Funny Millionaires:
Funny Paper With
Funny Numbers

Millionaire? Based on funny numbers on funny paper? Or, lifehours? Consider how Bile Guts has more dollars than John D. Workerkiller. Guts' dollars are in a time of people where average wages are about $20 per hour while Workerkiller's were in a time when people were paid in pennies per hour.

Almost twenty years after Workerkiller retired, Henry Ford shocked the business world by announcing that he would pay his workers $5 for a ten-hour day, a rate double what some people were paid for similar work. Almost twenty years after Workerkiller retired, his wealth had quadrupled. At its peak, Workerkiller wealth represented 3% of America's total wealth. Bile Guts' wealth never exceeded .03% of the national wealth. In other words, in the buying the hours of working Americans, Workerkiller was 100 times wealthier than Bile Guts.

In Zimbabwe where inflation reached 66,000% in Feburary, 2008, the common currency is the 10,000,000 zimbabwe dollar bill which is worth two US dollars. Everyone in Zimbabwe is a millionaire! Would you want to live in today's rich Zimbabwe or the past that had fewer millionaires and little inflation? For the future, do you want paper millionaires from inflation or product availability from stability?

The real basis of being a millionaire should be based in time, that is, how many hours of work you can buy with your wealth? Thus, if a millionaire is defined in terms of one-million lifehours at work then in an economy of $20/hr wages, one would need $20,000,000. Anyone who thinks America's number of millionaires is increasing based on funny numbers on funny paper is a part of the problem not part of the solution. It like a person who thinks they are getting richer as their house market value inflates as part of a bubble. Skyrocketing housing prices was not an increase in wealth. It was an inflationary illusion foster by economists and politicians.

Another way of looking at the false security of relying on funny numbers on funny paper is the claim that the US spends more on military defense than China, $360 billion versus $60 billion (2005). When one factors in how the average defense-related Chinese person is paid 1/20 of the US, one sees that China is spedning more than three times as much on defense time than the US. This timistic reality--real time over unreal numbers--shows up in how China is speeding past the US in the space race. Ominously, the modernization and expansion of the non-nuclear Chinese military forces will leave the US only the nuclear option when China bullies it's way into neighboring economies.

Adding to Chinese superiority are the number of Americans who have traded military and industrial secrets to China for once almighty dollar. In summary, are you really a millionaire or a self-deluder living in a land of self-liars?