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

421–430 of 475 posts

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

#421

Post by zanny »

fzeroracer wrote: post #194
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…

America is already incredibly religious and the rich/wealthy are no exception. What exactly makes you think that these miserable people are not religious? Because it seems like you're extrapolating miserable = lack of religion, which seems like a nonsensical connection. Religion has nothing to do with this unless you decide to No True Scotsman and claim that they aren't actually religious. The issue is that they're c…

I think OP means religion in the framing context of spiritual belief in a moral philosophy, less in which flavor of the god of Moses you want to throw your sword behind.

Consumerism is, in large part, a religion. Its just, as you describe, a really shitty one. Capitalism for the capitalists is a religion. Totalitarianism for the dictator is a religion. I'd bet a lot of the animators and artists working at Disney and Pixar treat their business model and the company proper as a religion - the experience, the intent, the purpose behind what they do. For the shareholders its just to make gross amounts of money by owning all culture, but for those in the trenches giving their blood they probably feel like they are creating joy and that is a valuable pursuit.

Same for those working at Space X or Tesla or probably even Google and Apple. Most of the employees at those companies drink the kool-aid and have faith.

In those regards, anyone who is just existing, or anyone without faith - and it need not be more complicated than just faith in humanity or the potential for good in people or the promise of the future - is living a hollow, pointless life. And I'd buy that argument.

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

#422

Post by flatfilefan »

1. There will always be unhappy people regardless of their income. 2. Extreme population density is not for everyone. Just the sheer frequency of daily subconscious eye contact in a megapolis must be extreme by e.g. 50-100 years ago standard. There should be some self-limiting mechanism in human population. Maybe that’s the factor provoking the unhappiness and decline.

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

#423

Post by reallydude »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #367
Spooky23 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yet the prejudice against UBI always assumes the poor and disadvantaged will always take the lazy option. They tend not to make that choice either as poor people need a purpose too. It's politics all the way down.

> They tend not to make that choice either

Do you have any evidence of that? All the studies I have seen, imply or play out the opposite. The poor stay poor and disinclined to achieve. Survival is hard enough at the bottom rung.

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

#424

Post by rakejake »

TrackerFF wrote: post #387
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…

It's easy to fall prey to the lifestyle creep. Suddenly your $300k house/apartment is too small, and you aim for one that's 5-10 times more expensive. Then your cars get more expensive. You start looking at a summer home. You get a couple of kids...and they turn out to be extremely expensive: - Daycare - Prep-schools - Private tutors - Prestigious Universities Because you want to maximize their chances of success, an…

Great comment. I'm still in school but I noticed how my lifestyle got slightly more expensive after I made some money through internships, or after I've been on vacation and enjoyed myself (and seen others enjoy themselves).

I used to think of myself as a very minimalist no-frivolous-spending kind of guy. I would do meticulous research on products to maximize the quality to price ratio (with strict upper bounds on price of course). Nowadays I just don't bother. I think you're right that the process is gradual. When a culture built around consumerism surrounds you, there is no choice but to become more consumerist.

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

#425

Post by ryandrake »

QualityReboot wrote: post #412
_fq4v wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How'd you get into the management consulting world? Is there a 500k/yr salary just waiting for me if I fake like I'm a Wall St guy from the 80s? Straight from undergrad. I went to a tech-focused school, majored in math and CS, and did a financial course series as a requirement for a scholarship. That, and I guess I'm a good interviewer / have people skills? > I can appreciate that you might need a wardrobe with nic…

That's fascinating. I had no idea about the 'classes' thing. I wonder if there's an alternate track for someone already established in another field. Could an established software developer somehow transition to getting a "big bucks" management position? Or does it all flow through that class system, and if you didn't enter at the bottom, you're not able to get to the top?

As OP said, the typical way to go into management consulting or investment banking or another of these "big bucks" careers is to do it right from the start. Going to a "prestigious" undergrad school helps immensely. Being able to look and talk like a big shot helps. Slog it out in a bank as an analyst for some years. Then at some point go to MBA school as a finishing degree, and then back into a bank/consulting company as a made man higher-level employee. The key is to get that "elite" pedigree early, which opens the rest of the doors.

There are also career changers who start out as something else (like a software developer) and go to the best MBA school they can get into, in order to try to "sneak in to the back door of the club" that way. I actually tried (and failed) to walk this path. My jaded view, after blowing more $ than I care to admit on B-school and literally dozens of interviews that went nowhere, is that these employers are looking for people already in the in-crowd, pre-blessed as elite, and are in general not welcoming to working class career changers. Investment banks are primarily looking for pedigreed former bankers, and management consulting firms are primarily looking for pedigreed former management consultants, and good luck if you're not already in one of those clubs.

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

#426

Post by _jal »

clairity wrote: post #381
abrahamepton wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Granted I don't have kids - but that parents act like this seems utterly delusional to me. Frankly, I think you're getting a below-average education if you're spending tens of thousands a year on it (before college). Private school, getting a seat at a public school in an expensive suburb - fuuuuuuuuck that. Those experiences are nowhere close to worth all that money, and honestly prevent the students involved from l…

yes, the marginal utility of the "better" education is not generally worth the tens of thousands of extra dollars, whether it be novel instructional methods, extra time/attention, better credentials, or nicer, more advanced facilities. but like most such situations, i suspect wealthy families are not simply buying better instruction, but rather exclusivity and esteem. the treadmill they're on is an attempt to maintai…

It is more that they're buying their kids a social circle that includes the kids of other elite families. They're not buying better math instruction, they're buying access.

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

#427

Post by ryandrake »

mnm1 wrote: post #361
ryandrake wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be 100% fine with working like a dog for $1.2M a year in a job I hated, spending as little as possible, if it meant after N Have not found that job offer yet, but if you know of it, E-mail in profile :-) I won't hold my breath.

The guy mentioned in this story certainly has that job. In 5 years, he'll make $6 million. That should be plenty to retire on if invested correctly.

Yea, I know those jobs exist--they're just not open to working class schmucks like us. I can say for certain that if I accumulated $6 million after five years of work, those would be the last five years I ever worked.

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

#428

Post by antisthenes »

toasterlovin wrote: post #212
antisthenes wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

> It's not until you get to the top several percent of income that fertility starts rising again.

Yes, that's what I meant. You could argue about the significance of the top percentage rise in fertility, but if anything, it shows that fertility is constrained by lack of resources in a significant way as well as education specifically.

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

#429

Post by thisisweirdok »

JohnFen wrote: post #146
thisisweirdok wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's fair, but I also think there's a lot to consider with various brain chemistry. I don't think anyone can just thrust themselves into it if they're in objectively bad scenarios.

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

#430

Post by xkcd-sucks »

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.…

Have you considered "religion" as "that which gives meaning in life" rather than "the supernatural"?
Post reply on HN