This is a very very common blind spot. I very frequently struggle to understand other people’s decision making process when they are acting very very suboptimally.
I was never good at predicting fish in poker for instance.
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When I come into your Canadian forum and mansplain voting for a right of center rapist to run your country, how to work harder to be wealthy, and white knight for every microaggression towards sexual quirks, feel free to call me out.
Like the majority of academics I’ve ever encountered (oops anecdotal!) you’re completely out of touch with the reality of lower/lower-middle class life.
All rich people think they worked super hard to be where they are. Which is bullshit in this country. The majority of wealth is inherited. That wealth makes more wealth. That’s how capitalism works. I know guys worth 8 and 9 figures. They legit don’t work. They may make a phone call while playing PLO or on the golf course to tell someone else to work, but that’s about the extent of it.
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10%? lol
I’d say more like <5% of people actually enjoy their work. Most of those work in healthcare, the armed forces, academia or the Arts/media.
Most people in offices ime can’t wait to retire or do something else because how office politics.brings out the worst in people is soul destroying for anyone not a sociopath.
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Man I really wanted to argue about income inequality and the disconnect between wealth and work in the US with a couple of people that never lived here this morning. Thanks for tagging me in a thread I haven’t looked at in weeks so I can be educated some more about living in America by people that never lived here. JFC
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This post is legit awesome.
Wrong use of mansplain, double down on anecdotal evidence, denigrate social science research, misidentify my profession, defend xenophobia, belittle defending sexual minorities, and call yourself a progressive.
Well played.
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I feel like for many people with office jobs theres a lot of ups and downs. Its possible to be happy for periods where your income is covering your costs so you feel economically secure, where the workload is reasonable so you’re not dealing with crazy late nights or the constant stress of falling behind, and where there aren’t alot of errors happening that create conflict. However that is a very tenuous three legged stool and any one of those things can go sideways at any point in time. Also managers are trained to pick away at those things so its hard to maintain them all at all times.
Nothing I’ve read on this forum suggests anybody thinks this.
Wtf? How can ones view of the world not be coloured by where they come from? I’m hoping this is lost in translation as this point seems completely redundant.
I pointed this out before, but in the US we’re also locked into a retirement system where everything we put in today goes straight to currently retired people. It amounts to around 15% of our income. There’s currently a nominal surplus, but that will vanish before I retire for sure, estimates have it happening within 10-15 years. So if that is one of your main complaints about living in Germany, lol it happens here too.
If we define “work” in any sort of reasonable manner, then of course wealthy people work less, it’s ridiculous to think otherwise. But if we define “work” as time spent in the office or thinking about work, then yea the wealthy probably win. We hear all the time about CEOs that spend lots time in their office fucking around, but consider that working, because technically they’re thinking about work. I’d imagine there’s a certain canadian who runs his own company in here that agrees.
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Do you have more data to back this up?
The Princeton study you posted used some interesting terminology.
“data show that people with higher incomes devote relatively more of their time to work, shopping, childcare and other “obligatory” activities…People with higher incomes spend less time on “passive leisure” activities such as socializing or watching television”
This seems to be saying that higher income people tend towards higher cost activities like shopping more, and lower income people tend to spend their free time involved in low or no cost activities(actual Netflix and chill). Then the researchers classified the activities rich people do more of as “obligatory”, and poor people activities as “passive”, and voila…rich people work more!
I’m not going to post more research given your disdain for it but most wealth is not inherited.
The real problem with income inequality is the supposed meritocracy that privileges already advantaged middle class white men while making it far harder for everyone else to gain wealth.
If you are going to claim to want to fix a social issue it pays to educate yourself on it a little.
Opportunities to build wealth, at least where I am in Australia, are largely inherited if the wealth hasn’t been directly inherited itself (it probably has). I worked (miserably) at a big 4 accounting firm until recently and I’d say 95% of the high flying ladder climbing (and mouth breather) consultants came from upper middle class backgrounds and went to 20k/year high schools.
Additionally, what about housing as a source of wealth? Again I only speak for Australia but you CANNOT buy a house in anywhere that isn’t two hours outside of the city unless your parents helped significantly.
Do a quick google. It’s easy to find.
One need to be careful interpreting it though. While it seems clear wealthy people work more hours it’s not at all clear that is why they are wealthy. Conversely poor people are not poor because they work fewer hours.
Rich people have the luxury of working when they want at a job they like. Poor people often can’t find full time employment, have to work many jobs, have no control over their schedule, and their jobs are less fulfilling.
The idea rich people are rich cause they work harder is not demonstrated by the data. They do seem to work more hours though.
This thing where you make hostile posts disagreeing with people, not with the spirit or principle behind what they’re saying, but the technicalities, is really fucking tiring.
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Other people are usually not acting very, very suboptimally, they are just optimizing for things other than what is important to you. Your ability to understand them is related to your ability to empathize with someone who has very different priorities.
I’m not going to apologize for caring about being technically accurate is a discussion. It’s the only way actual progress is made. He thinks the problem is something it’s not. If we want to solve it maybe it helps to correctly identify the actual problem.
I did do a quick google, and I’m not finding the source data for studies that back up your claim.
There are some articles that link back to the paper that you cited, but the thing about that paper is that it appears to:
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simply categorize life activities in a way that makes it appear that wealthy work more. They defined shopping as “obligatory” and if “obligatory” can be defined to mean “work” then yes, rich people shopping more = working more.
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it does not mention if it takes into account structural unemployment. It notes that the difference between poor people’s time spent in “passive” compared to “obligatory” activities compared to rich people was ~15% of their time. Considering that structural unemployment impacts the poor more than the rich, a large portion of that disparity could be linked directly to rates of unemployment.
Hours at the job isn’t the only measure of how much someone works.
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It’s not a measure at all. There was a guy at my work who did exactly 0 the entire ~5 years he worked there. He was always in his office though. Got in early most days and went home late. Not 1 thing accomplished.