Dear Reader,

Last month, Elon Musk briefly became the first publicly recorded trillionaire in history.

One trillion dollars.

It is such a ridiculous number that it barely feels real.

And whenever somebody accumulates that much wealth, the same old questions crop up from the left:

How is that fair?

Does one person really need that much?

Is Musk “hoarding” wealth – leaving less on the table for everyone else?

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That last question rests on an assumption I hear all the time – that wealth is a fixed pie.

If one person takes a larger slice, everybody else must receive less.

But that’s not how wealth works.

The pie can grow. And it has been growing for centuries.

There is more wealth in the world today than there was 50 years ago.

There was more wealth 50 years ago than there was 500 years ago.

And even just a few hundred years ago, kings and emperors lived without things that ordinary Americans barely think about today…

Things like antibiotics, electricity, refrigerators, cars, or smartphones.

Each one improved our quality of life while allowing more to be produced with fewer resources and less human effort.

That’s how new wealth is created, how the pie grows.

But you cannot create more wealth by cutting the existing pie into different pieces.

Elon Musk having an enormous slice does not automatically make your slice smaller.

The key issue is whether society continues creating more wealth…

And whether ordinary people gain access to more of it over time.

So, can everyone be rich?

Well, first, that depends entirely on what we mean by “rich.”

A Trillion Dollars That Couldn’t Buy Much

Most people define rich with a dollar figure.

A millionaire is rich.

A billionaire is very rich.

A trillionaire is almost beyond comprehension.

So let’s run a little thought experiment.

Suppose the Federal Reserve pressed a button tomorrow morning and deposited $1 million into every American’s bank account.

Congratulations, everyone is now a millionaire!

Did everyone become rich?

Of course not.

We did not suddenly produce more homes.

There are no additional cars, doctors, gallons of gas, or plates of food.

All we did was create more claims on the same supply of goods and services.

Markets would adjust immediately.

If you suddenly had $1 million in the bank, you might not be willing to sell an hour of your life for $30 anymore.

Your employer would have to offer more.

The people producing your food would feel the same way.

So would the person repairing your plumbing.

Wages would rise, but prices would quickly follow.

Maybe you earn $1,000 an hour instead of $100.

Great.

Except now milk costs $50 and filling your car costs $1,500.

The numbers will change, but your lifestyle won’t.

Zimbabwe showed us an extreme version of this.

In 2009, its central bank issued a 100-trillion-dollar banknote.

It created a country where a note with fourteen zeros could barely buy anything (in fact, it was worth 40 cents at the time).

Remember, money is not wealth.

Money is simply a claim on wealth.

If you create more money without creating more things people actually want, you have not made society richer.

You have simply changed the price tags.

Do You Want Wealth – Or Status?

Wealth is not a zero-sum game.

But status certainly is.

Status is relative.

It comes from where you sit compared to everybody else.

There’s an old joke that a wealthy man is someone who earns $100 more than his wife’s sister’s husband.

You can only be above average because somebody else is below it.

And by definition, only 1% of people can belong to the top 1%.

Economists call things whose value depends on that relative position “positional goods.”

A home gives you shelter either way.

But for some people, the larger home becomes more desirable because it is larger than the one next door.

The same can be true of cars, watches, job titles, and even net worth.

At that point, the thing itself is only part of the appeal.

The rest comes from what it says about your place in the hierarchy.

That is why defining “rich” as being in the top 1% does not really work.

Every person on Earth could become ten times wealthier tomorrow, and the top 1% would still contain exactly 1% of the population.

Everyone could have better food, safer homes, faster transportation, and more control over their time.

Yet most people would still sit outside that top bracket.

So here’s where it’s worth being truly honest with yourself.

Do you want your life to improve?

Or do you want to know that your life is better than somebody else’s?

A middle-class American already enjoys comforts that would have been unimaginable to most people throughout history.

Yet plenty of middle-class (and even objectively upper-class) Americans still feel poor because they are always looking at people who have more.

Once comparison becomes the standard, there is no finish line.

There is always a larger house, a higher income, or another person farther up the rankings.

Here’s an easy thought experiment that will let you see the difference.

Imagine everyone wealthier than you lost everything tomorrow.

Their businesses disappeared. Their investments went to zero. Their homes and cars vanished.

Your position in the “rankings” would rise dramatically.

But nothing in your own life would improve.

You would still live in the same home, earn the same income, and have the same amount of time.

In reality, your life might get worse because many of the businesses that disappeared were producing the goods and services you rely on.

You would have gained status while losing wealth.

Would you take that deal?

There are plenty of people who would.

For them, wealth was never really the goal.

They didn’t want to be rich, they wanted rank.

That is not my definition of rich.

To me…

Rich Means Freedom From Toil

Notice that I did not say freedom from work.

I think human beings need meaningful work.

We need responsibility.

We need to be useful to other people.

A life where nobody depends on you and nothing requires your effort sounds miserable to me.

But there is a difference between meaningful work and toil.

Toil is work you feel trapped doing because you need the money.

You don’t enjoy it. You don’t believe in it. You would leave tomorrow if you could afford to.

Adam Smith once wrote:

“The real price of every thing…is the toil and trouble of acquiring it.”

That gets much closer to real wealth.

How much of your life must you surrender just to meet your needs?

How much choice do you have over the work you do?

A rich person has margin.

And that margin gives them choice.

They can choose useful work instead of accepting whatever pays enough to survive.

The exact lifestyle will vary.

Some people genuinely want to build a cabin, grow vegetables, and hunt their own food.

Personally, that sounds like toil to me.

But the point remains – rich is not one universal bank balance.

It is having enough resources to live the life you value without being controlled by financial fear.

But once you define rich this way, the “can everyone get rich?” question starts to lose its usefulness.

And the true question becomes…

Can YOU Get Rich?

The good news is, there is a fairly predictable formula for doing so.

Start by increasing your income.

That usually means becoming more useful – developing skills that create measurable value for somebody else.

For many people, sales or starting a business offer the clearest path.

If you can consistently bring in more revenue than you cost, somebody will pay you well for it.

But earning more is only the beginning.

You also have to stop your lifestyle from consuming everything you produce.

The gap between income and spending is where wealth begins.

Invest that difference across assets that do not all depend on the same economic outcome.

Then keep increasing your earning power without allowing your expenses to rise just as quickly.

Over time, that gap compounds into something more valuable than a larger bank balance.

It gives you freedom from toil.

But freedom is not the end of the process.

My own approach is best summed up by John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church:

Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.

You earn by using your abilities to create value.

You save and invest instead of consuming everything you make.

And as your wealth grows, so does your ability to help other people in a meaningful way.

Too many people accumulate wealth but still feel dissatisfied.

They keep comparing themselves to others who have more, leaving them envious and resentful.

So they keep chasing the next number, hoping it will finally make them feel rich.

It never does.

Then they bitterly tell you that “money can’t buy happiness”.

But the truth is, they were chasing status rather than wealth.

Follow Wesley’s advice, and wealth can become more than a number.

It can give you freedom – and the ability to use that freedom for other people.