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idk, but for me it's clearly above $1m. I mean, if I won a million on the lottery, I'm not going to be able to give my family enough money so they can all retire. So it's not like that much money is going to change anyone's life except my own. Two million? Getting there, but probably still pushing it in terms of my entire family retiring. Five million? That'll do it. So I guess from the point of view of me doing anything I could possibly want to do with large amounts of money, five million is enough.
Yes, it's hard to find the exact point-- we certainly won't hone in on it ITT.
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But if I had that much money, I would likely invest. And if those investments came good, perhaps I could turn five million into a billion. What's immoral about that? Those investments didn't just make me rich, they helped make a business succeed, creating jobs in the process. Yes, I made money off peoples' labour, but that labour was partly created by my investment.
If I had a billion, I could invest in a lot more, potentially creating many more jobs in the process. This kind of wealth accumulation, I don't see a problem with it, and I don't see why we should put a limit on it. It will never result in someone controlling all the money in the world, because otherwise there is no way any of the businesses can succeed. Consumers need to be financially stable. So there's already a limit on how rich a person can become. If someone owns all the money in the world, he's as broke as everyone else because people will trade using gold, and if one person owns all the gold, people will trade using salt.
Yeah, great, but that's unfortunately not what seems to happen in practice. This is exactly my point, that wealth generation and social good often are tethered at the start. People have a problem, you solve it, they reward you. What I'm claiming, is that there are diminishing and ultimately reversing returns as the wealth accumulation increases. Rent seeking, lobbying for financially beneficial policy that serves no good for society, edging out upstart competition with incumbent might, creating monopolies, etc. Further, that greater wealth inequality, the more ground the average person needs to cover to join the top 5%, the less effective the acquisition of wealth works as an incentive. If making it to the top is not a feasible goal, cynicism will creep in and grow right alongside the wealth inequality.