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

theatlantic.com

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

#351

Post by amf12 »

edanm wrote: post #335
amf12 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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"…

Thanks! I'll start here.

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

#352

Post by dovvdkc »

kaybe wrote: post #143
dovvdkc wrote: post #28

“For one study, Norton and his collaborator paid each respondent about 46 euros for every completed questionnaire. “You can run a survey on regular people for like a dollar,” “ Hmm I refused to give my email to a cable provider for a $100 Best Buy gift card (I was in Best Buy). At the time I thought who would trade their email address for a lousy $100? Now I know.

Do you only have one email adress? I wouldn't give out the main one, but some of the others.. or just make a new account somewhere and forward it to your main, then delete it if it ever collects spam.

I don’t like to give out my fake one either. Wouldn’t want my porn spam to get diluted by COMCAST offers.

Actually you could learn a lot about me and who I am by cross referencing all the places i’ve given my fake address to. Since I don’t want to create a thousand fake addresses, I don’t give that out either for a mere $100

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

#353

Post by kaybe »

dovvdkc wrote: post #352
kaybe wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you only have one email adress? I wouldn't give out the main one, but some of the others.. or just make a new account somewhere and forward it to your main, then delete it if it ever collects spam.

I don’t like to give out my fake one either. Wouldn’t want my porn spam to get diluted by COMCAST offers. Actually you could learn a lot about me and who I am by cross referencing all the places i’ve given my fake address to. Since I don’t want to create a thousand fake addresses, I don’t give that out either for a mere $100

I see, though $100 is not that little.. I like mailhero (mailhero.io) where you can give out unique email adresses (free, but maybe better not for important stuff) but of course it is not very hard to trace.

(It works like this: You have one identifier (eg smith) and then add anythingn before the dot, like company.smith@mailhero.io), so the identifier is the same in all cases.)

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

#354

Post by tokyodude »

ryanmercer wrote: post #327
tokyodude wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and so you're saying if they had 1 million dollars you would consider them financially "rich"? The article is about the motivations of rich people. it doesn't sound like the lifestyle you're describing is a financially "rich" lifestyle. It sounds like an "I could get by if I pinched pennies" lifestyle. One for which it would be obvious why they'd want more money.

>and so you're saying if they had 1 million dollars you would consider them financially "rich"? To most of the country 1 million dollars makes you quite rich. Again, median HOUSEHOLD income is 59k. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, that means 66.31 years of gross wages for a minimum wage worker.

living 66 years on a minimum wage is not rich. you seem to have a very different definition of rich from most people. having $60k a year for 16 years is also not rich. do you consider someone making medium income rich?

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

#355

Post by bytematic »

scarface74 wrote: post #323
bytematic wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That 2-3 million number is a common one I see for software engineers who aim to have that much invested by 40-50. Certainly my goal.

Well because of $bad_decisions up until I was 35 and purposeful financial commitments I’ve made for the past 10 years, it’s going to be a stretch for us to have $2 million. But, I’m okay with that. If we can retire with a paid for house, about a million and whatever social security is then, we should be okay. Worse case, what would We do retired that we couldn’t do with me contracting/consulting part time? My hobbies…

Certainly true, goals can very different from reality. I could never retire from making stuff, would be a different type of death really.

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

#356

Post by lihaciudaniel »

throwaway1932 wrote: post #206
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd never own a Ferrari, but why would I need to? Because you were raised poor, you still are poor, so your views on life do not revolve around one of the finest and most exclusive automobiles money can buy. You've never been in a position to be even remotely close to owning a Ferrari, so your brain has ignored the value they offer. Yes. Driving a high speed status symbol can be rewarding. It can start conversation…

> Driving a high speed status symbol [...] can get you access to groups of people who would never have looked at you before I grew up in a very wealthy area and learnt to stay away from that kind of people.

Elon Musk did it once , I guess for the lols.

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

#357

Post by honestoHeminway »

Its a circular worldview, with elements of competition. That can be found in any fitness-center.

Why do you build your body? > Because i want to be the best version of myself. Why do you want to be the best version? > So all the other gymn-members can see. Why do all the other gym-members need to see? > Because they are building that body too.

Its really sort of depressing. People with all that potential to do interesting things, and most are stuck in the circular thought that got them there.

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

#358

Post by honestoHeminway »

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.

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