The Algebra Of Wealth Quotes

The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.

What music is to the heart, mathematics is to the mind.

wealth is the absence of economic anxiety. Freed of the pressure to earn, we can choose how we live. Our relationships with others aren’t shadowed by the stress of money. It sounds basic, easy even.

wealth is the absence of economic anxiety.

because it’s much easier to be successful when people are rooting for you. Strong character is a wealth accelerant.

To a scholar, mathematics is music.

Stalin formulated the economic aims of socialism as: “The securing of the maximum satisfaction of the constantly rising material and cultural requirements of the whole society.” [Economic Problems of Socialism in U.S.S.R., English edition, p. 45.] Taken positively, this has no more content than any metaphysical slogan; like the slogan “All men are equal,” it expresses its point of view through negations. “Constantly rising” requirements means that there is no foreseeable limit to the possible rise in productivity (for, of course, it is not so much the needs as the means to satisfy them that will continually increase). “Cultural” requirements means that growing wealth is not to be confined to physical goods (though these alone enter into the Marxist definition of output). “The whole society” implies a condemnation of the arbitrary distribution of wealth. There is nothing in this that the orthodox economists can object to. Indeed, it takes the very words out of their mouth. But they were wont to excuse the inequality generated by private property in the means of production because it was necessary to make total income greater. If income grows faster without it, they are in an awkward situation. Perhaps this is why they have crept off to hide in thickets of algebra and left the torch of ideology to be carried by the political argument that capitalist institutions are the bulwark of liberty. [pp. 109-110]

There are plenty of qualified advisers, so don’t deviate from these requirements. Don’t hire someone to guide you on the path to economic security because they were in your sorority pledge class or they get great sports tickets. It will be the most expensive Knicks game you’ve ever been to. Here’s the critical thing about advisers. You aren’t paying them for investment returns. Over the long term, nobody beats the market. And if someone does have the secret to above-market returns, they aren’t going to be sharing it with you for a fixed percentage. You’re paying an adviser for planning, accountability, and confidence. The more wealth you accumulate and the more complex your life gets, the more valuable these services become.

Social media is likely one of the great wealth destroyers in history. It robs young people of years of time when they need it most—when investing in work and (real) relationships can compound.

My colleague Aswath Damodaran says the best regulation is life lessons

Campbell and Brickman coined the term “hedonic treadmill” to describe what they were seeing in the data: no matter how much apparent progress we make toward our goal, we remain in the same place, spinning the treadmill faster.

The Party Exercise” to identify environments where you’ll thrive from among six types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. The exercise is straightforward: Imagine you’re invited to a party. In six different corners of that party are six groups of people, each representing one of those categories. Which group are you heading to first? Who do you want to hang out with? Who do you avoid? The people you work with have the power to make or break your environment. They are, as Bolles writes, “either energy drainers or energy creators.

Your identity emerges out of your habits.

Adelard of Bath (ca. 1075-1160) disguised himself as a Muslim and studied at Cordoba; he translated Euclid's Elements from the Arabic translation into Latin, and Ptolemy's Almagest from Greek into Latin. When Alfonso VI of Castile captured Toledo from the Moors in 1085, he did not burn their libraries, containing a wealth of Muslim manuscripts. Under the encouragement of the Archbishop of Toledo, a veritable intelligence evaluation center was set up. A large number of translators, the best known of whom was Gerard of Cremona (1114-1187), translated from Arabic, Greek and Hebrew into Latin, at last acquainting Europe not only with classical Greek mathematics, but also with contemporary Arab algebra, trigonometry and astronomy. Before the Toledo leak opened, mediaeval Europe did not have a mathematician who was not a Moor, Greek or a Jew.

Mathematics is not just a subject of education system, it is the soul of education system.

This is the first lesson in this book: economic security isn’t a function of what you earn but what you keep and knowing how much is enough for you. As the great philosopher Sheryl Crow once said, happiness isn’t “having what you want, it’s wanting what you’ve got.” It’s not about getting more . . . but ascertaining what you need and applying the right strategy to get you there, so you can focus on other things.

Your mission is to find something you’re good at and apply the thousands of hours of grit and sacrifice necessary to become great at it. As you get there, the feeling of growth and your increasing mastery of your craft, along with the economic rewards, recognition, and camaraderie, will make you passionate about whatever “it” is. Nobody grows up saying, “I’m passionate about tax law,” but the best tax lawyers in the country are financially secure, have access to a broader selection of mates, and are—because they are so good at it—passionate about tax law. It’s unlikely you will ever be great at something you dislike doing, but mastery can lead to passion.

A decent strategy for economic security is to buy a home that needs fixing up, spend two years living in it while improving it (thoughtfully), then sell it (shielding up to $500,000 [for married couples] in gains from taxation), and do so again.

what I want most—to send money back in time, to the people I loved who didn’t have it. The insecurity and shame present in my childhood home will always be there. But that’s okay, as it was motivating.

Life is an accumulation of decisions, large and small. It’s strange that “decision-making” isn’t a recognized discipline, a standard high school course. There should be a decision-making section in the bookstore. The second President Bush caught a lot of flak for describing his job as “I’m the decider,” but he was saying something profound about the job. The same thing Truman was saying with his the buck stops here desk plaque. In the White House, there’s an apparatus of experts who make all the easy decisions and most of the hard ones. The only decisions that get to the president’s desk are the brutal, unwinnable ones. In your life, you get those, too, plus no staff to make the other ones. So it’s worth putting some time into thinking about how you make decisions, and how you can make better ones.

An essential aspect of character, and one that contributes to success, is an appreciation for and a belief in our interdependence. In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Covey describes three ways we can relate to others: dependence, independence, and interdependence.

Young people seem deflated when I tell them this, but working at an organization or platform offers better risk-adjusted returns. The reason the organization exists is it can pull together resources and be greater than the sum of its parts. Be one of its parts, and it will share that excess value with you. If you have the skills and patience to navigate the obstacles and the politics, and the maturity to endure the guaranteed injustices, you will over the medium- and long-term reap rewards.