You Ought To Be Rich
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Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Benjamin Taylor of the THIRD PIG blog. (Benjamin is also the President of Brick Financial Management, LLC)
“Everybody Ought to be Rich” was an article published in August 1929, just before the beginning of the Great Depression in the Ladies’ Home Journal by John Jakob Raskob. Raskob, a wealthy financier at the time, believed in the stock market as a viable means of wealth creation for everyone. However, the article is often seen as an example of irrational exuberance due primarily to the unfortunate timing of its publication.
This does not mean that Rasko was wrong in his declaration. The truth of the matter is that everyone ought to be rich, but not everyone will be rich. Becoming rich requires a level of persistence that few people seem to possess. Becoming rich, as Raskob implies, is not a matter of business genius but a matter of disciplined saving in performing asset classes, namely the stocks of high quality companies.