Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 15. Today we're going to be talking

about the spectrum of wealth. I heard this Chris Rock joke many years ago,

Chris Rock one of my favorite comedians of all time. He said if Bill Gates woke up

with Oprah's money he'd jump out the window.

Like most comedy it's funny because it contains a nugget of truth in there.

All wealth is relative. There is no such thing as an objective measure of what wealth is. And that is so

true that I think most people's definition of wealth can be so skewed in the eyes of somebody else.

There's a study that came out recently, it was published on C.N.C.

It asked Americans how much money you need to earn per year for you to feel rich.

And the most common answer in the survey was over a million dollars per year.

Which, hey, I understand that.

If that's your answer to, I don't fault you for it.

In today's society, I get why you would believe that.

What's interesting about this number, a million dollars a year, is that adjusted for inflation,

it works out to something like $250,000 in 1990 money when you adjust it for inflation. And I went back and looked,

how many Americans earned over $250,000 a year in 1990?

The answer is just over 600,000.

Out of 250 million people who lived in the country at the time.

So here you have today's definition of rich in 2023 equates to being in the top fraction of 1% in 1990 not that long ago.

I think what has happened here over the last 33 years is that people's definition of what rich is

has increased exponentially even adjusted for inflation and that to me is just another

indication that all wealth is relative it's not about how much money you make,

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