Then I pray, “Don’t take me soon, 'cause I am here for a reason”
I was talking to a friend about absolute and relative happiness. and i am generally a very happy person. but honestly i dont believe in absolute happiness. i think you need to be absolutely mental if you think anyone can be happy with nothing. anyways
are you happy?
what about if i take away everything, family, money, job, and possessions, would you still be happy?
lets discuss
As humanity progresses along, making their monuments and great leaps in the sciences and in the quest for universal knowledge, it occurs to me that we are on a life raft in the cosmic ocean, struggling for meaning as we all trace down the downward spiral until the inevitable confrontation with The Universal Big Crunch. And up until then, should humanity be fortunate enough to spread our seeds through the cosmos, it will inevitably be for naught, and unless we attain a technology that enables us to survive outside of the boundaries of that universal collapse, it ultimately will mean very little in the unimaginable timescales within the yawning of the abyss.
Until then, there’s drinking and philosophizing, and taking advantage of the moment you’re in.
“Lie”, not “lay”.
this is usually what i say right b4 i do something i am going to prolly regret! nihilism’s not a good path. the hedonistic path is better. now thats a good philosophy. FUN > Everything. if we’re all going to die we might as well enjoy.
Happy? Meh. Happiness is just a fleeting emotion. I pursue joy, which is a state of mind.
I look for joy and positivity in the small things.
yea thats healthy.
me personally, there is only 1 thing that’ll make me happy. but i know once i get it. i’ll have to work harder. life is a struggle.
Yeah I’m happy. You can grate cheese off my abs.
I wouldn’t trade that for all the $100k/yr jobs in the world.
It is the nature of humans to rationalize their choices or lot in life by bigging up what they have, and downplaying the importance of what they don’t have. It’s an ego protection mechanism. Would you trade the abs for a $200k job? A $500k job? I don’t think it needs to be that high. A set of abs can’t protect you like the cushion achieved from several years earning a multiple of where you currently are now. And you can always get the abs back later, if you are really determined that your life goals are “maintaining abs.”
You’re missing the forest through the trees. Having abs is just but one simple blue spruce in the gargantuan forrest that represents how much easier life is for people who are shredded VS their flabbier counterparts.
Trust me, there’s some intangibles a paycheck can’t buy.
a high salary is important when you dont have a lot. but once you have a lot of money. lets say you have 10m or 100m. i doubt you’re going to care much about losing a job that pays 500k. anyways you can go further and say net worth vs happiness. at the end of the day, i say the happiest man is the richest man.
Why not have both? Abs and solid pay are there for your taking. Both tend to require sacrifices and delaying gratification!
Happiness never lies at the extreme end of a spectrum. The golden middle ground is where it’s at.
But to answer the question, I’d say I’m pretty happy. I’d probably be happy even if I lost all my money because I have the earning potential to get it back again and I could survive with a lot less than I have now. But to lose family, friends, wife (if I had one), that would really throw a wrench into my happiness!
Because sometimes (often times actually) you don’t get what you work for in life. This isn’t true however when it comes to the gym. You always get what you work for there.
lol very true!
true. my parents are worth maybe 650k. they have term life insurance at about 1m expiring in a couple years. if they were to die, i would inherit like 400k ish. and honestly i would rather they live past the two years than die now.
Let me get this straight…you’re essentially saying a high salary is uncorrelated with “having a lot?” Where does the lot come from? Skillful trades on Robinhood?
I think you have your causality wrong. Of course at $100m net worth you don’t care about a half mil job. You wouldn’t still have that job then. But many years of making a half mil, or a million, plus more with executive options and rich variable comp, you’re going to be sitting pretty.
Yep income and wealth has low r squared, about 0.25. So a correlation of 0.5. There are a ton of other factors that determine net worth. It can range from having rich parents, high iq, or marrying up. There was a study before that mentioned teachers having a high chance of becoming a millionaire. And it had something to do with actual millionaires marrying them. Funny eh?
There are many instances when people with high incomes are not very rich. From basketball players like Allen iverson who have lost it all. To finance people who have high incomes but hate their job, who are twice divorced, with kids that hate them, and no rock hard abs to speak of because they compensate their unhappiness with a 3k monthly budget on food.
Not trying to be a jerk, but this is the most asinine logic I ever heard. The more you can earn, the more you can invest. It’s not like you have to be poor, or earn the salary of a lowly research associate to, what? Have the discipline to generate investment return? I guess all of the people earning a half million or more a year are just too soft, p!ssing away their salaries, and stupidly, don’t know how to invest?
Then the tax item. Makes no sense. Even if the all-in tax rate was, say, hypothetically worst case, 50% on someone making a million (which, I would advise that guy to get a new accountant by the way) who is better off? That guy, or the guy earning $100k and paying 25% in taxes? After tax, high earner with higher tax rate still beats lower earner with lower tax rate. More is more.
That’s exactly it. You can’t argue the data. The correlation and r squared is weak. Personally I think it depends on a variety of factors. But there have been studies that have shown that millionaires are just wired differently.
In terms of how regular people earn they usually spend everything they have. It doesn’t matter how educated they are or how much money they make. That’s just how most people operate. I know a chick who makes 250k and is still dreaming for their first home. She pays like 5k in rent at Marina Del Rey and have a six fig car and enjoys her peloton bike I also know a guy who makes 75k a year, yet was able to start buying real estate in sf and coverted to a nursing home with a net worth north of 6m net of debt. Nursing home makes no money on paper but is minting cash.
There’s also a people who make a lot of money who don’t like to take risk and want to have 50 percent in cash. They literally can’t take the volatility of tech. And these are people working at tech cos getting paid millions and want their investment in non tech cos. I am actually flabbergasted you’ve never met these types. I thought they were pretty common which is why we don’t just put everyone in a cookie cutter optimal risk profile. We have to take into account how beta they are.
I don’t think you know how taxes work. If you make 500k as a single dude, your effective tax is essentially 42.5 in Cali. When you combine fed state and fica. What kind of deductions are you pulling that would lower that as an employee ? Back in the day there was more shenanigans one can pull but trump ended that. You gotta create a business now to do the same crap. That salt crap also hurt a lot of people in high tax states and generating that kind of cash.
Also in your example you are comparing a pre tax 400k differential to a post tax of 200k. That makes a huge difference!
Dow what yours net worth? Just out of curiosity
I think you just said a bunch of words but missed the point. You’re telling me there’s low correlation between income and wealth. I’m saying, for people that are not born wealthy, of course there would have to be a connection. How else would they get there? Lottery winnings? You theorize about making real money, I make real money. So I know exactly what taxes are all about, thanks. And I think that you know what taxes are all about, too — for a guy making less than $100k in all probability. So, if my income ever dramatically falls to that level, I’ll have to come and ask for your advice.