What do you mean by recent? There's been a whole society of rentiers living solely off investment income in most countries for at least the last 300 years, if not several thousand years. It's extremely well documented, especially in Britain and France since the early 1800's (see Thomas Piketty's work on wealth distribution). The more capital one owns, in general, more income is earned from capital rather than wages. This ratio increases sharply when you look at the top 1% and 0.1% of owners.
I think the recent phenomenon is that many folks with moderate levels of income and initial capital have become convinced that they can attain financial freedom. Pickety's research does not support that, in fact, it supports the opposite conclusion: the only way to get wealthy, is to start wealthy.
That's an ironic claim on this platform. If you make $200k/year (normal high tech comp, probably not far from the average person here), save $100k/year and average 6.5% returns over 10 years, you have $1.4M.
You can then on average draw down $63k/year assuming 2% inflation to retain your purchasing power until the end of time. That's very comfortable if you're just willing to not live in the bay area or NYC.
I'm drawing a line between "software developer" and "high tech"
By high tech I ideally mean a company building novel and innovative software using new ideas and techniques, but implicitly I pretty much mean FAANG/well resourced startup in a tech hub.
And of course it reflects the "HN bubble", that's literally what I was referencing.
HN ranks in the top 1000 most popular sites in the US. How many of those visitors do you think are building “new and innovative” software?
How many of those who are building software at all do you think are not just building yet another software as a service CRUD app where the founder thinks they need “rockstar ninja” employees who can do leetCode in their sleep?
It's like that quote attributed to Steinbeck - "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."
Temporarily embarrassed millionaire American here. I can't make universal health care and UBI happen. The next best thing is to acquire wealth so I can some day avoid the drudgery of working life. Maybe.
