Quote Originally Posted by Ionathus View Post
Lack of stuff makes sense to me if they're new and didn't have a lot of stuff. Especially if Marigold's the "meal ticket" here, it's possible the others are uncomfortable about pushing her to buy furniture or feel like it's "her" house and they just live there.
There's also broadly minimalist tendencies among Millennials and the compounding minimalism among AIs. Neither May or Momo have anything like the human need for stuff, and the most human-oriented AI in the comic, Roko, openly admitted that she bought stuff in a bit of self-deception about trying to appear more human.

Again, would be interesting to get a wealth disparity plot with this crew here. How has Marigold's wild success affected everybody? Even just that first scene with Marigold playing the original gray brick GameBoy on a couch in an unfinished basement almost seems to point towards Marigold being uncomfortable with her wealth, wishing to return to simpler times, wanting to just "play games for fun," whatever that is.

I don't think we're actually headed towards that, mind. But it would be interesting.
Well, that would require properly quantifying exactly how much money is involved here, which is very much the opposite of Jeph's approach to well, everything regarding money throughout the comic.

For example, let's say Marigold makes in the vicinity of $1-2 million USD per year (this is along the lines of what the highest paid streamers/vtubers make), but, critically, even with the timeskip she's only been doing this for around one year, maybe a year and a half at the most. Considering that taxes will take in the realm of 40-50% of her earnings (Massachusetts has high state tax), she's unlikely to have accumulated more than around one million in true income after expenses. Previous comments regarding her hiring May suggests that she's not paying either Dale or Momo anything beyond their daily expenses (and they now live with her, which means they aren't paying rent), so let's say the expenses directed toward the rest of the trio amounts to 100,000 in aggregate. Purchasing and renovating a fairly large house very easily could have swallowed up the entirety of her liquid assets (assuming she paid in cash or at least 50+% down). Her current cash could very easily be only around 100,00-200,000.

Then there's the question of sustainability. Internet flame tends to be fleeting. While streaming wealth is new enough that we really don't know how long any of the various celebrities in this space can keep going - the world's wealthiest streamer, Ninja has only been famous since roughly 2017 (though he spent several years as a pro gamer before that, the 'hustle stage' that Marigold skipped entirely). Estimates will therefore be very nebulous but it seems to me foolish to count on more than ten years of significant income as Bugger Oni and more likely a mere five. That means Bugger Oni's total earnings might max out in the low eight-figure space, before taxes. At the end of the day, she'd probably face 'retirement' in her early thirties with an after-tax income of 5-10 million.

Now, that's a lot, and certainly enough to support four people in upper middle-class comfort for the rest of their lives if managed properly (for example, with 8 million in the market, an annual 5% return would allow for 400,000 a year to live on), but it's not a limitless fortune by any means. Really, Marigold is looking at the kind of income a member on the edge of the 1% (ex. a high-powered doctor or lawyer) makes over a lifetime compressed from 30-40 years into 5-10. This is in many ways similar to the career of a low-level professional athlete (an NBA bench player, for example) and carries a high risk of going broke later in life if not managed with care, as happens to many athletes.