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Club Capital
Let's say you're an average American. A "normal economic person," as Jerome Powell once put it.
How long would it take these days, for you to buy a stake in corporate America?
Put differently, assuming you're labor and you want to get into the capital game but you don't have the means to start a business, how many hours would you have to work to buy admission to the club?
Well, if you proxy the earnings of "normal economic people" by the BLS's production and nonsupervisory wages series, and
A well-known professor of entrepreneurship and frequent contributor to HBR, frequently espoused a notion that to create a successful business startup one needs 10,000 hours of experience in their chosen target field. My grandfather worked as a salesman for a leading builder of industrial lighting for six years or so (during the Depression) before he knew his customers, the company’s suppliers, processes, competitors, and some valuable secret tricks, before he was ready to start up his own version of this business (he was a sixth grade dropout, btw) . That learning process made him rich enough to live to 100 and support three generations of family and a few others less fortunate than himself. My experience with over 100 startups tells me that although 200 hours of pay might allow one to buy a couple shares at Robinhood, it will take more like a couple hundred thousand bucks to enter the capital pond, especially for a startup. (I can’t tell you how much I hated capital raising for startups. So many people who could help a fellow traveler would rather rob you than help.)