I am not shocked that the writer is shocked. The only typical big city coastal professionals I know who ever encounter the car dealership types are the accountants that do their books and the wealth managers to run their investments. For your typical doctor or corporate lawyer that just collects their big wage and pays their big tax bill, they would never see the kinds of tax breaks and stuff that “small” business owners have available to them. The pro-small business propagandists have successfully established the image of the small business owner as the mom and pop at the local neighborhood store, and coastal elites mostly feel sorry for them!
They can go on feeling sorry for me. I feel sorry for them. Imagine working 80 hours a week to make 150k a year in a high cost of living city.
The big one not mentioned in that excerpt are commercial real estate owners.
These people pay zero tax and receive an incredible amount of subsidies. Every flyover town in America has some random old white guy whose family has owned all the apartments and retail surrounding the Wal Mart forever, who is worth $20 million or more and will never pay any tax (and will then avoid the estate tax with marginally competent attorneys).
It’s also worth reflecting on why all of this is so “shocking” to the writer. It can’t be simply the case that this writer has been gobsmacked by learning a new fact. You might even think that a person who chose to be a journalist for a living would generally lean more toward excitement than shock when they learn new things since that’s kind of the point of being a journalist.
I am not familiar with the writer or their overall perspective, but I think that this idea that owners of “boring” businesses are the people who actually get rich would also “shock” a lot of my peers. It’s pretty common for the cosmopolitan urban elite to believe that society does, or should, reward Smart People that go to Good Schools and do Important Work. To think that they have actually designed a society that rewards Coca Cola distributors even more would drive them crazy specifically because that runs against their values. The urban elite certainly fancies themselves as liberal on average, but the definitely don’t want a society where the guy who sells them their BMWs makes more than they do. The shock doesn’t come from learning this is so, the shock comes from how unfair it feels.
3 Likes
So much this. I make shit but I don’t work 60-80 hours a week.
Six figures is shit pay if you don’t have the time or energy to enjoy the money
This is true, and it’s that group of people (extremely hard working but only moderately affluent) that leads to studies showing that money doesn’t buy happiness over a certain threshold.
They really have no idea how big some of the boring industries are. Personally I’ll continue to avoid any industry that is sexier than extremely unsexy B2B SaaS software if a meteor strikes the deeply unsexy business I’m currently in.
Yeah.
The author grew up in Alpine, NJ, one of the richest zip codes in America. He attended Stanford and has a graduate degree from Harvard.
“Gobsmacked” isn’t quite right. It’s outright horror and revulsion at some fourth generation Fox News inhaling moron in Topeka making $5 million a year distributing Bud Light to dive bars while our 200 IQ author is probably barely making his Tribeca rent.
Edit: this article from the replies is really good.
3 Likes
i grind out that much in a high cost city while working 20-30 hours, with some oncall type random times when i have to login and look busy.
80 hours is so much that i don’t even understand how white collar workers with kids can even fit that much into a week. even WFH.
1 Like
When my wife was in consulting, her and her coworkers were regularly hammering out 70-80 hours a week of actual work and that was without working weekends. It’s rare that would last more than 2-3 weeks at a time even on the most grinding projects, but there were times of people doing multiple days in a row of like 6AM - Midnight of either Meetings, Excel, or PowerPoint.
It’s insane.
1 Like
I’ve legit worked 80/hrs a week maybe 3 or 4 times in my working life of 20 years.
Fuck all the way off doing even close to that on a regular basis.
I truly don’t know how BigLaw people do it. I don’t care how much you’re getting paid, that’s an absolutely miserable way to live. And it is soul crushing work.
1 Like
I’ve topped 100 hours in a week twice, I think, though not in many years. Seven days straight of sleep-work-sleep-repeat. That was mint-numbing, like just living in a daze for a while. I think it’s one thing to do 80 hours in a white-collar environment, but I can’t imagine how the folks who work two or three jobs for peanuts and end up combining at over 80 hours on a regular basis do it, especially considering that those jobs require a lot more physical exertion than just sitting at a computer.
Depending on the specialty, residents do this 48 weeks a year for 3-5 years
Yeah, this is the #1 reason why being an MD was never on my radar.
It is so abusive. Completely indefensible.
One of the biggest positives of moving out of America is getting out of the live to work mindset that is so prevalent there.
4 Likes
Imagine how angry you would be after all that to find out that the Toyota dealership guy makes 5x as much money as you do.
I have an associate who works full time in the school system and then works 32 hours a week for me at night. Basically does 630-1030 five days a week. I have no idea how she does it. If I do 50 hours a week my body and brain are shot
Same. I’ve never been that hard working and I never will be.