In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich

Seems to me, people are either of the kind that's happy as long as they have a cold beer and someone to share it with, or the kind that will always be sufficiently unhappy with what they have to bust their ass in pursuit of more.

I suspect Silicon Valley, like New York, is home to an over abundance of the latter kind. While at the same time, those who can't understand continuing to work like that despite having millions, are exactly those that would never have bothered putting in the effort to get millions in the first place.

Well, there you go. If you wonder why a "normal" house in SV costs five times more than in St. Louis or Dallas, this is a profile of the answer. For that matter, I understand better why Athertonians live in $12M houses -- they'd be $4M houses in other parts of the country, so curiously they're getting more bang for the buck.

And it has a reciprocal effect. When a major component of life, one's house, costs five times more, that depresses the wealth effect. When you're living among the super-rich, same thing. If these folks were living in Buffalo, they would be so acutely aware that they were exceptionally rich you wouldn't expect them to have anything to strive for. So there's a lack of a sense of privilege.

But it's also interesting to see the cavalier attitude toward wealth that it engenders. To be the richest fellow in town and still strive for "just a little bit more" requires a rare mindset. But yeah, stick a multi-millionaire in a suburb of super-millionaires and golly, what's a couple million bucks? Not much. I mean, it's not like you're going to quit your job or anything.

Do a back-of-the-envelope calculation for how much it would cost to do something to an extreme: - constant tour of the world - ultimate gaming setup - beach bum in the tropics.

Then figure out how much you'd have to work to achieve it. In most cases, it takes less than a full-time median wage 52 . 40 . 16, meaning I could do them working far less than full-time.

"making it" is a state of mind. As is striving to reach an amorphous goal. Happiness research is perhaps some of the most useless work in economics because self reporting is so iffy.

If people don't feel rich, it has nothing to do with their absolute level of material comfort. Almost everyone alive today is far more rich than all other humans that have ever lived.

Well, it's stories like these that make us pause and reflect that we are lucky not to have such troubles.

I know a guy like that. His take on it is that it's a combination of social pressure and families: families are often more expensive than any of ivankirigin's doing things to extremes, and they get more expensive as you put them in richer peer groups. I suspect that if you were single, being worth $10 million would sit with you just fine, even if you wanted to do extravagant things.

(Not that that would make me choose to be single, though.)

Well, that's slightly depressing... it's reflective of the fundamental existential angst of humanity, we're just not made to be happy.

I can definitely see that, having only been in California for 3 months being an intern (i.e. having money in the bank for the first time in a while), it's hard not to spend when everyone here has cool gadgets and such (though on the scale of cell phones and monitors, not cars and houses...).

So if living among people much more wealthy than oneself leads to so much angst, why not try living among the lower classes? You ought to feel fantastic then.

An abject lesson in unchecked desire.

And here I was, happy to have health insurance and enough to pay rent.

If only I were unhappy with millions of dollars.

This is exactly why you don't move out to Silicon Valley. Build your start-up, get out, and enjoy your life. You might even have something left to give to charity.

In Silicon Valley you'll blow your money on a huge house, a plastic wife, and kids who want a BMW the moment they can drive. Oh, and don't forget the taxes.