[juliangregorian]

It's well known that, once you acquire enough money, you can live off the proceeds of that money. If you inherited a million dollars and put it in bog-standard funds, you'd get ~$75,000 a year for doing absolutely nothing. How that factors into your theory, I'd love to know.

[philh]

In (at least) two ways. One, you'd be lending wealth to other people so that they can create more wealth. Without your investment, less wealth would be created. Two, your parents acquired money by producing wealth, and one of the things that they chose to spend that money on was their progeny.

(NB. This does not claim that the allocation of money for value produced is perfectly fair, or just, or economically optimal, or whatever.)

[AndrewKemendo]

Not the OP but your assumption is that 1. That "investment" mechanism will hold up forever and 2. That you don't put that money in the system at the wrong time assuming it is a random walk.

[juliangregorian]

Well, that's pretty much how ETFs work. I don't quite understand what you mean about a random walk, though.

[AndrewKemendo]

You're missing the point. Any investment, ETFs or otherwise, work, when the market is going up or sideways.

It falls apart if you needed money in - oh say 2008 or 2009. Or at any of the other points in time when things were shit.

It also falls apart 200 years from now - so it's not like it's a law that this is a system that will remain in place.

[juliangregorian]

You're being rather argumentative, don't you think? Did you have something worth elaborating with the bit about the random walk? I would still be curious to know.

[AndrewKemendo]

Oh, I just overlooked that part...not intending to be argumentative.

See: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4479810