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Comment by gshdg | Hacker News Reader

This seems to suggest that the correlation means hat patience causes wealth; but why assume the causation isn’t in the other direction?

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If the 'Stanford marshmallow experiment' [1] is to be believed, patience (well, control of delayed gratification) at age 3-5 is correlated with educational attainment, BMI and even divorce rate in adulthood.

(Note also that subsequent studies [2] found much less significant results than the famous study - and another study [3] found evidence of, as you say, a reversed correlation.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impu... [3] https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/06/marshmall...

There certainly is causality here. If you are patient and invest your money long-term instead of spending it all, you will literally be wealthier than if you spent it all.

Of course, there is causality the other way round as well, that is, a basic level of stability and wealth allows you to save.

The more wealth you have, 1) the more likely you have absolutely no desire to spend it all right now and 2), the more likely you're spending money on things that are just as likely to appreciate as depreciate; that can't be called patience.

Spending on disposable goods doesn't scale linearly with wealth. That's why consumption taxes are regressive.

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