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Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

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Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#331

Post by dang »

jensv wrote: post #82
rmspower wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that this makes their messaging strategy any more coherent, but 200k is on the very low end of Google compensation; new grads have offers with total compensation north of that. But they're just new grads, so obviously they can't know much, right?

I've noticed this on multiple occasions but why do people often create new accounts just to spread propaganda regarding compensation at Google? Is this a recruiting strategy executed by paid schills?

This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask you not to insinuate astroturfing or shillage without evidence. If you'd review and follow https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html, we'd appreciate it.

Compensation is an intense topic for obvious reasons. There is a lot of variance in the data and it is anything but transparent. It's not surprising that people would create accounts to post sensitive information about it. I haven't seen examples of abuse in this area, but if you or anyone think you're seeing some, please email hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#332

Post by solveit »

antocv wrote: post #280
humanrebar wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Slavery, violence, and murder are not features of free markets I beg to differ. Slavery, violence and murder are inherent properties of an unjust relationships which follow from unequal distribution of wealth. If you can show me a society which used property but did not have those effects, feel free to correct this point. But on other hand, I can show you societies which did not have concepts of property, of trade,…

If you could actually show examples at reasonable scale, I would be very impressed and maybe even go anti-capitalism.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#333

Post by Applejinx »

edanm wrote: post #175
Applejinx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a hidden assumption. Why would you not work doing whatever it is you do as an avocation, or if you like, a hobby or dream job? If it's what you love and what fascinates you, why would that not lead to income across your whole life? Granted, it'd take years to get to the point where it's sustainable, but surely there is tangible value in this? I do not understand a mindset of 'My only purpose is to ama…

> I do not understand a mindset of 'My only purpose is to amass a pile of wealth so large that I don't spend any of it or do anything else ever, merely use the mechanisms of finance to subsist unproductively off the leakage from my giant pile of wealth, literally forever'. > You're going to die having made no use of the hoard you seized, despite having taken it from others who need wealth of their own to survive. Ret…

Rationalization.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#334

Post by amf12 »

edanm wrote: post #175
Applejinx wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a hidden assumption. Why would you not work doing whatever it is you do as an avocation, or if you like, a hobby or dream job? If it's what you love and what fascinates you, why would that not lead to income across your whole life? Granted, it'd take years to get to the point where it's sustainable, but surely there is tangible value in this? I do not understand a mindset of 'My only purpose is to ama…

> I do not understand a mindset of 'My only purpose is to amass a pile of wealth so large that I don't spend any of it or do anything else ever, merely use the mechanisms of finance to subsist unproductively off the leakage from my giant pile of wealth, literally forever'. > You're going to die having made no use of the hoard you seized, despite having taken it from others who need wealth of their own to survive. Ret…

> I highly recommend you read a little about economics

Can you suggest some resources?

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#335

Post by edanm »

amf12 wrote: post #334
edanm wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do not understand a mindset of 'My only purpose is to amass a pile of wealth so large that I don't spend any of it or do anything else ever, merely use the mechanisms of finance to subsist unproductively off the leakage from my giant pile of wealth, literally forever'. > You're going to die having made no use of the hoard you seized, despite having taken it from others who need wealth of their own to survive. Ret…

> I highly recommend you read a little about economics Can you suggest some resources?

It depends how far into economics you want to get (and remember, I am not at all an economist, just an interested layperson).

A good book for getting started, IMO, is Charles Wheelan's "Naked Economics".

The first thing that I read was "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell, which I liked a lot and highly recommend - however, keep in mind that Thomas Sowell is very capitalist/right leaning, and the book is quite "biased".

A great textbook, if you really want to get further into economics, is Greg Mankiw's Principles of Economics (almost all undergrad economics textbooks are called "Principles of Economics", for some reason, so you have to search by author.) That's definitely the place to go if you want to have a more sophisticated understanding of economics than you'll just get by reading books.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#336

Post by jahaja »

simonh wrote: post #329
antocv wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

The Spanish conquistadors were feudalists, not capitalists. Spain actually had one of the most rigid and statist economies in all of Europe. The sort of tribalism (of the European colonists) that lead to the destruction of native societies in the Americas, both North and South is it's own thing and exists independently of the economic system of those practicing it. In fact Capitalism says very little about politics t…

The double standards, lack of historical context and nuance, the surgical separation of capitalism from the power concentration it creates and its consequences (inequality, skewed democracy etc), the euphemisms (usually using the word freedom), and the reflexive assumption that critics want Stalinism and so on, all these things are just too infuriating and requires too much effort to step by step reply too, hence my downvote.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#337

Post by mendelsd »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #97
rv-de wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In terms of machine learning money is the opposite of regularization. The more money the less regularization the more over-fitting to your specific self-chosen environment. A not rich person will have to learn to cope with obstacles. A rich person can remove obstacles. But it is impossible to remove all obstacles which will lead to increased hostility towards those remaining annoyances - like for example with SUVs in…

Money is an insanely toxic mental, political, and social poison, for exactly these kinds of reasons. It's also a social reward function that privileges egotism and narcissism over empathy; exploitation, scamming, and rent-seeking over creativity, curiosity and invention; and short-term gain over long-term damage. Like the hardest of hard addictive drugs, it's an almost irresistible modifier of behaviour and attitude.

Good comment, except I'd point out that plenty of creativity and invention gets employed in the service of rent-seeking: e.g. most of academic economics, and the way it gets used politically.

Check out Michael Hudson and Richard Werner for a dose of reality.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#338

Post by theshadowknows »

I can see there being some weird stuff that can happen. Say the Hilton girls or Bill Gates or anyone who is exceptionally wealthy. Eventually you realize there’s nothing that can be bought that you can’t have. And nothing with a price that you can’t do. I guess that’s why some of them decide to go to space. It’s a huge thrill ride. In my case, my wife and I struggled a lot. Both from low income families. We struggled through college. I struggled in freelancing and consulting with clients that didn’t pay or paid very late. She has and continues to struggle with mystery health issues. But we always had each other, and we make each other happy. Once my salary cracked over 100k/yr it gave us a lot of breathing room. We’re less stressed. We can actually enjoy life. We both smile more. But we’re both still relatively new to it. I’m sure once your net worth is in the hundreds of millions or billions then there’s so little to worry about that life can get boring.

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#339

Post by sobani »

Namrog84 wrote: post #101
rgbrenner wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100k * 10% = 10k/year. 10% is about the best return you can count on (very optimistically) I don't know what country you live in, but 10k in the US, even for a single person, would put you far below the poverty line. No way you could afford that dental work after you pay rent on that. And let's not even talk about all of the other huge expenses that will come up later in your life. $10m * 3% = $300k/year That's a hig…

> You could cut this number in half, and that would be ok too IMO. Less than some developers make. I think you might have a bias in your viewpoint here. At half would be 150k/year and is still significantly above what most developers make. And I am assuming only United states.

> Less than some

> above what most

I don't see the contradiction here?

Re: Why Aren’t Rich People Happy With the Money They Have?

#340

Post by Fargren »

jcelerier wrote: post #317
Fargren wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if you weren't worrying about finances at some level why are you going to work today instead of going on holidays in a nice spot ? I care about my finances. But I don't worry about them. I have a high degree of certainty that, barring getting a disease that prevents me from working for multiple years, I won't have major financial problems for the rest of my life. The fact that I live in a country with good public he…

> I care about my finances. But I don't worry about them. I don't see any distinction between "caring" and "worrying" in this context: "worrying" means "thinking about it". When people say "without having to worry about finances again" it must be understood as "don't even want to think about their account balance ever in their whole life".

I'm not a native speaker, but the first entry in the dictionary for worry is "to torment oneself with or suffer from disturbing thoughts; fret", while "care" when used as a verb is defined as "to be concerned or solicitous; have thought or regard"

I have thoughts and regards about my financial situation, and will for the rest of my life. I think everyone has such concerns, so saying that someone cares about their financial situation is kind of meaningless. If that's your definition of worrying, even the richest person in the planet worries about their finances.

I certainly don't torment myself thinking about my financial situation, nor do I think I will ever need to again.

EDIT: Actually, there are people who don't care. I've seen them. But these people generally have never learnt to care: they are either children, who havne't had to handle money yet, or people spoiled people who essentially behave as children. In my experience, not caring about money is not related to how much money you have.

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