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

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

#211

Post by poof131 » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:27 PM UTC

zhobbs wrote: post #163

dclusin wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The median annual earnings of palo altans is about $400k/year. That's probably workable for cheaper areas like south palo alto where a house built in the 80s will run you $2.5 mil. Move closer to downtown and you could easily double or triple your necessary annual take.

"According to Census data, the median household income in Palo Alto is $137,000 a year, while the US average is $57,600" from: https://www.cnet.com/news/silicon-valley-middle-class-earns-...

Those numbers don’t remotely reflect the cost of living for people moving to the area now. Prop 13 has distorted things dramatically. In Palo Alto, there are numerous retired people living in houses paying property tax rates essentially set in the 1970s. In fact, Palo Alto has the lowest tax rate in the country by percent since the houses are so expensive but the people pay so little compared to the value.[1] You could definitely live off $500k, but $137 would be really tough to near impossible with a family. Prop 13 has really broken the California housing market.

https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/news/2016/12/01/pro...

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

#212

Post by toasterlovin » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

antisthenes wrote: post #190

toasterlovin wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> people in rich nations have less children. This is not, at all, what biology would predict. More resources should lead to more offspring. This is not correct. Rich people in rich nations have more kids than middle-income people in rich nations. What matters is your comparative purchasing power. Fertility actually increases with income, even for women with education; this is mostly due to rich being able to afford t…

All you really need to know is that developed nations are home to the highest levels of human affluence that have ever existed, at all levels of society. And yet they have the lowest fertility rates ever measured. So low that they are not sufficient to maintain population size.

But if you go even further, you'll see that fertility actually declines with income in developed nations. It's not until you get to the top several percent of income that fertility starts rising again.

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

#213

Post by School-Cotton » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:28 PM UTC

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.

It's "easy" to squander almost any amount of money -- even Johnny Depp went broke. But just like Depp didn't have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on wine, nobody has to live on the UES and send their kids to 50k/yr schools.

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

#214

Post by sjjshvuiajhz » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:28 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…

A depressed person will find a way to be depressed about religion, eg. obsessing over whether they or others are committing various sins.

I think the problem is a type of thinking deeply ingrained in our culture (and maybe built into the human brain) - the deep desire for things to be different than they are, the critical instinct. You can always find something to dislike about your house, the food you are eating, the movies you are watching, the car you are driving, your coworkers, friends, and family members. People are so good at being critical. Is it any wonder they are depressed when they have a hair trigger to detect the negatives in everything?

Appreciating what you have is a virtue, and you don’t get it automatically - you have to intentionally opt in, deliberately try to think of the positives. The rewards are great and you don’t need religion to get them. Religion won’t even help in many cases where it’s more fear-based.

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

#215

Post by maps » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

kurthr wrote: post #121

maps wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To consume $100k a month we need a $10-20 million dollar mortgage (50-100k/mo depending on years and rate). I have to assume a few cars, dining, etc would probably end up being $10-20k/mo so the mortgage is probably around $15 mil. So in NY or SF you are looking at something like a 1-2k sq/ft 2 bed 1 bathroom shithole apartment. Not so luxurious after all really.

I assume you're being sarcastic... a $15M shithole apartment! X^D

Yeah looks like I obviously touched a nerve with some people here I guess?

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

#216

Post by scarejunba » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:30 PM UTC

joshuakcockrell wrote: post #41

> We want to feel that we’re making the world better, even if it’s as small a matter as helping a shopper find the right product at the grocery store. My question for HN is do you feel that the content you are working on makes a difference in your career satisfaction? Or do you just need to know that _someone_ out there is being benefited? Is it just as fulfilling to work on a video game that flops (but maybe a few p…

Definitely where it helps more people. If I have to make tough choices in order to get there, so be it.

As it stands, I work in online advertising by choice and I love it. It's pretty meaningful to me.

It's the hard choices that really attract me: defence, advertising and privacy, pharma, companies like Monsanto. Hated but worthwhile. That's what I like.

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

#217

Post by scarejunba » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

randomacct3847 wrote: post #2

I think there was a Blind post a few weeks ago where 40% said they were depressed despite most making $300k-$600k/year

It's Blind. 90% wankage and 10% community wankage.

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

#218

Post by TomVDB » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:33 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #199

TomVDB wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You initially explicitly mentioning capitalism as a system where work as a way of providing meaning is a false premise.

Do you have any systems in mind where work exists to provide meaning?

I have the impression that you are arguing as work as a way of finding purpose in general.

And at that point, the whole discussion becomes kind of pointless.

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

#219

Post by CptFribble » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:34 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #172

madrox wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve thought about this...especially among the very wealthy. Why continue to be a high pressure CEO when you basically never have to work again? My hypothesis is that most very high paying roles are incentive-based, and incentives can be addicting: meet a goal, get a million dollar dopamine hit. I don’t think these people hate their jobs as much as they might say they do.

It's more than that. People need purpose. That's why things like UBI are a pipe-dream. Any Fortune-500 executive could live a life of leisure with 2-3 years of planning. They tend to not make that choice.

On the contrary, UBI would free people to leave the jobs that feel meaningless, and do things they are passionate about.

If the problem is that people need purpose, what better than a system that allows people to find purpose, rather than one that keeps them trapped doing work they hate?

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

#220

Post by uuwp » Thu, Feb 21, 2019, 6:34 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…

More like a 2M house and a 120K car. 500K/year isn't enough to live in a 10M house because it's 20 years of work (30, accounting for other expenses) and that assumes no cut in income. To get into a 10M house one needs to start a very successful business, which is quite possible after all the experience at such a job.