Thrifty vs Spendthrift

Thrifty people save money. Thrifty people put a little by on a regular basis to give the next generation an inheritance.

The spendthrift wastes the previous generation’s thriftiness.

It is the small minority of thrifty people, the doers of the world, these are the people that build the cities, that make the discoveries, that fashion the companies, that discover new lands and create lasting wealth.

Civilisation stands on their efforts.

Even though most of the populace go to work, earn a decent wage and live what we might call a responsible lifestyle, did you ever stop to notice that those same people are actually spendthrifts and wastrels?

These people aren’t spending their parents’ or grandparents’ financial inheritance. It’s much more subtle than that. These spendthrifts are frittering away the inheritance of the entire population that came before them.

Take a large portion of the population, the portion that just gets up in the morning and puts in the minimal effort so that they don’t get fired, assuming they even bother getting up and going to work, and if that part of the population were to suddenly disappear by the wave of a magic wand the average level of income generation and personal growth and discovery and industry of everyone else would actually increase dramatically.

Take out the rowdiest and most boisterous kid in the class. Suddenly the noise level and disruption in the classroom goes so far down that the rest of the students are able to concentrate and the average learning ability of everyone goes up. That kid was a negative drain on everyone else and their ability to get things done.

This happens in society at large.

Just substitute the “noisy kid in school” with a “person who does the minimum necessary.”

They go to work in the cubicle next door to you.

They show up in the corner office on the tenth floor.

They put in 8 hours.

They screw around for 5 of those hours.

And they think they did good work.

Their net outcome for the whole of society is actually minimal, or even negative. They are spendthrifts squandering the inheritance put away by the previous and current generation of people.

If these people disappeared tomorrow we’d hardly notice the net effect on the growth of society as a whole.

When you’re gone, which side of the balance sheet do you want your life to be on?