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America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

nytimes.com

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Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#191

Post by vasilipupkin »

JackFr wrote: post #138
strikelaserclaw wrote: post #6

- He had received an offer at a start-up, and he would have loved to take it, but it paid half as much, and he felt locked into a lifestyle that made this pay cut impossible. “My wife laughed when I told her about it,” he said. Sounds like a good wife to me, and this "pay cut" is making 500k-600k instead of 1.2 million, what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't…

Let's say you've got three kids and you're living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Your mortgage and maintenance for a 3 bedroom apartment at $3.5MM are going to be ~15000 a month or 180K a year. Three private school tuitions are 150K. Living in NYC you're paying NYC, NYS and Federal income taxes for probably the highest tax rate in the country. So basically it's easy to be paycheck to paycheck on 500K in NYC.

a problem easily solvable by a move to NJ, which of course, would dramatically increase your misery level. In fact, that's probably why that guy is miserable - he doesn't live in Manhattan and has a 2 hr or more commute every day.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#192

Post by aglavine »

ttoinou wrote: post #122
aglavine wrote: post #20

At least in my country (Argentina) I think that at a personal level (indoor) we are all OK, the problem is at a social level (outdoor). I can think of several projects that would make me happy and 100% sure that they would improve my community as well. But I don't have time or wealth or mechanisms to deal with it. We are lacking community level organization, because it is really hard to do it well, without messing wi…

Interesting, what projects for example and how can you be so sure people would be interested ? I tend to think that one kinda needs to exchange (i.e. not just give everything away) with others in order for the "improvements" one is looking for gets validated / get real time feedback.

As a clear example, We lack green areas in our cities by any measure. That's something that already have been done in many places and have 100% positive impact. You don't really need to innovate, just copy what have worked in other places.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#193

Post by tenpies »

munk-a wrote: post #169
Murdoch wrote: post #17

The rich are depressed, the middle-class is shrinking and fearful, the poor are hopeless. I'm gonna take a leap here and say maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning. I found it interesting that a person in the article who made $1.2M a year was still depressed in thinking they were wasting their lives and it was all meaningless. I ask myself, does this person have children? a famil…

I have individual faith and it's arisen out of a general respect for nature and acceptance of existential philosophical crises but... I'm never setting foot in a church. Organized religion in America is a toxic and terrible institution. When I was growing up my parents were friends with a couple that had moved up from Georgia, as I grew older I learned that they have moved there after the father had been the pastor o…

Just curious, but how do you know that the church they prayed at supports the behaviour of their neighbours?

It just strikes me as odd logic, like saying that because a thief goes to church to pray, that church must condone thievery.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#194

Post by fzeroracer »

Murdoch wrote: post #17

The rich are depressed, the middle-class is shrinking and fearful, the poor are hopeless. I'm gonna take a leap here and say maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning. I found it interesting that a person in the article who made $1.2M a year was still depressed in thinking they were wasting their lives and it was all meaningless. I ask myself, does this person have children? a famil…

America is already incredibly religious and the rich/wealthy are no exception. What exactly makes you think that these miserable people are not religious? Because it seems like you're extrapolating miserable = lack of religion, which seems like a nonsensical connection.

Religion has nothing to do with this unless you decide to No True Scotsman and claim that they aren't actually religious. The issue is that they're chasing a lifestyle of endless consumption where at a certain point consumption doesn't actually add anything to your life. Better houses, more cars, wealthier friends, eventually you hit a point where your capital only marginally affects your life until you hop into the hyper-wealthy category. At that point you can start using capital to influence policy but that still relies on personal conviction.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#195

Post by madengr »

minikites wrote: post #154
madengr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even a poverty level wage (for family of 4) is $25k/year. So $500k over a 20 year retirement sounds like a lot, but it’s not.

You're leaving out the compound interest that could be earned through stocks/bonds.

Yes, but even bonds don't keep up with inflation, and you need enough principle to ride out the dips. The "safe" return is considered to be 4%, which is $20k on $500k, so you'd be dipping into the principle even on that poverty scale.

It just take a lot more to retire than the average person realizes, and not eat Alpo.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#197

Post by Wwhite »

kevmo wrote: post #47

Bullshit Jobs, a 2018 book by David Graeber, discusses this phenomenon pretty extensively and calls for more research. His rudimentary theory is that people who aren't contributing to society know that they aren't, and it makes them miserable. People have an inherent desire to change the world around them, and most professional jobs are actually mostly nonsense. This results in professionals being depressed and feeli…

This article is like a watery, inoffensive version of Graeber for the author and his MBA classmates in the managerial class.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#198

Post by o_nate »

akavi wrote: post #19

The article seems to be omitting an important piece of data: Are people who make more money less happy/equally happy/more happy than people who make less? It implies by its framing that they're less happy, but that's not actually supported by any actual data in the piece (though to be fair, on cursory googling I wasn't able to find any evidence one way or another).

I don't think there's any known objective way to measure happiness.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#199

Post by krapp »

TomVDB wrote: post #155
krapp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is the false premise that employment in a capitalist system exists to provide meaning or value through work, that work is noble or carries some implicit moral weight or dignity of purpose. Work exists to allow you to enrich the capital ownership class, of which you are likely not a part (if you were, you wouldn't need to work to eat.) That's it. If you want to find more, look elsewhere.

And yet, when I look around me I see a bunch of older colleagues, some of them older than 65, who rode the same wave from smallish to a pretty big company. Like me, they could afford to not work anymore, but they keep on working anyway. They have exactly was the article describes as essential features for job happiness: respect from people they respect, working on something that make the world a (little) bit better f…

You and your colleagues are lucky and privileged to be able to find satisfaction in work, but that's still orthogonal to the purpose of work. Enjoying one's job is a coincidence, not an expected result.

Re: America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

#200

Post by School-Cotton »

Alex3917 wrote: post #73
naravara wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>what world are these people living in that you can't give up a job that you hate because you can't afford to live on 500-600k. The one where you lock into a mortgage and a car that assumes a $1.2M salary to keep ahead of. It's really easy to let your lifestyle expenses balloon, especially in a high-COL city where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money.

> where minor increases in living space/amenities can end up costing large amounts of money. It is pretty crazy how little extra money buys you. E.g. in NYC, the only differences between a $2,000 month apartment and a $20,000 a month apartment are going to be things like location, granite countertops, a well-designed bathroom, and better windows. But in most cases the actual floor space and layout is going to be almo…

This is not true. $20,000/mo rent in NYC will get you a gigantic apartment (thousands of square feet), as you can verify on any housing listings website.
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