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
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082545 and marked it off-topic.
The Busy Person’s Lies
141–150 of 199 posts
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I feel like what I am obtaining from an exchange of money for some thing, is less valuable to me than the amount of my lifetime/mental and physical energies I spent to acquire that money originally, I am probably not going to feel good about the exchange. This seems like common sense to me? It makes me feel even worse on general principle when the exchange is coercive, using my example, I parked in a place that wa…
How much are paved roads, fire trucks, city administrators, and hospitals worth to you?
You are on the verge of straw-manning me, I am absolutely not some anti-tax advocate. I willingly pay fees based reasonably on a fraction of my overall income to pay for those services, and I see nothing wrong with that. But wanting these services for other people in the use-pool, and my personal use-level of the communal service-pool are two different things.
The 'wince' from paying taxes comes from the psychological disconnect between my actual use-level of the services, it isn't logical, but it is definitely there. This psychological disconnect is where libertarian positions come in, people want to pay for what they make use of, and no more. I don't personally believe that individualistic positions make much sense, but I experience why people would advocate for them in a visceral way when I pay for services that I don't use.
I have never once broken a bone or been a patient in a hospital for any reason, I have still paid for it.
I have never once used a fire service, nor can I think of a single person I know that has off the top of my head, yet I still pay for it.
The roads in my city are a great example because in my city the money has been mismanaged and they have not patched any pot-holes for over five years now. My morning commute to work across my city is as bumpy as rural country roads. And yet I am still paying for something?
These things add up to that wince when I pay money, but that isn't to say that we shouldn't pay for the upkeep of these services and I would never advocate for people not acting collectively. I think the 'wince' is more of a symptom of how disconnected we are from the other people in our community.
When we don't see the fruits of our monetary subsidies because we are disconnected from all the people around us we lack the positive stimulation our brains require to tell us we made a good purchase with our taxes.
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
... 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…
How did you get out of it? Or are you still in that situation?
Hard work, a healthy serving of luck, and a decent amount of hustle. Luck in that while my living and financial circumstances sucked, I won the genetic lottery on the intelligence front, so learning has always been both fairly easy for me, and something I'm naturally inclined to pursue. On the hard work front I basically gave up my social life for the most part and instead focused on learning everything I could, and made myself available to move should any opportunity come up. At 35 years old I've moved over 20 times almost always in pursuit of opportunity. I also make a point to always be available for my clients or for my boss if I'm working for someone. This helped me build a decent sized network of people who say nice things about me which makes tracking down those new opportunities easier. Currently going on my 6th year in six figure territory and my 8th for doing better than 80K a year. Not bad for a previously homeless guy with a GED eh? :-)
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#144The 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.
I agree with you, but the author is trying to pass a message, that we are not so busy as we think we are. People from all social classes could potentially measure their days to realize that.
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#145Is there a Chrome extension or program that does something like mentioned in the article, asking you every half-hour "what did you do this last half-hour?" I think that would be an effective way to get me logging my time.
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.
You should start measuring the quality of your sleep using apps like Sleep Cycle. I used to be exactly the same way. Then I realized that the reason I was sleeping for 9-10 hours was because my sleep was "shallow" and kept getting interrupted. It all changed drastically after I optimized my sleeping environment: totally dark, 68 degrees year around, appropriate mattress type for my sleeping position, etc. Now I can g…
Would you recommend Sleep Cycle the most? Do they require the phone physically on your bed or nearby?
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#147The 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.
>Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days.
I'd venture they are approximately as out-of-touch as the people who give the poor and working class those extremely busy schedules in the first place.
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#148I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…
0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.
It's a double-edged sword. I go to sleep between 12 and 12:45 every night, and wake up almost exactly six hours later without an alarm. It's great when waking up for work, it's really irritating on the weekends that I want to sleep in on.
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#149I keep track of my own time quite well and don't really agree with the article at all in fact I started coming up with my own outlandish solutions. One of them is that I segment my sleep like people used to do before the Industrial Revolution. When I get off work I sleep for 2-3 hours and then go to bed much later for 3-5 hours. I've found that I used to waste more time preparing to try and sleep for 8 hour blocks th…
What system do you use to keep track of your time?
Re: The Busy Person’s Lies
#150The lack of time is really a perception caused by mental overload. Most people I know have extra time. They're just incredibly overwhelmed with the background noise of work. They have time, but extremely little of it is mentally useful time.