At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.” Enough. I was stunned by the simple eloquence of that word-stunned for two reasons: first, because I have been given so much in my own life and, second, because Joseph Heller couldn’t have been more accurate. For a critical element of our society, including many of the wealthiest and most powerful among us, there seems to be no limit today on what enough entails.
Pirkei Avot (Ethics of the Fathers, written 2,000 years ago), Chapter 4:1: Who is rich? The one who is happy with what he has.
Ben Zoma said: Who is wise? He who learns from every man, as it is said: “From all who taught me have I gained understanding” (Psalms 119:99). Who is mighty? He who subdues his [evil] inclination, as it is said: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit than he that takes a city” (Proverbs 16:32). Who is rich? He who rejoices in his lot, as it is said: “You shall enjoy the fruit of your labors, you shall be happy and you shall prosper” (Psalms 128:2) “You shall be happy” in this world, “and you shall prosper” in the world to come. Who is he that is honored? He who honors his fellow human beings as it is said: “For I honor those that honor Me, but those who spurn Me shall be dishonored” (I Samuel 2:30).
I mostly (not always) think the biggest issue facing humanity is the collapse of communal religious/philosophical engagement, ever more replaced by what was once denounced as “gossip” – the reckless ‘likes oriented’ social media – as the supreme arbiter of our daily lives.
HA! and as usual he leaves out the rest of the elements involved. Presenting everything the way a child or libertarian or legitimately ignorant person would, even though he is not at all ignorant in these matters. How was it acquired? What were the rules and whom did they favor in its acquisition? (This bit of business is always skipped over to create the illusion of “hard work” involved.) And the leap without explanation that requiring a payback or recognition is “greed” while simply hoarding money is not, implying that it cannot be, "greed, when of course it is greed.
Why would you automatically think or assume that the money was acquired illegally, unethically or without hard work, rather than assume the opposite? Is it in fact that the more money you have the more likely you got it nefariously?
Maybe not “nefariously”, but the system is rigged to favor those earning investment income and being gifted inherited wealth, rather than those earning an honest wage (i.e., wage and salary income).
I’ve made far more money over the past 30 years “sleeping until noon” and spending a few hours at year end doing a little tax planning and portfolio rebalancing, than I did in my blissfully short and reasonably well paid 17-year career as an engineer in the oil & gas industry. You need to flip that around if you expect smart people to work for a living. {{ LOL }}
There’s a big difference between being a doctor (where you’re hopefully healing people) and doing the kind of nonsense most of us are exposed to in professional-level corporate jobs. Though I suppose today more doctors are experiencing the corporate world as Private Equity takes over health care and drains the US Treasury through Medicare & Medicaid.
I just devised a more time efficient way to provide a middle-class income (a few hours of tax planning at year end, versus 40+ hours/week sitting in an office.) Seeking efficency is just good engineering practice.
That’s certainly true for some people, maybe most. But I never worked in an office where more than 2% of the people would show up for work if they suddenly no longer needed a paycheck.
But it wasn’t JUST this. Maybe you forgot because it was a long time ago, but you also forewent (the past tense of forego, I had to look it up) many of the things that your peers didn’t forego. Instead of spending most of your money on “fun” (cars, houses, drinking, vacations, whatever is “fun” for you and your peers), you saved it to enable the initial accumulation of enough capital to retire and live on the lower-taxed capital gains thereafter. Of course, it is entirely possible that the saving itself was “fun” for you, but this is still the primary difference between you and your peers.
Some of us are not allowed to have “fun”: required to work massive amounts of overtime, attempts to use vacation time supposedly earned refused.
Early retirement = time for “fun”. Biggest decisions I have now are which “fun” thing to do. Things I never had time to do before, because the “JC” demanded I spend the time making him richer.
Think I solved the dilemma for this Saturday. An event in Frankenmuth starts at 9am. A friend has an event starting at noon. Frankenmuth is a 90 minute drive away from the other event. If I can get up early enough, I can make both.
I had coworkers/underlings that got away with that. Always amazed me they got away with it. My boss’ solution was to always dump their work on me. I objected to having a coworker’s work dumped on me, once. I got a disciplinary write up for my trouble, and told to shut up and work. I would expect that is the office dynamic now. If some employees, I won’t call them “workers”, refuse to work, but the boss’ boss requires the work to be done, someone will be stuck doing it.
