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Reblog via Georg

I was once again listening to the audio book "Around the World in Eighty Days", written by Jules Verne in 1872.

If you don't know the book, its an adventure about a super rich person Phileas Fogg. He is visiting a club in London and closes a bet with other super rich, male people if he could travel around the world in 80 days.

Lets look at how rich Fogg is: He owns a house. He doesn't seem to be working. He hires someone to prepare his food and wash his cloth. He is able to pay himself and his travel mates out of any problem. He even buys a ship to burn it!

Its probably as rich as a human can possibly become in terms of satisfaction of needs. He doesn't need to care for food, for housing, for clothing. He can decide within a few hours to leave his home for 80 days and travel around the world. He is free to do whatever he wants.

Now lets check the numbers. If I remember correctly he took 40.000 pounds on his travel and had 20.000 pounds at the bank. Makes 60.000 pounds. He also owns a house and maybe more assets, so lets assume he is worth 100.000 pounds. According to Statista¹ the purchasing power of a pound was about 114 times of a pound in 2019.

Why am I telling you this? Because if you do the math, you will notice that this guy, who is as rich as one could possibly be, would be worth about 11,4 mio pounds today. According to Forbes the world has 2781 billionaires². Each of them is 100 times wealthier than the a novel author considers to be as-rich-as-you-can-be in 1872.

#EatTheRich!

¹ https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1066473/umfrage/kaufkraft-eines-britischen-pfund-sterling/
² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires