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The Busy Person’s Lies

nytimes.com

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Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#121

Post by linkregister »

JamesBarney wrote: post #94
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoever downvoted this comment doesn't understand it at all. The working poor are a revenue source. By keeping people indebted, they remain predictable consumers and fixed-income assets, like a human bond. The impoverished are effectively trapped by the welfare system itself, because it reduces benefits as incomes rise at a faster rate than can be made up by the equivalent amount of work. If the minimum wage was a li…

The impoverished are effectively trapped by the welfare system itself, because it reduces benefits as incomes rise at a faster rate than can be made up by the equivalent amount of work This isn't true. The CBO extensivesly evaluates changes in benefits and taxes to calculate effectice marginal tax rates across the income distribution to make sure that you never make less money from working more. There are a couple of…

Some tax credits disappear faster than the rate of increased income. The only federal ones I'm familiar with are on the upper-middle-class portion.

California has some incentives that cliff at around $40k per household, no graduation (e.g. renters deduction).

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#122

Post by Roritharr »

cmurf wrote: post #119
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

Yeah but the difference between working class $50K per year, and professional $500K per year, is tiny in comparison to the difference between millionaire and billionaire. A billionaire can buy a new Mercedes Benz every day, and burn it to the ground in a pile of $100 bills at the end of that day, and not run out of money their entire life. So...

One just adds one zero, the other adds three. The proportion is correct.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#123

Post by dancek »

jobu wrote: post #54
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

As a parent of four kids myself, this seems ridiculously low: "I spent a mere 9.09 hours weekly on housework and errands" How is that possible? Housecleaner? Personal shopper? Nanny? We spend 6-8 hours each week shopping around trying to save money on just groceries, and that's not including clothes or haircuts etc.

As a stay-at-home dad with twins, I spend about 2 hours a week shopping and probably an hour a day on average on housework. We cook lots once a week and microwave it; I run the dishwasher every day and do laundry perhaps 3 times a week.

Of course I spend a lot of time with the kids, playing, dressing them up, changing diapers etc. All day basically. But that's more like hanging out than housework.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#124

Post by apsec112 »

krisroadruck wrote: post #72
faceyspacey wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That view that it it's "terribly depressing to be broke" and all the despair the poor in America feel because they can create no value could only be thought up by us smug hacker news software creators. I know first hand that much of the poor are content to live off the government, never had any aspirations and ultimately don't need much to survive and be content enough. They don't know what they don't know and theref…

... I barely know how to respond to this. If you think the most poor people are content being poor it's hard for me to craft a rebuttal given how out of touch you are with reality. I grew up poor myself. Like lived on the streets for 2 years, spent time in the state grouphome system, had shoes held together by safety-pins level of poor and I now make six figures. On my way from there to here I spent a lot of time wit…

It's good to hear about your experiences, but please don't make personal attacks on HN. Usually, commenters here are quasi-anonymous; even when they're wrong, it's bad to make assumptions about who they are as people, since in most cases you just don't know.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#125

Post by parasubvert »

spoinkaroo wrote: post #118

What kind of systems do you guys use for time tracking, priority organization, and achieving goals/finding meaning? I've flittered around with various systems, but never settled on anything. (Planning out my week in advance, time tracking from 15 minute intervals to morning intervals with what I have during the day, to do lists organized by urgent+important // important // urgent // neither, etc. It can be overwhelmi…

I've found that a rough version of GTD has really helped me focus on "getting things done" when I feel i need structure because I am pulled in many different directions.

Don't worry about all the self help material, it really is a simple workflow:

https://goo.gl/images/R7ciME

From an overall "how to think and act effectively" philosophy, the original is still the best IMO: "The Effective Executive", by Peter Drucker, written in 1967. It contains very simple ideas, but I've found them to be tremendous life lessons on how to do the right things, rather than just doing things right.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#126

Post by nerfhammer »

Swizec wrote: post #101
nerfhammer wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't call that upper "middle" class, I would just call that upper class...

Upper class is when you no longer have a salary, just investments. Upper middle is when you have a high salary and some investments, but your main source of income is still leveraging time and skill for money.

So a CEO with a seven figure salary is still upper middle class? I think not.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#127

Post by Kluny »

JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

People who can make a living as writers generally have a spouse who makes much more money, more regularly. It shows.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#128

Post by geodel »

photogrammetry wrote: post #86
SilasX wrote: post #64

Reminds me of the WSJ's infographic of tax-hike impacts and the forlorn expressions on their faces. http://i.huffpost.com/gen/944732/original.jpg

It's not just that they threw in a token retired AA couple and token hardworking Asian businesswoman. It's that they think those people will be making, respectively, $180k per year (that's three times the income of a well-off middle/working class person!) and $230k/year (that's maybe 98th percentile). Oh, the poor girl, she has to pay another $2k (1% of her income) in taxes! Call the Red Cross! It's unimaginable that…

I have seen same thing in Indian newspapers where concerns of of many 0.1% of nation's richest are frequently discussed as the biggest issues of populace.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#129

Post by imh »

cmurf wrote: post #119
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

Yeah but the difference between working class $50K per year, and professional $500K per year, is tiny in comparison to the difference between millionaire and billionaire. A billionaire can buy a new Mercedes Benz every day, and burn it to the ground in a pile of $100 bills at the end of that day, and not run out of money their entire life. So...

Is it really? At $50k/year, planning to save for things most people have to deal with is hard. You have to actively plan for it, and still might not be able to. At $500k/year, it's easy. At a million or a billion, it's still easy. Yeah there are large differences, but not in terms of day to day life relative to a normal person.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#130

Post by nikatwork »

cmurf wrote: post #119
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

Yeah but the difference between working class $50K per year, and professional $500K per year, is tiny in comparison to the difference between millionaire and billionaire. A billionaire can buy a new Mercedes Benz every day, and burn it to the ground in a pile of $100 bills at the end of that day, and not run out of money their entire life. So...

> Yeah but

Most professionals have a financial safety net the working class do not. That is a huge psychological difference.

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