How $30,000 Can be More Than $300,000

[Javaman]

(I posted a short essay a week or so ago, entitled, "It will be...Different." http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5213898

basically, just spit balling about how our economy and it's "recovery" will be unlike anything we have ever experience or anything we can predict. This following article, plays up to just that concept. It's a good read. Enjoy)

How $30,000 Can be More Than $300,000

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5174

In interviews, speeches and in writing on this blog, I often point out that financial capital is just a marker for real capital, which is comprised of natural, built, social and human components. In the context of upcoming social upheaval given numerous converging crises, this post is a brief discussion piece on how those making little or no money may actually have a leg up on those who are employed/making alot of money.

With the financial crises making headlines, and folks losing jobs and unable to pay for things they once viewed as 'necessities', I thought I would offer a different perspective. For at least 4 reasons, I think those lower on the income hierarchy may have advantages.

Let me begin with some personal history. I am not a wealthy man, at least by US standards, but in the past I've made a great deal of money. Two years out of MBA school in 1994, I was making over $400,000 per year. However, irrespective of how much I earned, I was living paycheck to paycheck - not only did I spend all my after tax income but was psychologically dependent on the next check being at least as big. (The details behind this are another story entirely). Today I live off of a graduate student stipend of $21,000 per annum and some income generated from savings. I now live in a 1200 square foot house, grow 40% of my own food and spend most of my spare cash on tools, books and gardening equipment. I am no saint, and due to travel still have a footprint many times that of the average person. I consume less not because I have to, but because it has made me much happier, and calmer. Perhaps I was lucky in my twenties to hang with billionaires who weren't happy. However, I still am connected to the financial markets, both due to interest and because more than half of my closest friends still work in the industry (though that number is declining, partially because some are losing their jobs and partially because I am losing some of them as friends.) I don't have all the answers to the upcoming social puzzle, but having breathed the air near the top, as well as studied the unrelated sciences of habituation, finance and anthropology, so I feel qualified to make a few speculations.

With that backdrop here are some reasons why those of you making a lot of money ought to reassess your path, and those making little or no money, should perhaps have a brighter outlook.

[hendo]

1. Yup

money rarely if ever brings happiness. More people need to learn that.

There is a great example in a book that i just finished reading. It's in the form of a question: "Would you rather work in a tollbooth and make $100k a year, or as an architect and make $50k a year?"

Its just too bad that a lot of people would take the tollbooth job for the prospect of more money. People are blinded by cash, and make themselves miserable in pursuit of more.

I am going to get flamed here for saying this, but McCain was right, rich should be defined in terms other than money.

[Javaman]

2. no flame, but it's easy for a rich guy to say that. nt

[hendo]

5. if its not defined in terms of money

i would bet many people who earn far less than he does are richer.

[Hannah Bell]

6. yep. i've lived poor voluntarily & involuntarily. my preferred lifestyle is that of a student.

but it's much more comfortable to live that way with a good paycheck & savings in the bank than surviving from tiny check to check or worse.

this is one thing that peeves me about some of the folks recommending "downsizing" for its lifestyle/mental health/green/spirituality benefits.

no benefit if one thing going wrong will put you on the streets.

[Javaman]

8. exactly. If we were to take the riches perspective on wealth doesn't bring happiness...

then by this guys definition, the poorest are the happiest. Somehow, I don't think that jibes with reality.

Don't get me wrong, the metaphoric sense of wealth (mind, body and spirit), is all fine and good, but at the end of the day, who doesn't like a full stomach and a warm place to sleep?

The rich have no clue.

[Hannah Bell]

9. nope, they don't, imo most of this kind of stuff is directed at upper-middle folks

who have money in the bank & are tired of the rat-race.

[SoCalDem]

4. For some people the tollbooth job would be a fit..not for the money

but for the fact that once they go home at night, they are DONE.. they don't worry about something they might have missed on page 123 of the specs or from page 3 of the blueprints..

Jobs that "go home with you", or that haunt you because of bids you lost or criticisms can eat away at you..'
The tollbooth guy, collects his tolls, and then goes home..

Boring for one person, may not be boring for someone else.. If toll collectors make $100K, that's just a plus.. My husband has a degree in architecture, and it's taken him a lifetime to get to $86K.. (he's always worked for someone else)

[Belial]

3. Show me the money. I think our culture promotes this..

[BlueIris]

7. Kicking it.

...egh. I'm so not looking forward to my thirties/forties/fifties. And possibly sixties.