I was watching a quiz programme today that listed some of the richest people in the world. We need to eat to live, but there is only so much we can eat.
I started to wonder about the ability to spend money.
All of the people mentioned in the quiz were worth more than $50 billion. So I decided to look at a mere £10 billion with a low rate of return.
Spending £1,000,000 a day every day of your life this would last a hundred years. And if you let that spending increase by inflation it would still last 30 years.
So give this exercise a try – jot down a list of what you would buy for yourself on day 1 with your first million. Then try day 2, then day 3. Just do the first week.
I can’t manage it, I run out of ideas pretty soon.
So why do people need to keep earning beyond their first £10 billion? What does it give them other than a number. Most of these people have set the rewards from their business to be to their benefit over that of the office cleaner. Why do they still need that?
And what sort of society do we live in that allows that level of greed while others suffer?
I think this is the big flaw in the “They are a great business person – so they would make a great leader for our country” argument. A great business person has spent their life building up their personal wealth at the expense of those below them in the pecking order and by taking from the organisations they run. How is that evidence of suitability for the job?