Hedge, this is probably standard operating procedure for western world, free market capitalism. Its just that the information age has rocketed the high IQ people into the stratosphere in terms of accumulated wealth. You can out-earn someone with an IQ of 140. What you can't do is start a tech company the way they can (when they write all the original source code) and create a publicly traded company with a billion-dollar market valuation. In that sense alone hedge, this is why they say it is easier to become a billionaire than to become a millionaire. The billionaire just gets it by launching a successful tech company that their IQ was going to give them, their God given birthright. The millionaire must work and save and not spend money for 40 years and accumulate real estate and stock assets. Only 10% of the people in the world have the responsibility to do that.
When I was teaching my kids, I would tell them over and over that to at least become "wealthy", one had to get out of the rent-trap and into home ownership as quickly as possible. But I would then amend that statement and say, your first home should be a one or two bedroom condo that is 50+ years old, cockroaches, torn wallpaper, completely un-updated. My middle schoolers would groan and say that they wont ever do that, that they all live better than that right now and I would tell them, yes you do. Right now you do. But you also don't pay any bills yet and when you have to make that first mortgage payment, you want that monthly bill to be very very small. Just get what you need to start and what you really need at the very beginning of your adulthood is a place to call your own that you can so easily afford that isn't just paying someone else rent. Then my 13 year olds would just "get it."
