What I love about this inversion, is that it changes the notion of wealth from “what I have” to “what we all have.” And also from “what I accumulate” to “what I save.”
In this whole world, there is nobody more generous than the miser — the man who could deplete the world’s resources but chooses not to. The only difference between miserliness and philanthropy is that the philanthropist serves a favored few while the miser spreads his largess far and wide.
If you build a house and refuse to buy a house, the rest of the world is one house richer. If you earn a dollar and refuse to spend a dollar, the rest of the world is one dollar richer—because you produced a dollar’s worth of goods and didn’t consume them.
Even some hard-core economists seem to think this is a good idea.