What a Billionaire Thinks Every Kid Should Know
What has made Ray Dalio, the billionaire who founded the biggest hedge fund in the world, so financially successful? Dalio himself has offered an explanation: In 2017, he summed up his accumulated wisdom in a book called Principles: Life & Work, which was purchased by more than 2 million people worldwide and received testimonials from a phalanx of other billionaires, including Bill Gates, Mark Cuban, and Michael Bloomberg.
Now, so that an even broader audience may access his insights, Dalio has condensed the nearly 600 pages of Principles down to 157, in the form of a picture book released late last year called Principles for Success. This simpler version—a mostly abstract blueprint for accomplishing one’s goals—is intended, Dalio told me, for readers ages 6 to 60, and beyond.
While there is a long, rich tradition in America of books about how to be successful, most of them have been targeted exclusively to seems to belong to a new, somewhat anxious curriculum—right there alongside and books about raising , children—for equipping kids for the unforgiving labor market that likely awaits them in adulthood. It’s not always clear, though, who this philosophy actually benefits: Are kids at all interested in, let alone capable of understanding, such lessons, or do they just exist to mollify nervous parents and satisfy the authors’ desires to spread their beliefs about success?
