everywhere you go.

"More programs" doesn't quite sound like "wealth" though. Plus, help me with the math: I spend my inheritance buying furniture, and building an addition to my house, and going to a concert. Manufacturers, retailers, construction workers, musicians, and ticket agents all work.

Or, the government spends my inheritance building schools, ploughing roads, repairing sidewalks.... Teachers, construction workers, equipment drivers all work.

Why is one better than the other? Don't both scenarios create jobs?

- - - Updated - - -

I went the wages route. Before I got hurt I was on track to retire a multi millionaire.

Okay that says insurance against risk needs to be part of the calculation...

 

[xbuzzerx]

I understand that you laid out criteria for "wealthy" but I think I struggle with it because "wealthy" to me always carries the connotation of being a comparative term: to the poor, to the working and middle class, to people who spend most of the resources who come in on continuing to exist and eat or house themselves for the next month or so.

Are you using "wealthy" as "economically secure?" Or "has significant economic surplus?" And could you detail how much surplus you have in mind?