[extropy-chat] who wants to be a millionaire?

[Damien Broderick]

At 09:19 AM 5/12/2004 -0700, Robert wrote:

>According to
>my handy dandy spreadsheet that I have here -- if you stick $5000
>into a reasonable mutual fund earning ~6% after inflation (reasonable
>given historic long term stock market returns) when you are 21 then
>by the time you hit 130 years you are a multi-millionaire.

and later modified this to millionaire. Modulo nano.

But if *everyone* is a millionaire, or a multi-millionaire, what are a few 
million worth? A painting was sold the other day for $140 million. A 
hundred years ago you could own or endow a large chunk of America for that.

<Born in 1835, Carnegie immigrated to the United States in 1848 with his 
parents. Working in American industry and making shrewd investments, he 
amassed a fortune before the age of thirty. In the 1870s, he noted the 
potential of the steel industry and founded J. Edgar Thomson Steel Works 
near Pittsburgh, which eventually evolved into the Carnegie Steel Company. 
The company boomed, and in 1901, Carnegie sold it to financier J.P. Morgan 
for $250 million and retired.

Carnegie devoted the rest of his life to writing and philanthropic 
activities. Believing that any accumulated wealth should be distributed in 
the form of public endowments, Carnegie founded 2,509 libraries in the 
English-speaking world, including ones in Michigan, New York, Ohio, 
Vermont, and Washington, D.C. He also established several trusts and helped 
found Carnegie Mellon University. At the time of his death in 1919, 
Carnegie had given away over $350 million. >

Damien Broderick