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Comment by tluyben2 | Hacker News Reader

Anecdotal: the richest self made people I know work the hardest, the poorest don't work at all or as little as possible, by choice (state pays). People who inherited wealth are the unhappiest and the people who do well but not enough to be rich (I guess some type of middle class) whine about it all and want to be rich to vacation the rest of their life (but will probably never get there as they never run, just chug along and keep whining).

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>People who inherited wealth are the unhappiest

Please. Meet more people or just read a newspaper or book. The rich love to whine about dissatisfaction, but it is in the smallest tier of unhappiness. The stress of dealing with (or putting off) healthcare you need but can't afford, being evicted or having your utilities turned off, watching those around you slowly die to a drug epidemic, living every day in fear of being arrested by the police that target your neighborhood or your race.....there are actual hardships in life, and the boredom of being out of ideas on how to spend your money is not one of them.

I do not live in the US, it seems rather different over there. But I was actually talking about people who inherited millions and because of lack of life goals etc they ended up dead (suicides), addicts, in jail etc. I do not know if you can judge their tier of unhappiness or if it is a contest: they squandered the life of ease they were given but they are genuinely unhappy: if you want to put a comparison scale on that, that is fine. I said anecdotal and I didn't exactly grow up in a cocoon so no need for the reading advice: I do understand that I live in the first world and so do the people that I know: life can be much worse, I know.

There's a lack of empathy and imagination in this comment, not to mention no appreciation for irony. Is it so hard to imagine that someone's mental environment can turn paradise into hell? Or for that matter, hell into paradise?

Imagine being born into a rich family, and knowing from day one that nothing you do really matters. Any screwups you have will be fixed immediately by daddy's money. And anything you accomplish, it'll be like "Well yeah of course they were able to do that because of their privilege." Nothing is yours, you aren't even the one responsible for your successes or failures. Life is meaningless and it's because, as the article is trying to say, there's no adversity to give it meaning.

"Adversity gives life meaning" is a lie pushed by people who want to encourage those in adverse circumstances to know their place. If you want to feel like "nothing you do really matters", all you have to do is take a minimum wage job at any store or restaurant where management will constantly remind you that you're a replaceable cog, that if they could pay you less they would except that it would be illegal (so they'll settle for illegally garnishing wages and asking you to come in early or stay late off the clock), and where you'll realize that there's no way to keep doing this and make rent and healthcare - much less to get ahead.

Where do you live though? The social security makes my anecdotal poor friends have an enjoyable life while not feeling like a cog because they do not choose to work like that. It does not buy you sports cars but the social security net pays for everything so they only need money 'to live', with or without a family. This seems not at all what you are talking about; so maybe anecdotal, not US should have been more complete?

The suckiness of being poor is a viewpoint already represented on the thread. Yeah sure, but also: my point. Repetition of yours would seem to indicate you would like only one of the two to be true, but they're both true, or as close as it comes for either of us, who I'm willing to wager have experienced neither.

Nothing actually gives life meaning by the way, that's just a shorthand I used.

Consider that hardship and unhappiness are not synonyms and there isn’t always a simple relationship between them.

poor !== unhappy

People ultimately accept their situation and work within their circumstances to make things better

Not anecdotal: By nature of the structural relations of our society, the richest people are exploiting the labor of the poorest people, which leaves little reason for the poor people to coopperate.

Not anecdotal, just plain wrong!

Objectively not wrong, but self-evidently relative. Of course, if you somehow believe an entire society of exploiters is coherent, then maybe it seems rational to think hard work can infinitely “pay off.” But if you account for the need of exploiters to have somebody to exploit, then the idea doesn’t seem so sound.

What is the fix if employers ('the rich') are to employ and not exploit? For cases in the news like Amazon drivers etc it is clear but many people just want jobs and do not feel exploited even though their boss is making a killing?

The rich people I know are the ones who were lucky to be born I a place/social class where opportunities were available to them, and maybe they worked hard.

The first is a prerequisite. Hard work might be needed, but not always, specially if you are born in to a rich family.

I agree with that, but in my circles, and ffs I add anecdotal again (I am not a science journal), the ones who inherited are dead (3 of them drank themselves literally to death out of boredom in my small town), addicts or in jail. So I guess it can land well, but I would think rich parents/social class and then hard work would be better.

Why didn't they leave the small town?

They did: that was worse imho: rich young bored guys with millions in a city. It sped up the process. None of them died in the town we grew up in but they were all buried there. Note that these were high-school class mates.

“I know”. This says more about you.

Sure, hence the anecdotal.

He literally prefaced it with “Anecdotal:”.

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