besides spend it on frivolous shit like yachts and planes and stuff, there's no way it's all liquid. do they just park all their billions in a bunch of investment vehicles and wait for it to propagate itself? don't they get bored of just waiting and watching line go up?
This. you invest your capital in things that return a profit, then you live off a portion of the profit while reinvesting the rest so your giant pile of wealth grows like some fetid necromantic mushroom from hell. It's the key difference between rich people and poor people. When people who have a 500,000$ a year salary lose their job they're fucked because they were living on a salary. They were never rich, once the money stops coming in it's gone. But if they invested a bunch of that shit and it's kicking back 25k a year in interest or profits or whatever the fuck, they're rich, even if they're living in a shitty apartment in Omaha because they're getting 25k a year simply because they own capital that's turning a profit. that's the difference between rich and poor. Not how much money you've got any given day, but where that money comes from. Rich is when your money makes money.
Solid explanation of class. I liked the part about the mushroom.
Most people who make $500k a year are probably saving at least $200k of that - realistically unless you're a total idiot you're probably saving $300-$350k of it. If you do that for 15 years you can retire with $5 million in the bank while you're still young/probably in your 50s. It's way easy to live off that for another 25 years - it's still $200k a year which would be more than you were living off of in the previous 15 years