I first encountered "Fuck you" as a quantification of money in Neal
Stephenson's
Cryptonomicon. Its exact amount depends on your
age,
current economic conditions, the cost of your desired
lifestyle
in your
preferred location, and other factors. The name derives from
the fact that once you have acquired the appropriate amount, you can
tell your
boss, your
investors, your
creditors,
anybody, "
Fuck
you!"
Interestingly, the amount is not as large as you might expect. Until
very recently, we were accustomed to hearing Cinderella stories about
high school dropouts who start web companies which they sell to
well-heeled investors after a year or two, for tens of millions of
dollars. And, of course, athletes have been making news for their
lucrative contracts for years. Against this backdrop, one might
assume that five or ten million dollars wouldn't come close to fuck
you money, but one would very likely be wrong.
Consider the pauper with just two million dollars in the bank.
Granted, he'd probably have to have made four or five million in order
to have two left after taxes, but let's say he's done it. He could
invest it in tax-free municipal bonds at 3 or 4 percent and have
$60,000 to $80,000 income after taxes, for life. That's
comparable to a salary of $100,000 or $150,000, which is easily
livable, even in New York or Los Angeles, and downright plush in
many places. And you don't have to lift a finger -- you don't even
have to get out of bed!
"Wait," you say, "I want a couple of Ferraris, a house in Malibu, and
tickets to the opera in Milan every other weekend." Well, so do I,
but neither of us will get it by working for The Man. I believe there
are only a few ways to get the kind of money you need to have in order
to buy a $200,000 car, or a $5,000,000 house, or to support a
$12,000-a-month habit, and none of them have much to do with showing
up at an office for forty hours a week.
To really make good, you must be a residual claimant in some
enterprise -- one of the guys who splits the profits after the
suppliers and wage slaves are paid. Sure, sometimes they don't make
any money, or they lose some, or even go broke (while the slaves,
bless their hearts, still take home whatever the IRS leaves of their
$5,000 per month). But when the company's sales are up because the
slaves are doing their jobs marginally well, who do you think is
laughing all the way to the bank?
The U.S. economy has been honed with diabolical cleverness to tease
citizens into coveting the unattainable Ferraris, beachfront
properties, and other baubles of star actors, athletes, and lottery
winners; while making it easy to acquire the booby prizes --
big-screen TVs and SUVs -- on credit that absorbs their savings and
makes sure they won't be able to say "Fuck you" to their bosses in
this life.
You should save, not for your retirement, but so that you can afford
to risk your savings on your enterprise, the one from which
you pocket the profits. Let's face it, if you end up relying
on your IRA for your retirement, with or without Social Security,
you're deeply fucked.
cgori notes that I haven't accounted for
inflation, and suggests that the minimum bound for
fuck you money is more like $4,000,000 in the bank. It's true that I ignored inflation, and obviously, when it comes to
money in the bank,
the more the merrier. I don't have $2 million in the bank yet, let alone $4 million, so I can't comment with any more authority than (I expect)
cgori can.
Still, my point is that you don't have to be richer than God, or even Bill Gates. A few million in the bank, and you can live like you do now, but without the soul-killing grind for The Man.