Rethinking Wealth

I read something interesting yesterday that stuck with me. It was a different way of thinking about wealth. It went something like this:

Someone with a lot of wealth can be assumed to have provided a lot of value to others in the past, which resulted in their wealth accumulation.

This author was speaking from a historical perspective, meaning they were looking at wealth accumulation over thousands of years, not just the last few decades.

I like this way of thinking about wealth, and I’m curious how many people think about it in these terms, given the monetary conditions of the last few decades. Not many, I suspect, but I want to test to confirm my intuition during the holidays with friends and family. I’m genuinely interested in hearing people’s thoughts on this.