I’ve come across it in several places recently, such as this podcast with Tim O’Reilly. The rule says,
A simple way to forecast the future is to look at what rich people have today; middle-income people will have something equivalent in 10 years, and poor people will have it in an additional decade.
I can think of many exceptions off the top of my head, and it depends on definitions. There will always be a luxury form of something–the private jet, for example.
But overall I think it’s a view of the world that is more sensible than “robots are going to kill all the jobs and there will be mass poverty.”
Hayek on the rich going first, from, The Constitution of Liberty (1960)
What do rich people have today (apart from luxury items such as Park Ave. apartments) that hasn’t already spread into the middle class?
I can’t think of anything significant, which means all the hubbub about income inequality is just so much hot air.
I was trying to answer the same question. The only thing I could come up with was financial advisors/wealth managers. Robo-advisors have sprung up over the last few years, but they haven’t really spread that widely. I guess target-date funds are the current middle class version of an advisor.
Maybe, this is a cause, or reflection, of the alleged Great Stagnation and productivity slowdown. Maybe, bringing the wealthy’s products and services to the mass market is the first world’s version of “catch up growth” and helping the middle class catch up to the wealthy is lower hanging fruit than innovating new products for the wealthy because at least we have a target in mind.
I can think of two innovations that the rich may be close to getting: self-driving cars and anti-aging medical treatments. (Maybe, we are closer to the first than the second.) When/if the wealthy get these things, I expect that the mass market will get them too very quickly afterwards.
You’re joking, right? Here’s what rich people have that the rest of us don’t: guaranteed access to healthcare, income security, housing security, retirement security. Then we could go on to not having to live in toxic environments (water in Flint MI, cancer alley LA, etc). Another thing the rich have is the ability to purchase government policy that is favorable to their interests, and unfavorable to the rest of us. Also, access to the judicial system. So they don’t get shot when they’re pulled over by the police. They don’t have to worry about what the abortion laws are where they live because they can take a flight to France if they need that. They can break the law for drug use that gets a poor person a life in prison or laundering money for drug cartels (HSBC) and everything in between and know the criminal justice system won’t care. And if for some reason they do, they have lawyers for that. I could go on, but the point is the rich are treated as people and as citizens and the rest of us are not in many meaningful ways.
Actually, the 10 year rule is over. Modern marketing has convinced the middle and even lower middle class that they can own something expensive right now.
When I was a kid, we were middle class, but we never went to restaurants, and our parents just didn’t buy stuff outside our economic lane. Now, someone who is living month to month still might buy a $1000 bag or $300 sneakers, or get granite countertops. Some level of credit is pervasive. You can always pay later. You can’t be rich, but you can have something that makes you feel like it.
Unfortunately, this isn’t particularly good for anyone’s longer term financial well being.
This used to be true. When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, there was a long list of rich-people goods (and some services): Color TVs, second cars, clothes dryers, central air, jet air travel, and frequent dining out. Later it was microwave ovens, VCRs, DVD players, and mobile phones. Still later the rich were early adopters of GPS devices, flat-screen TVs, digital cameras, ebook readers, and smart phones. But now, that list is pretty much empty. All those kinds of things are mass market goods. Even the latest new kinds gadgets are generally very affordable when new now (e.g. smart speakers, drones).