America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

tome wrote: post #101

minikites wrote: post #3

>“I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.” Capitalists are realizing the fundamental emptiness of capitalism. It's hard to have a sense of purpose when your entire life is spent making a number on a spreadsheet into a slightly larger number for the benefit of someone even more elite than yo…

I exist in a capitalist economy. I make a number on a spreadsheet a bit larger and then I go home and live a meaningful life using, in part, the money I've earned doing so. I'd be hard-pressed to do that under any other economic system that's ever been tried.

> I exist in a capitalist economy.

If you live in the modern developed world, you probably live in a mixed market economy that has incorporated many structures advocated by socialist critics of capitalism (in many places some straight out the Communist Manifesto), rather than an actually capitalist system.

And it's quite likely that, for those outside of the bourgeoisie—and even much of the petit bourgeoisie, as much as many critics of capitalism see them as class enemies—your ability to have a meaningful life outside of doing what is necessary to maintain your condition in the economic system is a direct result of the ways in which you do not live in a capitalist society.

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

#142

Post by jhall1468 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #99

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.

Yeah... I literally don't buy it. High Cost of Living city has nothing to do with needing $500k/yr in earnings (post tax). What kind of mortgage and car do you have that? Simple answer... that's a $10M house or a $2M car or half of each of those. Besides the fact that if you're earning $1.2M salary, you're taking home other bonus/stock that are comparable. Getting locked into this sort of lifestyle is a choice not dr…

100% agree. We recently purchased a car. In our case the "expensive" aspect is that we bought new... a new Subaru Outback. We could certainly afford a brand new Escalade, but those types of behaviors would lock me into my current employer or something that pays similarly and that idea isn't something I'm fond of.

And this dude bought that shit despite hating his professional life. Hard to feel bad for him.

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

#143

Post by kough » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

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 don't know why you were downvoted, this is right on the money. There's a reason we've all heard the phrase "crisis of meaning."

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

#144

Post by justwalt » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:53 PM UTC

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’ve agreed with this more and more as I get older. It wouldn’t surprise me if this correlation was pretty much universal.

It reminds me of using cheat codes in old video games. When you play normally, you’re chasing an objective that can take you a substantial amount of hours to achieve. But once you activate god mode and unlimited resources, the interest/enjoyment lasts about 15 minutes, and then the game feels pointless to play.

Without a higher purpose, then what is there? Personally, I don’t think I could ever be persuaded by or force myself to subscribe to to any religion. The highest goal I’ve given myself is to create a great family and teach my future children as best I can. I find it easier to ignore the question of “But why?” a little easier with this goal in mind than others.

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

#145

Post by kough » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

nimonian wrote: post #136

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…

> maybe people need some religion in their lives to give direction and meaning I can't just accept dogma because I'm miserable. I can't just say 2+2=5 even if it would make me feel better. Religion isn't something you can just pick up like pilates. If life is inherently without meaning or direction, I'd rather go with that and be true to myself than refract the universe through some doctrine I understand to be false.…

Practicing regularly to increase self-knowledge, thinking spiritually, reflecting on your relation to the world – do you not consider that a religion? Organized Christianity is just one flavor.

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

#146

Post by JohnFen » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

thisisweirdok wrote: post #97

nightski wrote: post #42

I'd just like to add a thought - maybe happiness isn't all it's cracked up to be? I mean sure, we should strive to achieve a certain standard of living for everyone. But once you get to a certain point of "happiness", maybe it's the happiness itself which makes you miserable?

It's fleeting. What makes you happy today might feel miserable tomorrow. You need to recognize this and be willing to change. It's hard. Life is hard.

> What makes you happy today might feel miserable tomorrow.

Not to get too philosophical, but I honestly don't think that things make people happy or unhappy. Happiness appears to be a choice. I say this based on my observation that I've known people who've lived in objectively awful circumstance, but were genuinely happy -- and I've known people who've lived in ideal circumstances, but were miserable.

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

#147

Post by freeflight » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #70

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…

So this dovetails with what I think is the most fascinating topic in evolution: the demographic transition in humans. If you're not familiar, demographic transition is the term used to describe what has happened to the demography of nations as they become developed. Which is that, rather than producing more children with their material abundance, people in rich nations have less children. This is not, at all, what bi…

> This is not, at all, what biology would predict.

Why isn't it? Afaik in biology, healthy populations tend to be stable populations.

Populations that shrink or grow too fast are often a sign for something going very wrong, usually having to do with sustainability.

That's why I think people in rich nations having fewer children is a feature and not a bug. It's the result of increasing living standards because when you have very low child-mortality rates you don't need to "try" several times to get one into adult age, just like the availability of contraception allows for more reliable family planning.

The same applies to having a social security net: Without that, you have to depend on your offspring to take care of you when you get too old to work/sick.

In a situation like that, more off-spring is always better, as long as you get them through childhood into productive adulthood. Each child is a future potential care-taker and each one of them could end up being a big earner. In that context, a whole lot of people treat getting children like playing the lottery.

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

#148

Post by vibrato » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

toasterlovin wrote: post #120

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about it being religion specifically, but I would say that people need a better philosophy, a model of reality, to understand why the things they think will make them happy don't.

I think it's useful to divorce the concept Religion from the concept of God in your mind. IMO, the religions of the future will be God-less. If you look at the jobs that religions typically do, a lot of the ground is being covered by science (telling a story about how we came to exist and what our purpose is) and the rest is being covered by political ideologies (how we should live our lives and how we should relate…

The religion of social justice based on marxist identity politics is alive and well.

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

#149

Post by obastani » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

It sounds like part of the problem is his family (or at least with his wife)...

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

#150

Post by sp527 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

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…

You could also simply read excellent literature. That’s a more effective strategy to unpack and comprehend the human experience, with the added benefit of not incorporating tall tales of dubious veracity.