Statements like these reveal so much implicit values/philosophy.
Viewing life - success, output, fulfillment etc - through lenses like this is the issue IMO.
That is certainly where my financial anxieties lie.
You need to be making way above average in at least 50% of the country to afford those things (yes, many people that can't afford those things still do them, but it will bite them in the ass later).
People like stability. People, on average, have less stability these days.
It's super great for exploitation though. Start companies people! Probably no better time, at least outside the tech industry, workers are cheap.
I wonder whether it's just the price of progress, of increasing complexity in human organization? As heartbreaking as it is, could it be any different?
Not if all those 401(k), IRA, and defined benefit pension funds want fat ROIs.
There is something quite humorous about people working hard to earn money to invest, and then those same investments causing them to work even harder to meet their ROIs.
I would not have guessed this, given the size of the average person's 401(k). My guess was much smaller. Not sure if I'm worried or relieved to be wrong about that.
Well...now you have to work harder to make those 8% returns come true. And the savers get screwed too because people (aka government) will opt to pump up the value of equities to make sure the 8% nominal return comes true at the expense of sacrificing the value of the currency.
Having met people on streets, I can tell you not everyone thinks like this. It's mostly the audience of this site who are high achievers and focused individuals, they need some way to gauge meaningfulness of their lives and this is how they chose to do it.
I've one friend who only plants trees and another friend who is always creating RC vehicles and uploading videos of his experiments on YouTube. They are happy.