The New Luxury Is Not Money. It Is Time.
The richest person in the room may not be the one with the highest income. It may be the one who can decide what to do with Tuesday afternoon.
For most of economic history, wealth has been relatively easy to recognize.
Land.
Gold.
Factories.
Houses.
Money.
Today we continue to measure wealth largely through the same intellectual framework.
Net worth.
Income.
Portfolio value.
Property.
But something increasingly scarce is missing from the balance sheet.
Time that belongs to you.
We live in a peculiar society in which people can earn six-figure salaries while having to request permission to take their child to the doctor.
Others can own expensive watches while spending their lives explaining why they are five minutes late.
Perhaps the watch is not the luxury.
Perhaps the luxury is having nowhere you are required to be.
Imagine two people
Person A earns $200,000 a year.
He works 65 hours a week.
He has a large mortgage, two financed cars, private-school fees, expensive insurance, constant emails and a telephone that regards Sunday as an administrative misunderstanding.
Person B earns $75,000.
She owns a modest home, has little debt, works 30 hours a week and can decide on Wednesday morning to spend the afternoon with her daughter.
Which one is richer?
Accounting gives us one answer.
Life may give us another.
I am not suggesting that money does not matter.
That would be an especially eccentric argument for someone who has spent much of his professional life in finance.
Money matters enormously.
But after a certain point, money increasingly buys something more interesting than objects.
It buys control over time.
And control may be the true luxury good.
Economics has always priced labour. It rarely prices freedom.