How many venture capitalists aren't millionaires

I agree. That is why its generally a good idea to save money, be thrifty, then spend money wisely. Although you have lower demand, the reality is that the jobs that are created are generally high-value jobs. In our consumerist society, jobs are generally plentiful for lower skilled labor: retail, fast-food, and the like.

My grandma and grandpa lived through the Great Depression, and since I've got older, I've talked to her extensively about it. It really impacted their values and how they managed their money - use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without. They turned off lights every time they left a room, only purchased new clothes when they absolutely needed them, and bought cars only when the last one died. Their family was one-income, and despite that (he worked as a general laborer at a power plant for ~30 years), they retired with approximately $1 million USD in assets.

Thinking about that and the massive growth of wealth and the middle class after WW2 and the depression, it makes a lot of sense. People came out of the Depression with the idea that they must conserve, so they did. When they conserved, they kept their assets, had little use of credit, and therefore kept their monies. Since that generation has passed away, values shifted to rampant consumerism, and now compound interest is wrecking peoples' lives, because they are transfering their wealth to those that loaned them the money. We've seen this through the savings rate plummeting since the 1970's, and eventually collapsed at the same time the housing bubble burst.

I'd imagine that going back to such a society would be difficult, but is needed. My opinion is that (as an American) that other Western societies are far more responsible with their credit, which ensures that the lower and middle class aren't transfering their wealth to the upper class. I know in my own life, I've focused on having as little debt as possible, and its made me pretty wealthy pretty quickly.

VC far from represent the totality of their investments however...

How many hedge funds investors aren't millionaires ? ( and there's a lot more money into hedge than into VC).

PS : the most successfull companies of these last 20 years actually hardly needed VC funding by the way ( Google, Facebook). By the time the VC got in those companies were actually already so successfull tha the VC were tripping each others to get in...

I am pretty sure if you took the factors that came after World War II, it led up to the situation that it had, which is probably abnormal and shouldn't be expected.  What you saw was:

* Frugality from being in a depression

* Development of community thrift and conserving in the name of a war effort.

* Large pent up demand coming off a war.

* Destruction of about every single manufacturing base outside of the United States, so America was the manufacturing center of the world.

Combine these factors together and you get levels of wealth not seen since, which led up to the 1960s, the Great Society and the belief that just enough government involvement (heck the U.S Government helped to win a World War) and there could be Utopia and no more world problems.  Just keep the tech coming and you will have the Star Trek Federation of Planets utopia (remember that world?) of Gene Roddenbury.  All that got lost in war after war after war.

To be fair though, the boom essentially lasted until government intervened so heavily that markets had to react negatively. Look at all the horrible things Nixon did as president (price controls, gold standard, ect).

Although I agree that the demand from the war, as well as Bretton Woods helped out significantly, I still believe that if we had continued in the spirit of thrift and less government paternalism, we wouldn't have had the stagflation of the 70s and would of continued to grow the middle class.