$40,000 and the Quality of Life
This past week billionaire Bill Gates, the richest person in the world, made a statement that made me think “did he really just say that?” Speaking on one of the Sunday talk shows Gates told journalist Fareed Zakaria that a person today making $40,000 has a “better quality of life” than a person who was making that same amount 20 years ago. His rationale is that technology and the internet have improved people’s quality of life significantly. This got me thinking about the two worlds that existed just twenty years apart. Would I be enjoying a better quality of life in 2015 compared with 1995 even though my pay was still $40,000 per year? Would my access to the internet and all of today’s wonderful technology make the difference? Let’s look at these questions in more detail.