Hacker News Reader

Comment by oscargrouch | Hacker News Reader

What about Bukowski, that was working in a post office, til 49 years old, when he dropped out to start his first novel ?!

View on HN

He didn't 'drop out', he was incentivized to the tune of $100 a month for life to quit.

And that was when $100 was an equivalent of 3 ounces of gold which is about $4k today. Barrel of oil and S&P500 had roughly the same price in gold then as they do today.

Both gold and oil are poor inflation metrics as their prices are fairly volatile, albeit for different reasons. Also, it's not like Bukowski was investing his monthly Franklin in commodities.

This website suggests $656 as a more realistic figure. Enough to survive on while working furiously on your writing.

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

By CPI deflator, $100 in 1969 is worth $634.76 today.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Not sure if that calls into question your statement, or suggests that the CPI is drastically understating inflation.

By CPI deflator we never doubled our (US) monetary base since 2007.

I'm not following you. What's your point?

What exactly you don't follow? You need me to define 'monetary base' to you? You need me to explain to you how to use google/wiki?

Reference on that?

>According to Born into This, a documentary on Bukowski's life, Martin, offered Bukowski 100 dollars per month for life on condition that Bukowski would quit working for the post office and write full-time. He agreed and Post Office was written within a month.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Martin_%28publisher%29

Thanks. That snip doesn't make particularly clear when this happened, though from Bukowski's biography, I'd guess 1969 or thereabouts (as noted in my other comment on the value of $100/mo today).

This also somewhat calls into question what's required for genius to foster. Seems that some people are simply driven to create, and any environment in which they're free to focus on their creative efforts, and have financial concerns taken off the table (I've seen similar arguments made for tech hires: pay me enough money to not have to worry about it) is sufficient.

There's also Daniel Pink's work in Drive.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com