After a little over a week of silence in the blogosphere, I’m back. My absence was willful—vacation. We had a great visit with family, including both of the grandsons, and made some valiant attempts at fishing. Unfortunately, the fishing was not good and the white bass (sand bass, as some call them) just didn’t show up. The catfish made an appearance, but not to the extent we’ve enjoyed in past trips.
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A Nov. 13, 2007 online article from Time magazine (“How They Spend It”) quotes Steve Forbes, the CEO of Forbes, as saying, “This is the richest year ever in human history.” According to the article, the recent Forbes 400 list consisted entirely of billionaires for only the second time. The article states: “This past year has seen the number of billionaires grow by 19%, to nearly 1,000, according to the company. In the past 10 years, the number of financial millionaires has more than doubled.”
Remember the days when kids dreamed of being millionaires? Now the dream is to be worth a billion, and apparently it is becoming a reality for more and more people. What I’d like you to think about is that this is the wealthiest generation that has ever lived on this planet. There are exceptions but many young people enjoy access to a lifestyle that was only a dream for their parents–foreign travel, education, unprecedented experiences, etc.
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Are you rich? How you answer that question is a matter of perspective. People generally judge their own wealth on the basis of comparison. We determine the meaning of “rich” in relation to other people we know or know of. If we compare ourselves to the homeless we might have to admit we are rich. But compared to Bill Gates we’re all paupers.
But maybe we’re comparing ourselves to the wrong people. We who live in a prosperous land like the United States tend to forget how the rest of the world lives. I found an interesting website that will provide you with a different perspective. Stop reading this for a minute, click on this link, and see where you rank on their list of the richest people in the world.
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