Why Don't Rich People Just Stop Working?
journal.media
journal.media
Edit: and now this one too, pew pew! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28540643
Edit 2: to clarify, this article was stolen from here: https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life-culture/why-dont-rich-...
If everyone does what they want - who does the jobs no one wants?
people talk about UBI (which i used to be for, but upon deeper investigation I feel is problematic) and about living wages for the lowest of jobs, but the USA is wholly captured by capital. We have two right wing parties that are controlled by industry. Neither of these things will never come unless its to hold off a violent revolution.
And i'd fuck-off on HackerNews and Reddit a lot less.
I just got a job where I make more than double my last role. It's world-changing types of money and benefits. But it's still a tech job and i'm not even being done training and my "revitalized energy" i got from leaving my last job only lasted like 3 weeks. The reality is, it's still a boring tech job with all the shit i knew I would hate about working at such a larger org. And I'm just burned out on tech. But it's the only thing i know how to do and actually make a living.
I think it would be worse to inflate your lifestyle with all the nice things and still have to work at that new big tech place for decades more
I would say about 5-10% of the money will go to increased creature comforts or better vacations. But beyond that it's been invested in college savings for my kid, our retirement and such.
The reality is, I'm trapped in my role. The only thing to do is continue and enjoy life to the best of my ability outside of work and to use the money i get for the best life i can have.
I have a financial opportunity here most people never get. I'm burnt out and disengaged and have only been here a month, but I will continue to work against my attitude and try to make the best of it.
I have to.
Having a family definitely sticks you in more.
Maybe you can grind and save up enough that you can take only few month stints or contracted jobs once in awhile. Live in a lower cost of living place and enjoy a simpler life.
The only difference is you're almost certainly a better developer than me, I'm scared out of my mind to switch jobs because I despise being put on the spot during interviews. I hate it, and in my real work I'm searching online all the time and that looks bad. I don't have a child either but part of me wants to end my lineage just because it increases my own slavery.
I have no better way of making money. And to think I used to want to do this. Sometimes at night when thinking about the next day and my constantly-angry coworkers, I spontaneously envision shooting myself or hanging myself. I'd never do that, because I'm not giving the world that satisfaction, but it sums up how I feel. I'd bet there's a lot here on the same page. I think a large part of this situation for a born and raised US citizen is the outsourcing. Not only is the pay suppressed, but the treatment isn't nearly as good as it would be if companies weren't allowed to outsource costs through visas and remote hires.
These companies didn't care about keeping jobs in the US, so we shouldn't care about them either, and unionize with our international colleagues. Then the treatment and respect would go through the roof, and having the dignity of putting red tape in their way for once would probably increase worker satisfaction. I'd certainly get a good chuckle watching them being forced to pay my Indian colleagues the same as I make, and I'd be happy to do that to any employer that embraces outsourcing.
I enjoy the act of exercising and the immediate effects following excercise. Most people that are very into fitness or exercise enjoy it as well.
Its the same thing for people who are serious about the gym. You can deadlift 600 lbs? Cool, now its time to try to get to 650. If you hit 650 it is time to plan for 700.
You know, in the beforetimes, I went to the gym and asked myself that question a lot. (Just usually more in the context of grumbling "why didn't this incredibly buff dude unload all these plates from this machine")
And if getting rich is not the end game whether entirely or partially then the work is never done. They are still on a mission and there are more challenges and more worlds to conquer.
Then he realised how boring and lonely it was. His friends were all at work while he was "free" and most people don't want to sit by themself at a bar in Tahiti, even if you can afford the drinks!
He quickly went back to working/advising companies and found it much more engaging.
I have zero interested however in trying to run a commercially viable vegetable farm.
I personally would definitely not work in my field if I made 10+million, but I would have no shortage of things I wanted to do with my time.
The idea of a single guy in his mid-20s being unable to find meaning in his life seems pretty normal. I'm not saying getting married or having kids mean you're winning at life or are the only ways to have meaning, but as a married person in his 30s, I'll gladly take a few million and retirement to go on adventures with my wife for the rest of my life when I'm not just enjoying my hobbies or visiting loved ones.
TL;dr- Different strokes. I would have gleefully retired at 18 given the chance.
Which you’ve done. With a family.
Thanks for your service, sir.
But it should be revised to meaningful work. Not schlepping a mop at 7-11 to eke out next month's rent.
Heck, I don't have that level of success, am very middle class in fact, but even I think it's so boring to just sit in a beach sipping drinks for the rest of my life.
It means more to me when it's a nice well earned break from the work but for that to be the rest of my life .... I couldn't. I'd always find something else to work on as long as I was able bodied and of sound mind.
His wife was an absolute gem, so I asked her one day - why is he still working at his age. He's surely got enough to retire on. She explained that they moved there to retire, but he was "like a caged lion" and just couldn't stop. So he took up several ventures almost as hobbies. My job was his hobby.
tl;dr; I agree. I strongly suspect that for this type, getting rich is a side-effect, not an end goal. It's unimaginable for me - with that money I'd be on a 50ft sailboat doing endless laps of the planet with no real goal or ambition. It's just who they are.
Clearly it wasn’t for money. I would say our sense of purpose was built into us for years. His wife built the stone stairs leading to the main door, 3 months before dying. Brave people from ancient times.
But I agree other factors are involved; if there are rivals left to be crushed, or any capacity for increased public attention remaining, many rich people will keep grinding.
Rich, as in, a busy lawyer with lots of customers on his shoulders, who also tries to maintain a respectable social status by having the right house, connections and the right car. For him, stopping work means cutting their income stream and social connections and still having to support this expensive lifestyle.
There's also rich with passive income from investments and they really have the option for a leisurely escape.
While some people are content to retire and stay home in bed, not having something meaningful to do every day makes quite a lot of people absolutely miserable.
Imagine, instead, you enjoyed sports, blogging, travelling, exploring etc. you could easily do that if you were super rich and not bother with work again.
Then you have pure engineers like Torvolds or Carmack that just like being in the trenches.
heh, Tom's life (according to https://www.hellomagazine.com/travel/2020111645793/tom-myspa...) would have myself commit seppuku in three weeks. I can barely stand five days of "do nothing productive" vacations. Would definitely choose "testify in front of congress" instead.
But, more importantly, I think most people who despise "do nothing productive" vacations are worried about falling behind. If you've already opted into permanent falling behind I wonder how that changes things.
It doesn't seem fundamentally different from taking up sculpture or painting.
There is no universal metric for enjoying life. Some people just like playing the game. My 99 year old grandpa was still managing his farm’s yields before he died even though he had no need to because why not. He actually bought it after he “retired”.
When I'm busy I actively block out time to do those activities and plan for them and look forward to them. It's a weird phenomena but I'd guess if I was wealthy enough not to have to work (which I'm not!) I would need to keep working anyways to keep some structure in my life and avoid depression.
I said something like "Man I would find work pretty dang nice if I was up here".
My boss said something like "Yeah but these guys work all the time."
I couldn't help but think... yeah it would still be pretty easy to work all the time in this environment.
That's not to say they're not stressed or etc, but if you have the option to work comfortably ... I can see why you might continue to work if your conditions are good.
Meanwhile I go back to my cube with constant noise, folks looking over my shoulder, planning business my trip in regular people class (not 1st) and so on.
These folks aren't "just working" they didn't take up a job at McDonald's... they choose to work in a different world too I suspect.
We discussed the pros and cons of laptops vs desktops and etc (this was when laptops were still a big tradeoff vs a desktop in power and etc). IIRC we recommended a nice desktop for the kids that could be upgraded / changed they were inclined but also plenty useful if they chose not to. Also told him to get a nicer monitor than they were thinking.
This seems to be where you probably mislead him. If the CEO is making enough money, you buy a new computer, never bother upgrading. Depends on how much he wants to spoil his grandkids (the answer is usually too much.)
But yes, people spend a lot of time on specs and completely neglect the monitor.
I'm not saying they have a "bad" like and they're well-paid for it but it's not particularly relaxing or flexible.
If you have a million dollars, stop working, invest the money, you can safely draw about 35K per year for a long time. This is based on long term historic returns of the stock market.
There are different definitions of middle class in the US. The first one I found, Pew 2019, said the range was 46k - 137K.
So living off the passive income of a million dollars puts you well below middle class.
But I only work hard for the reward. Once I cash out and have FU money, I am done working forever. Life is so short, I just want to focus on family, health and pleasure.
I understand that most other ambitious people aren't like that but personally I don't get it.
Bill Gates leaving Microsoft to focus on the foundation? - AKA, he wants to focus on making the world a better place
Elon used all that Paypal money and started SpaceX and Tesla? - Also, wants to focus on making the world a better place
If I were Zuckerberg, personally I wouldn't trust all of the power that Facebook has in somebody else's hands...ever.
The kids still have to go to school. Even if you took a year off to say, travel the world or something along those lines...you're going to get bored eventually. Either you'll pick up a hobby (Jimmy Carter and his furniture building) or you will focus on working on something that you care about.
The difference is that you're doing it because you want to, not because you have to. At that point...it's not really work anymore.
Just because ~you~ hate ~your~ work and can't see value in it beyond [money, status, narcissism, power, etc] doesn't mean that's how everyone else values work and the other parts of life. Sheesh.
But for people in any domain at the top of their game, what else is as fulfilling?
Some people want impact, not money. They may be driven by their worldview and being able to further it.
Some people worry about getting stale if they dont do anything.
Free time can get boring, one values free time more when they have less of it.
It seems to me the author's point is: Why do people who reach a certain level of wealth keep grinding away at jobs they may not like? For the sake of argument, lets exclude those who shift and work on what they care about. I think he's talking about those who do not necessarily love what they do. This group would be millionaires, and using his numbers are the top 0.005% globally (40M/7B). His answer is that they continue to strive for money because they look towards the next class above them and to provide for their children.
I agree with the author in that people are seeking higher and higher status, and I agree with a peer comment that people get used to luxury. But I would add that that this striving for climbing the class ladder is both endemic in the culture of the US as well as accessible. In many other places in the world there are stricter controls on upward class mobility. I'd posit that people continue on in this because they don't really create a philosophy of life or pay that much attention to how to live until they are much older. It's easy to just keep doing the same thing, especially if it provides a luxurious life. It is a subjective value statement on what to do when you reach that point that is clearly different for everyone.
Signed, someone semi-retired from tech
According to Expatistan[0] a typical family of four in the US need $55K/yr just to cover living expenses. At a SWR of 3% (Reasonable if you're young and looking to ride out a lot of market variance before you shuffle off rock) that means you need ~$1.8M fully invested just to live a typical middle class existence.
If you say you have $2M in the bank some might say you're 'rich'. If you say you earn $55K/year most people certainly won't. The best case scenario of course, is to have both.
[0] https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/united-sta...
The three faces in the picture at the top of the article are famous billionaire outliers. Plenty of modestly wealthy people (say net worth of >$5M) lead lives of complete leisure.
and being rich their risk of failure is immaterial. if expectations ever exceed their desire they could stop, so they can negotiate & put in as much or little real effort as they please.
amsuingly from a serendipity perrspective, our made-it founder-ceo raised this question out of no where in his opener talk, pretty recently at a mid year all hands. i dont really remember the response he offered? i like it, seems like probably about 60% covers what he said.
Most people's spending catches up, or at least increases, with their wealth. Completely ignoring the whole keeping up with peers aspect (who are also wealthy now) and even power/wealth craving, most people aren't content just realistically living within the perpetual means provided to them by their accumulated wealth. Additionally, a lot of people that think they'd be content not working and living a simpler life, actually aren't when they give it a try.
I'm extremely biased, but I always end up citing hobbies as the problem and solution in this kind of situation. Ask a friend what they'd do if they didn't have to "work" any more. Most of them are going to tell you that they have no clue and haven't thought about it, or tell you about something that isn't actually feasible to be your primary activity without a steady traditional income stream.
I'm mostly talking about people that barely qualify for this discussion in the 1-5m wealth range. As mentioned in the article, this is generally plenty to satisfy general FIRE requirements, and even tradition retirement requirements. But most people in that wealth range would also have to change their lifestyle to safely make retirement happen, and that's a tough sell when most people get their dopamine fix and sense of enjoyment/relaxation from expensive vacations, fancy dinners, new cars, new gadgets, stuff directly tied to spending money with no return.
I think most people with unlimited financial backing would pursue what truely interests and excites them, might be projects, more money, parties, power. Money buys the freedom to do that.
Theres plenty of stories of people inheriting money and just spending it all on partying and hedonism. And others where they just study in education their whole life.
* Because it's something to do. Being retired is boring.
* Because whatever they're doing is providing some meaning (even if it's just getting richer and building on their ego)
* To stay relevant/up to date
* Their spouse is still working, and why not?
* Because they have friends who retired and degraded health wise (it seems to happen in older age) and they don't want that
It's certainly not a motivation for billionaires like Elon Musk, who seemed singularly driven by his life mission.
In my social circle I know of 3 people in that bracket and all of them are working. It isn't so much for the money they like being mentally and socially engaged while working on problems that interest them. Of these individuals their ages range from mid 40's to mid 50's. All of them had taken breaks from work and found not working to be incredibly boring.
If you have enemies in life, consider encouraging them to get really into horses because imo it's the fastest way to drain their time and assets with little return.
It's up there with owning a megayacht and collecting art.
Zero sum game: every day that I don't work, others are getting head. Either everyone has to quit or we all need to keep going.
I noticed that nothing stressed him -- he would push people and get angry and annoyed, but it was all externalized and not internalized. He's worth billions, but never does _anything_ that normal people would consider fun. For him, the work is his fun. I have great respect for the work and the success, but it's hollow in context of it all.
Same with MLK, Diana Spencer, Michael Jackson, John Lennon etc.
Even if you are #1 of 8.000.000.000 you are still only 1/8.000.000.000
Bezos and Branson didn't need to go up in their own rocketship, but they did so to occupy the airwaves.
Same reason why Musk tweets like a maniac
These people are like the person who climbs the Everest "because it's there", but instead of mt. Everest they see the total amount of daily waking hours that the 8 billion people on the planet spend doing their own activities and then seek to monopolize that time forcing people to genuflect and idolize them and their products.
In the past those who had this sort of social standing were forced to live in the moment.
Roman emperors woke up greatful that they were not assassinated during the night, and went to bed equally greatful that they managed to stay alive.
Today you have people with 100B dollars and 40 years of life ahead of them! Humans were never made to live in this way. We are in uncharted territory.
I don't know if we would ever be able to analyze brains in real time or postmortem but we probably won't like what we'll find in there.
There are probably many reasons for why rich people work.
seems to me i made a clear statement about how rich people are rich that is pretty hard to argue with, and it made you feel a way.
i have no evidence for that either, just a human being considering the motivations of another human being given a set of facts.
anything to substantiate your claim (eg. some rich guy's autobiography that says "yep, I work otherwise I feel bad about leeching off people's work"), otherwise it's an unfalsifiable statement and should be dismissed as such.
Oppression and wage-theft still occur, bit they are not necessary parts of capitalism per se, but rather abuses of the system. If workers are truly free to choose their jobs, they can leave a bad situation, and that puts market pressure on businesses to do better.