Hacker News Reader

Comment by gumby | Hacker News Reader

So much condescending presumption in this article.

Calling "wealth accumulation" (Frank's term) "the closest thing they have to fun" betrays his own bias.

It's quite possible that the work is just inherently fun. My work is, to me; sometimes I do it for free.

This reminds me of an article from the NYT probably 25 years ago when the author was astonished to see Mercedes' in the parking lot of Costco. "If you can afford a Mercedes why would you go to Costco?" Perhaps you prefer to shop there and don't give a shit about the old fashioned sumptuary habits.

View on HN

Do these writers realize that multi-millionaires actually often eat at fast food restaurants? I could literally buy a hundred S class Mercedes cars and yet I went to Target a couple days ago to buy a dish scrubber and got a cheeseburger at a chain yesterday.

The book the millionaire next door goes into great depth and detail about what the majority of millionaires spend money on. A lot of the people driving mercs are not rich. Most have bought their cars using lease schemes which is a really expensive way to own a car you can't afford

What's the data source for that book?

That’s just a misunderstanding of Costco. Costco is an expensive store with high quality products for high income shoppers... don’t be fooled by the name.

Was this true 25 years ago? I don’t remember.

In any case the attitude of the NYT was that people with any money would want to lord it over others. Back before the dot com boom that attitude had not migrated out here.

Costco used to be called Price Club: https://youtu.be/KAB_hwx_5WM

It was a merger. I remember price club in the Bay Area but not Costco (which isn’t to say it wasn’t down here too).

I upvoted you because what you're saying is true now, but it wasn't back then.

Both Costco and Sam's Club 25 years ago were truly "warehouse" stores. They had no heat. No air conditioning. They weren't brightly lit as they are today. Nowadays, they both have decent-to-above-average well-lit interiors that are designed to be essentially middle-class (in the case of Sam's) to upper middle-class (in the case of Costco) stores that are just "really big".

They were little more than distribution centers with printed price tags on items back in the mid-90s. A lot has changed, about both chains, since then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com