Hello and welcome to Brokonomics. Now, I've been thinking a bit philosophically lately.

I've been thinking about what does it actually mean to be rich?

Now, at first blush, this is one of those sort of questions which, you know, maybe the mere fact that you're asking it gives you your answer.

I mean, you don't ask, maybe you don't ask, am I rich or am I sane unless you actually are,

and then you're just sort of pontificating a bit too much about it. But I tell you what got me thinking

about it is, is Guy Ritchie. He has this, he has this good series about, it's called The Gentleman.

And it starts out with this sort of montage of what you might assume are very rich people, landed gentry living in their country estates and their big houses.

But they're all absolutely broke.

And, you know, yes, they live on a country estate with a very big house.

It's been in the family for 17 generations or whatever it is.

But they're completely poor and, you know, the roof is shot through and, you know, they can't afford to fix it.

And nobody goes upstairs anymore because the upstairs is just covered in tarpauling

and buckets everywhere, which they just had to go up and occasionally empty out the window.

So, you know, it is possible to, on first blush, look rich while being completely poor.

Spoiler, where I'm coming to this is basically Western nations today.

Because I keep getting told that people are coming here because we are a rich country.

But it doesn't feel like that to me. It feels to me like we are completely broke.

But anyway, on my philosophical journey, I started pondering, you know, what does it mean to be rich as an individual for a start?

And I came to about five factors, I think, that clinched it for me.

And, you know, the first big one is that you get to control your

time. You know, if your hours are, you know, directed by debt and obligation and fear of loss,

then maybe you're not actually rich. You know, is the man who earns 40k a year with no mortgage who has time to raise

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