> The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do.
I can only speak to the US but this is much more an insurance issue than a wealth issue. When I made $30k a year I had a ~$75k surgery and it cost me about $1200 all in, including follow-up copays with the surgeon, because I had good insurance through my employer. I probably had $15k in credit card debt at the time and rented a $400/mo room in someone else's house - certainly not rich by any stretch.
> The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress.
This is all about skills, not wealth. Most folks on HN could leave their job today and walk into something making 95-120% of their current salary without much issue.
> The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure. (Buying a few franchises vs. buying a payday loan)
You don't need to be rich to get a franchise loan.
> The ability to, fundamentally, own yourself instead of being forced to act according to the interests of people with the money to pay you.
This is so esoteric it's hard to even know what you're trying to say here. I'm sure you could find plenty of people with $10+ million net worths who feel beholden to act a certain way in the interests of certain people.
Insurance is just to cover not dying. Being rich makes it a comfortable experience.
Yup, I believe that's their point. If you realize the reason you want to be rich can be had for less cost than actually becoming rich, you can save yourself a lot of time and stress.
Anecdotally, I cut my salary by 60% this year to directly pursue what I wanted, instead of saving to do it years later. I suppose I may regret it some day, but at this point I'm confident it was the right choice.
I think with OP is trying to say is that more money means more leverage – not in the credit sense – to only feel beholden to people that have interests that align with yours (family, peers, mentors) and less with those that don’t (boss, managers or people who know how to manipulate your behaviour by using lack of money as a tool).
However, you only get this peace of mind without being rich thanks to Obamacare (whose days may be numbered...). Before, you had to be rich to self-insure against the following events:
- What if you lose your job? It could take you longer to find one again than whatever Cobra covers, or a pre-existing condition could make individual insurance unaffordable.
- What if your insurance is not as good as you thought, and you hit a lifetime cap?
- What if the insurance company managed to conjure up a pre-existing condition to escape their obligations?
Well that's really weird since this was in 2009.
This isn't rich. Rich is the ability to direct people to research life extension and disease prevention. It's to be able to have access to the newest techniques and best doctor, regardless of world location.
It's the ability to have a sick child with 24/7 doctors and only worry about the child.
Rich is the ability to buy an island and create a clone army of yourself, using that army to construct the largest ai supercomputer the world has ever seen, then solving aging and disease ultimately merging with the machine, redefining and extending what it means to be human.
Err sorry wrong thread.
"I'll provide X" needs to be immediately though about on the terms that it will cost the planet (and everyone living in it) Y.
This is not exactly what you posted, but related: I'm not an environmental nut, I just think that this 'we create wealth' discourse more often than not ignores the fact that we're actually just borrowing quality of life from people in the future. They get to deal with bad water, worse weather, natural disasters, droughts, terrible air quality, etc. while we 'provide valuable insights to customer relations', 'maintain a pseudonymous decentralized currency' or some other obviously-not-worth-it bullshit
I pointed out that one that was overlooked (but that IHMO is the most important), is to re-invest it in making the world better.
Making the world better for the future is implied in that, and I think that's what you see in, for example, Elon Musk's efforts to make electric transportation viable and ubiquitous, along with the some of the philanthropic efforts of Gates, Buffet, etc.
Sure there are some bad actors who believe it's fine to plunder and trash the earth for short-term benefit, but the trend is in the opposite direction, and it's becoming far more commonplace, even among traditionally very destructive companies like petrochemical companies, to invest substantially in innovations and projects that reverse the damage and create benefits for the future. That's happening because more and more people are demanding it.
Don't forget also, that just as people who were inventing technologies and making medical discoveries 100 years ago were making improvements that benefit most of us living today, inventions of today will benefit future generations.
None of this is black and white; there are benefits and costs in everything, and it's important to be mindful of both as we progress and ensure things stack up positive in the end.
And even then, that just lets you live there. You don't become a citizen will full benefits for five years.
But once you meet those requirements... you're probably well-off enough that it doesn't matter anymore.
When asked why, they need only the things they would get from living 5 years of an imperfectly richer life first?
(Is there a probable way to get from an education and/or 25k in the bank to the rest of rich in less than 5 years and/or with better partial benefits during the interval?)
But as yayana points out, none of those factors depend on being rich in well run countries. (There are alternatives to the scandinavian models with a bit less nanny state that also achieve all of those factors, but the Scandinavian countries are the most famous for letting you not care about medical care and bad employers.)
- The ability to secure the best medical care for yourself and your family in a country where this takes money to do.
- The ability to walk away from abusive employment relationships without a second thought or any stress.
- The ability to engage in high-level economic actions, the kind that aren't designed for your failure. (Buying a few franchises vs. buying a payday loan)
- The ability to, fundamentally, own yourself instead of being forced to act according to the interests of people with the money to pay you. Maybe you'll use that time to act in the interests of people who can't pay you.