Tweet [1]
Today – February 20th, 2018 – is the second anniversary of what is by far the single most popular blog post that I’ve ever written [2]. It’s on how ordinary Americans today are quite plausibly materially richer than was J.D. Rockefeller a mere 100 years earlier. I stand by that claim. And if my claim is correct – or even if it is a candidate for being correct – of what relevance is all of today’s hand-wringing over, and pontificating about, differences in the sizes of monetary incomes or of monetary wealth?
If you are alive today in a first-world country, you are historically off-the-charts super rich. You are among the luckiest and most fortunate human beings ever to draw a breath. So if you’re complaining about the fact that your income or wealth isn’t as high as is that of, say, Bill Gates or George Clooney or your neighbor-the-neurosurgeon, stop it and grow up. You are complaining about an insignificance. Appreciate your immense good fortune.