this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Work Reform

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[–] [email protected] 45 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (13 children)

A lot of billionaires do wake up at 5AM.

I'm confident that a lot of them -- probably most of them -- do indeed work very hard, in every sense. Whether effective at their tasks or just fucking lucky (hint: it's the latter) the ones we know about do put in the hours. Hording wealth is their profession, hobby, and entire life all wrapped up in one.

But if the average lifetime earnings of the typical American is around $1 mil you would need to work 1,000 times harder than them, saving and investing every bit you earn and not spending it on anything including necessities, to just barely qualify as a billionaire in America by the time you retire. The average American works somewhere around 35 hours a week, so was the minimum billionaire working 3,500 hours a week? I suspect not.

There's no point or value in calling a billionaire lazy. It may or may not be true, but it ignores the point. It does not matter how hard anyone works. You don't get to a billion ethically.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Why would anyone wake up at half 5 if they didn't have to? You only wake at half 5 if you have to. You may find the odd person who likes being up that early but 99% of people would want to get up at a proper time.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

The difference is that workers have to get up at 5am to keep their housing, food, healthcare, etc. Billionaires get up whenever they want, and some might want to get up at 5am.

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