Most people probably haven't noticed this, but there is something built in to Steemit. Your interest rate on STEEM Power is around 90% a year, so you pretty much double it every year. You can see your interest rate by going to your wallet, refreshing the screen, then waiting 5 minutes and refreshing it again. That is your interest.
So with an interest rate that basically doubles any given amount within a year, and a Power Down plan that takes 104 weeks. At the end of 1 year, you will actually have around the same amount as you started with, and after another year you would have twice that. And that's if you don't ever post again when you Power Down. If you continue posting, you will actually have way more than you had before you started Powering Down.
So no matter what STEEM Power someone is when they Power Down, they will always have that same amount or more during the Power Down. So if everyone worked to get to $10,000, $50,000 or $100,000 STEEM Power, they could retire at whatever age that happened, and live pretty comfortably just on the interest during Power Down, and re-Downing everyone 2 years. And they could earn even more just by posting post-retirement travelouges. And that's jujst for people that want to retire, some people are going to use STEEM to start businesses, and possibly multiply the Power Down money many times over creating different companies and enterprises.
Over the next few years, STEEM is going to reach a lot of people, and by then there will be people living completely on STEEM.