I generally agree, but that basically sounds like prudent investing for eventual retirement. Yes, tune the degree of aggression both in terms of work input and spending restraint, but the "work input" has to be high (and effective) for those few decades.
replyEDIT: I'm also kind of writing in the context of having your own little economic engine that you own and control, and can be continually running, rather than owning a tiny piece of the abstracted aggregation of an entire economy's engines. That said, dead-simple, low-fee, market-indexed funds are a generally good place to put the surplus fruits of your own little economic engine.
Creating an additional 30%-50% on top of whatever a normal person would consider passive income in order to actually have passive income is NOT a realistic option for a huge % of the population.
replyThe key is living below your means by ~30%. You make 150k? Live like you make 100k. Every time you get a raise, 30% goes towards investing. For most engineers this is achievable.
replyEveryone getting income passively is not going to work for society in general. Work still needs to happen. Until we live in a post-scarsity society, if nobody works then everything collapses.
replyThat's not to say that passive income is impossible, its just not going to work if large swaths of the population are doing it.