President of Russia Vladimir Putin has urged young people not to sit on their cash like Gobseck, and to do business not just to make money, but to create a product that will last for a long time, TASS reports.
While acknowledging that money-making is actually a significant part of doing business, Putin warned young people against trying to do so at all costs, not caring about anything else.
“Only if you create a product, a result that will last forever or for a long time, that result will make you happy. Only then will you know that you have not wasted your life in vain, just raking in and not knowing what to do with all the money you have,” he said during the Breakthrough Directions nationwide open lesson at the ProyeKTOriya national career guidance forum in Yaroslavl.
He also urged young people not to forget that our lives are finite. The accumulated wealth might not even be passed on to descendants: fortunes are often spent in the second or third generation, and only brands remain.
Therefore, it is pointless to reduce your entire life to the acquisition of wealth like Gobseck, the Russian President said.
As a reminder, Gobseck is a usurer from a novella by Honore de Balzac who was famous for extreme stinginess and inflexibility.