this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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But at 1% pa interest you'd surpass all of humanity combined, even at measly savings contributions
Compounded gains truely are the wonder of the financial world.
If you put $1 in the bank 2777 years ago, at 1% a year you'd have $1t now, handily beating musk. At 5% pa it would take a mere 567 years! Easy! A bit of sensible financial planning by your great-great-great-something grand parents would have seen you very comfortable now.
But how much would 1$ of 751 BCE be worth in today's money?
I was going to make a joke about the problem being finding a bank that would last that long, but you've got me thinking.
We obviously can't use inflation to calculate values from that far back, as we don't have the data, dollars didn't exist, and the dollar isn't tethered to an underlying asset anymore, so the best comparison is probably buying power.
A loaf of bread aparently averages $2.74 at the moment, but you could almost certainly make a loaf yourself for a dollar or less.
I've not had much luck finding the cost of bread in everyone's favourite historical yardstick, Rome, in that era, the best I've found is the cost of grain in 200bce or so. Legionaries earned about 3as per day, which would buy enough grain to make 20 loaves, so 1 loaf would be an hour or two of work (assuming a legionary is employed 24 hours a day, the grain costs a bit more than a day's salary, and I'm rounding a lot).
So basically, if your ancient roman ancestor had invested a couple of hours of their wages, and your familial line since then had all kept it growing at a very modest 1% pa, you'd be a trillionaire by now.
True, if you managed to find a bank that lasted that long, or a currency that lasted that long. Look at the history of both banks and currencies and you’ll see that the miracle compound interest is not easy to uphold.
Those are, indeed, issues, but they could be addressed with careful management. See my reply to a sibling comment, but basically, investing a couple of hours of wages back then, and carefully moving it from investment to investment over the millenia would do the trick.
Another way of viewing it is that if Elon Musk spent $10k every day since the ice age, he would still not be out of money.
Elon Musk can spend 35 million every day and still get richer by around 5 million every day.
Well, not really. He can't actually spend that money. When he bought twitter, he had to take a bunch of sketchy loans and some of his stocks dropped because he had to sell a lot.
If he actually sells a bunch of his stocks, the price will dip and make the rest worth far less. So it's not actually spendable money.
It's more of a power measurement. If you have a billion you have influence over that many assets.
Also a problem with wealth tax. If you have to sell assets to pay it, that could have a bunch of weird effects. I think Denmark doesn't actually tax your assets, they just increase your income tax if your wealth is above a certain level. But I'm not 100% on that.
Every fucking year hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans pay a tax on an illiquid asset: the property tax.
Don't fucking tell me "oh it's too difficult, there's too many effects." Tax. Them.
Progressive tax rate on long term and short term capital gains. 95 % upper limit for income tax. Kneecap their bullshit "buy, borrow, die" cycle.
Get back to the fucking WW2 tax levels, back when we had a middle class, and then we can maybe finally have a balanced budget, at least.
95% income is wild. But capital gains increase might not be a bad idea. Higher top brackets also probably a good idea. Taxing debt that you borrow against assets might be difficult because of mortgages. Technically I think the state gets taxes on that but only when they die. If there is a good proposal that works, I'd have no problem with it.
Just Wealth tax is not a good idea. The problem in my opinion is not that people get too rich, it's that companies get too big. We need to break those monopolies up.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
95 is not that high For 20 years it was over 90
Now I know I hear people in the back "but it was world war time!" True. True.
How long have we been at war? Since Vietnam? How many fucking desert storms have we had? Cold war?
And not one person that has complained about the percentile has asked about what the top bracket would be.
Are you really going to argue that a 95% tax rate on every $1 over $1,000,000 is excessive or "wild"? Or does it actually represent the marginal utility of income?
Because the first 80k someone makes is waayyyyyyyyyyy more impactful than the next 80k. One makes sure you don't die of starvation and exposure. The other is all pleasure.
I like your counterpoint about the wealth tax being more about monopolistic power. Hadn't considered that angle. I do believe that the government must be larger than the entities it governs. If we ever want a smaller, more agile government, we need to shrink what it's supposed to govern.
Here is why I argue for a wealth tax: Most things in life are not simply exponential. They're logarithmic. At least for biology and natural systems. We need some corrective force that pushes back aggressively against wealth accumulation -regardless of source.
Well, we currently have death as a limiter. Proper inheritance taxes would cap everything to one lifetime.
What would happen to America and the USD if all of those people left the country and took their "wealth" with them?
They don't leave. At least, not in the scary mass exodus they always try to imply.
So nothing?
With 95% income taxed and tax on illiquid assets, you'd see a mass exodus..
Don't argue against things I didn't say.
You don't see an exodus of homeowners for their property tax.
Why is that? Hmmm? Is it the case that rich people wanna be where money is? And nice services are? Where the culture is? Where the art is? Where their family is? Their friends? Their children's life?
Show me a study that unequivocally shows that raising taxes leads to mass capital flight. I haven't seen one yet. At best, its mixed.
They say this about minimum wage "you can't raise it to $15 business will leave and go under!"
And every fucking time states or cities increase the minimum wage, that doesn't happen.
Stop fucking carrying water for the rich
A few percent land tax is no comparison to 95% income tax. Also, people at the level of wealth we're talking about don't have a lot of income. They have capital gains.
Also, 15$ minimum wage would destroy economies of many places. In California it's not a big problem. But in bumfuck nowhere with a median income of 25k it will destroy the local economy.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-highest-marginal-income-tax-rates
95 is not that high For 20 years it was over 90
And not one person that has complained about the percentile has asked about what the top bracket would be.
Are you really going to argue that a 95% tax rate on every $1 over $1,000,000 is not comparable to a 95% income tax when fully contextualized to being their one million and first dollar made in a year?
Find me a place where raising the minimum wage devastated a local economy. I legitimately can't find one so I'm hoping you can help me learn. Here's a write up about how Walmart devastated local economies though.
Honestly? The fact that we can even entertain, in America, that a state would have a median income of 25k shows truly just how fucked we are.
Yea, you can't see it anywhere because people know not to do that.
So your answer is "Trust me, bro. We don't need to study this. It's obvious bro everyone knows or. Just don't do it. Don't raise wages bro it's bad. I promise. Everyone already knows this. There's no research for it But we know it's true. Trust me."
I just want to make sure I understand your logic correctly.
https://lemmy.world/comment/23949258
I literally quoted you? Just straight up lying now. You sir can fuck off
What would the host do without the parasites?
Everytime time this meme is posted someone makes a comment about how dumb it would be to just sit on that cash for the last 80,000 years instead of just taking advantage of compound interest.
Obviously you'd be extremely wealthy if you were immortal and could invest wisely over the last 80,000 years. That's not really the point though.
The point is that billionaires have an obscene amount of money. An amount that most people can't even imagine without going to an extreme example. They wouldn't exist in a just society.