Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

America’s Professional Elite: Wealthy, Successful and Miserable

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 475 posts

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

#151

Post by JohnFen »

fromthestart wrote: post #89

I sometimes wonder if the problem is that we don't believe in anything in this country. Religion is on the decline, but we as a society haven't replaced it with anything meaningful. Nationalism is a swear word, jobs are performed with no loyalty (not to blame workers, we're treated pretty expendably), marriage is no longer sacred (don't like your partner? Just divorce and move on to the next!)... What meaning can som…

> we don't believe in anything in this country.

I haven't seen any indication that this is true.

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

#153

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

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…

I disagree about it being God-less per-se. I think people will come back around to a conception of God, not as an anthropomorphized magic sky wizard full of wrath and dogma, but as a philosophical concept that seems to underpin all of reality. And when that happens, they will look back at the religions of the past and find that they, in their own words, often spoke the same wisdom that will then be commonplace. We merely misunderstood it because we lacked the context see what what was really meant. Because the thing about context is that it is necessary for communication, and you don't get it for free.

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

#154

Post by minikites »

madengr wrote: post #95
cat199 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it? Many people could retire after one year at 500k or 1M because their cost of living is such that they would be able to save almost all of it, and this would spread across their retirement..

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.

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

#155

Post by TomVDB »

krapp wrote: post #53
piptastic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it capitalism or the fundamental emptiness of life?

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 for others, and lots of trust and autonomy within the company.

I don't really care about heavy claims like moral weight or dignity of purpose. But what I do know is that it provides immense amount of satisfaction that I wouldn't want to do without.

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

#156

Post by stagger87 »

thisisweirdok wrote: post #92

This kind of thing blows my mind. If I were making that much money I'd work for 5 years and retire. I sometimes wonder if that's why I don't make that much? Has anyone here done this and retired?

There are online communities and websites based on this idea. They call it FIRE, Financial Independence, Retire Early.

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

#157

Post by JohnFen »

ForHackernews wrote: post #15
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Life isn't fundamentally empty. It's the philosophical underpinnings of profit-worship that make life seem empty.

Life is fundamentally empty. Unless you're religious: you live for a while then you die. Maybe you successfully procreated, and your descendants live until something gets them too. Eventually climate change, or asteroids or supernova gets everyone left.

I disagree. I am not religious, but I don't see life as fundamentally empty at all. Our mortality isn't relevant to that.

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

#158

Post by projectramo »

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…

I bet its mostly taxes and real estate.

City + State + Federal taxes are around 50%. So $600k. Private School per kid is $50k. Assume two kids so about $100k.

Okay, now a 4 bedroom apartment in NYC is like $25k/month (on Zillow, eyeballing it), or about $300k/year.

You're down to $100k-$200k for food, vacations, clothes, cars etc.

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

#159

Post by adamredwoods »

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…

My take was that the author's life only revolved around working, trying to maintain a set income level, and therefore did not have time to explore more interesting ventures.

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

#160

Post by MrMember »

eclipxe wrote: post #91
QualityReboot wrote: post #64

I just don't understand this at all. If you can earn a million a year, do it for 3-5 years, never have to work again, and pursue your passions in life. I think the problem for most workers is the lifetime of toil, not the meaninglessness of the work. I'd happily dig ditches for 8-12 hours a day for 3 years if I knew I was completely financially independent with millions in the bank that. Actually, I'd rather do that…

5 years at a million a year, after taxes in a High COL state will be about 2.5M. A healthy sum indeed, but not enough to retire on, especially with a family.

A single person could absolutely retire on 2.5M. That's $100k a year using the 4% rule.
Post reply on HN