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I can think of a few other things the article doesn't touch on that influence me. 1) Once you become rich you also have a fair bit of say in what it is that yo

I can think of a few other things the article doesn't touch on that influence me. 1) Once you become rich you also have a fair bit of say in what it is that you do. If you are an hourly worker stocking shelves at Walmart your autonomy is limited and the chance that boredom sets in is much higher than it might be for most white collar employees. Where white collar employee's is a proxy for rich. 2) An hourly worker can only grow their income linearly with the number of hours that they work. The rich often have huge leverage with the time they put in vs the amount of money they get out. Sales is one example of this, a hedge fund employee might be another case. This tends to favour the "you eat what you kill" type of compensation. 3) The people I know who become rich often do so not by diversification but typically from concentrating on one endeavor, typically a company. In this case the company tends to become a very large part of their life. They aren't always at their desk but they are always thinking about their company. Maybe this is just an offshoot of point 2).

forgetsusername 10y ago
Your comment touches on how this happens, but not why. If rich people have more say in what they do, why are they working instead of things that might be more "fun"? If rich people have far more leverage in their hourly earnings, why not work far fewer hours? I'm not sure the article really solved it, either. It's a curiosity to me as someone who has determined the quality of life I desire and want to "work" the bare minimum to achieve that.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > If rich people have more say in what they do, why are they working instead of things that might be more "fun"? If rich people have far more leverage in their hourly earnings, why not work far fewer hours? There's probably a correlation between being rich and being more inclined to spend time on activities which return money. In that, ceteris paribus, having less of that inclination will reduce your probability of becoming rich.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    I'd turn it around: Being rich provides you with the opportunity to spend time on activities which return more and more money, opportunities that do not exist for (or are out of reach of) the poor.
    - dragonwriter 10y ago
      I don't doubt that, the two ideas are in no way mutually exclusive.
- tw04 10y ago
  Because, generally speaking, by the time you get to that point, work has become your life. Some people can't handle the disconnect. Much like when a pro athlete retires, they often lose their sense of self-worth because it was so closely tied to their profession.
- Retric 10y ago
  I think it's the same addiction cycle that drives MMO addicts. If work is the only thing in your life going well you may focus on it rather than fix what's broken. Many successful people are less happey in retirement because that don't get a social circle playing up the importance of what they are doing. Sitting on a beach is simply less rewarding than landing a major contract. Thus, these people are not checking email on vacation because of dedication they are chasing a reward cycle.
- beachstartup 10y ago
  i'll give it a shot. i own a business that could potentially make me rich if i sold it, but haven't considered it yet. (it could also make me go broke, but that's another story). a poor or lower middle class person would probably disagree if they saw my income and business bank accounts, but hey, everything is relative. anyway. here are some reasons that may or may not apply to myself and my group of peers (all business owners end up hanging out with a bunch of other business owners or sales-type people, it just happens). 1. they like working. they may deny it, but they do. they like making things happen, making things in general, etc. 2. they feel like if they stop working, the money will disappear, or be taken somehow. this may or may not be rational. 3. they are compelled to do it, it is simply an inner drive they can't overcome. i.e. that's how the money was made to begin with. 4. they like having a high level of disposable income to spend on nice things/experiences/influence. this is the polar opposite of how a lot of people on HN think, who seem to constantly trying to humble-brag about their rankings in the frugality olympics. i definitely fall into #4, the others maybe, maybe not. i like nice shit, so i work hard. if i wanted to not spend money, i'd just be poor and not work much. i did it for 4 years in college, i could do it for the rest of my life if i wanted to. it's not hard to do nothing and spend nothing. it's literally the easiest thing in the world, you just don't do anything, all day long. sorry for being snarky.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    Another point is that people have their sense of self-worth tied up in their occupation. I get paid a lot => I'm an important part of the world => if I stop then the world will fail (in some [tiny] way). You see a corollary of this in retirees, their occupation defined them. Pre-retirement they say "hi, I'm Joe, I'm a professor" - a professor isn't a professor when they're relaxing and enjoying themselves (the thought process goes) so in order to be a professor I must work long hours at teaching students.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- roc 10y ago
  I would guess: 1. Because the mindset of work > leisure is rewarded in the U.S., so wealthier people aren't choosing work because they're wealthier, they're wealthier because they choose work. 2. Because they have more leverage not only in how much they work, but in what work they do. If you draw a stark line between your job and what you enjoy, naturally you'll want to minimize that work and maximize your leisure. But if you actually enjoy your job...
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  I think they keep working because they achieve a lot of success with it so it's very rewarding. I am sure I would enjoy work much more if I felt that my work really makes a difference.
- douche 10y ago
  Some people really like working. If I was independently wealthy, I would work like a dog on the things I'm interested in, and I'd enjoy the hell out of it. It's not so much doing the work, it's having to do the work, and not having control over my time, that gets under my collar.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  It's pretty simple really: making money feels good. I run my own business, and as a result I have a very highly correlated effort-to-earnings relationship. The more I work, the more I make. I could spend my time doing "leisurely" activities away from work and I'd still make more than enough to live on, but instead I spend the better part of my work days (and oftentimes weekends) grinding away, trying to make this my highest earning September yet. I don't do this in the pursuit of some end goal. I have fairly modest tastes, and 90% of the money I earn goes into a bank account or brokerage where it sits forever. All I can say is that earning money gives me the most concrete measure of achievement I've found. When I was a kid I played World of Warcraft relentlessly, and gaining another level in that game gave me the same sense of forward progress. Money feels like the grown-up version of that.
  - seangrogg 10y ago
    So what do end-game raids look like to you?
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Wonder if this is somehow upbringing-related. I've never felt the "making money feels good" thing. Sure, it feels great to have a surplus on my bank account, so that I don't have to worry about not having money for food, or buying quality computing equipment when I need it, or helping a friend in need. But the act of making money? It always felt to me (and still feels today) as a period of grinding you have to endure, a painful sacrifice, that will ensure the bank balance will maintain its level.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>All I can say is that earning money gives me the most concrete measure of achievement I've found. You make money when you generate value for someone. It's OK to tie it to a sense of achievement, but at the end of the day you also have to remember to generate value for yourself.
  - intended 10y ago
    In school, one conversation with a close friend made it clear what this was about. I'd been brought up with a strong influence from my father who believed the pursuit of wealth for wealthy sake was pointless. It mattered what you did as a person than what you earned. My ideal job would be to become a scientist. My friend told me that he wanted to earn money, not because he wanted to be rich, but because he liked seeing that number go up. He knew that it was a straight up numeric increment for him. Now that's a relatively deep insight for a teen, which applies to everything from gaming to work. It's obvious and direct behavioral reinforcement. Oddly it doesn't explain why he grew up to be a scientist (bio-analytics/genomics) and I ended up wading into finance and business. Maybe self awareness is the pre requisite to being more comfortable with less than comfortable choices.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Is it perhaps because the type of person who gets rich is more likely to be the type of person who enjoys the work they do in and of itself?
- zhemao 10y ago
  It does implicitly answer the "why". If you have more choice in what you work on, you can choose work that you enjoy. If you enjoy your work, you'll do more of it. It's no longer a paradox when you take into account the fact that high-earning professionals consider work to be "fun".
freehunter 10y ago
Also many hourly workers don't get to pick their own hours. I know when I was stocking shelves, I only got to work the hours my manager scheduled me for. If I wanted to work more hours to make more money, I didn't have that option. I've got a friend who is a mechanic as well, and it's the same thing there. He only gets to work extra if they have extra work. If they don't have work for him, he goes home (and clocks out). I'm salaried, and I had several weeks earlier this year where I struggled to put in more than 5-10 hours a week of actual work because business was slow. I still got paid the same amount, though, and was still "on the clock". So it looks like I have less free time than my hourly friends because I'm still at work while they're at home playing video games.
- douche 10y ago
  We under-occupied salary workers just play our video games at the office... /s
  - freehunter 10y ago
    My wife gets jealous when she finds me playing Civilization during work hours (I work from home). But then she's upset when I'm on the phone with a client until 9pm and I miss dinner. Those hours pretty much balance out over the year, though.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - kiiski 10y ago
      > But then she's upset To be fair, from her point of view your hours playing Civilization might not balance out her having dinner alone.
      - freehunter 10y ago
        She has no problem cashing my paychecks though! All joking aside, it is certainly a downside to the job I do, but she understands. "Upset" is kind of a hyperbolic word to use, she fully supports the work I do as it affords us a lot of freedoms we might not have otherwise. I can't say how often we've turned a business trip into a vacation just by switching the credit card on file with the hotel to my personal card, or left for vacation in the middle of the work day as long as I bring my phone and take my calls from the passenger seat. Not to mention she doesn't have to work full time, so she can pursue her own dreams and hobbies. Not that any of that matters to you, I just didn't want anyone thinking I was being selfish or insensitive to my wife's feelings.
connoredel 10y ago
I think your point #2 is right on. This article is wondering why recent observations are not behaving the "backward bending supply curve of labour" [1]. But this curve assumes a constant return on hours worked (i.e. a constant wage). If it really behaves more like overtime -- where additional hours are worth more but only if you've already worked a certain amount -- then the marginal hourly wage can rise as the marginal leisure value rises, and the equilibrium is pushed further out. In other words, it changes that curve to strictly increasing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_...
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

forgetsusername 10y ago

Your comment touches on how this happens, but not why. If rich people have more say in what they do, why are they working instead of things that might be more "fun"? If rich people have far more leverage in their hourly earnings, why not work far fewer hours? I'm not sure the article really solved it, either. It's a curiosity to me as someone who has determined the quality of life I desire and want to "work" the bare minimum to achieve that.

dragonwriter 10y ago
> If rich people have more say in what they do, why are they working instead of things that might be more "fun"? If rich people have far more leverage in their hourly earnings, why not work far fewer hours? There's probably a correlation between being rich and being more inclined to spend time on activities which return money. In that, ceteris paribus, having less of that inclination will reduce your probability of becoming rich.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  I'd turn it around: Being rich provides you with the opportunity to spend time on activities which return more and more money, opportunities that do not exist for (or are out of reach of) the poor.
  - dragonwriter 10y ago
    I don't doubt that, the two ideas are in no way mutually exclusive.
tw04 10y ago
Because, generally speaking, by the time you get to that point, work has become your life. Some people can't handle the disconnect. Much like when a pro athlete retires, they often lose their sense of self-worth because it was so closely tied to their profession.
Retric 10y ago
I think it's the same addiction cycle that drives MMO addicts. If work is the only thing in your life going well you may focus on it rather than fix what's broken. Many successful people are less happey in retirement because that don't get a social circle playing up the importance of what they are doing. Sitting on a beach is simply less rewarding than landing a major contract. Thus, these people are not checking email on vacation because of dedication they are chasing a reward cycle.
beachstartup 10y ago
i'll give it a shot. i own a business that could potentially make me rich if i sold it, but haven't considered it yet. (it could also make me go broke, but that's another story). a poor or lower middle class person would probably disagree if they saw my income and business bank accounts, but hey, everything is relative. anyway. here are some reasons that may or may not apply to myself and my group of peers (all business owners end up hanging out with a bunch of other business owners or sales-type people, it just happens). 1. they like working. they may deny it, but they do. they like making things happen, making things in general, etc. 2. they feel like if they stop working, the money will disappear, or be taken somehow. this may or may not be rational. 3. they are compelled to do it, it is simply an inner drive they can't overcome. i.e. that's how the money was made to begin with. 4. they like having a high level of disposable income to spend on nice things/experiences/influence. this is the polar opposite of how a lot of people on HN think, who seem to constantly trying to humble-brag about their rankings in the frugality olympics. i definitely fall into #4, the others maybe, maybe not. i like nice shit, so i work hard. if i wanted to not spend money, i'd just be poor and not work much. i did it for 4 years in college, i could do it for the rest of my life if i wanted to. it's not hard to do nothing and spend nothing. it's literally the easiest thing in the world, you just don't do anything, all day long. sorry for being snarky.
- pbhjpbhj 10y ago
  Another point is that people have their sense of self-worth tied up in their occupation. I get paid a lot => I'm an important part of the world => if I stop then the world will fail (in some [tiny] way). You see a corollary of this in retirees, their occupation defined them. Pre-retirement they say "hi, I'm Joe, I'm a professor" - a professor isn't a professor when they're relaxing and enjoying themselves (the thought process goes) so in order to be a professor I must work long hours at teaching students.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
roc 10y ago
I would guess: 1. Because the mindset of work > leisure is rewarded in the U.S., so wealthier people aren't choosing work because they're wealthier, they're wealthier because they choose work. 2. Because they have more leverage not only in how much they work, but in what work they do. If you draw a stark line between your job and what you enjoy, naturally you'll want to minimize that work and maximize your leisure. But if you actually enjoy your job...
maxxxxx 10y ago
I think they keep working because they achieve a lot of success with it so it's very rewarding. I am sure I would enjoy work much more if I felt that my work really makes a difference.
douche 10y ago
Some people really like working. If I was independently wealthy, I would work like a dog on the things I'm interested in, and I'd enjoy the hell out of it. It's not so much doing the work, it's having to do the work, and not having control over my time, that gets under my collar.
cloakandswagger 10y ago
It's pretty simple really: making money feels good. I run my own business, and as a result I have a very highly correlated effort-to-earnings relationship. The more I work, the more I make. I could spend my time doing "leisurely" activities away from work and I'd still make more than enough to live on, but instead I spend the better part of my work days (and oftentimes weekends) grinding away, trying to make this my highest earning September yet. I don't do this in the pursuit of some end goal. I have fairly modest tastes, and 90% of the money I earn goes into a bank account or brokerage where it sits forever. All I can say is that earning money gives me the most concrete measure of achievement I've found. When I was a kid I played World of Warcraft relentlessly, and gaining another level in that game gave me the same sense of forward progress. Money feels like the grown-up version of that.
- seangrogg 10y ago
  So what do end-game raids look like to you?
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Wonder if this is somehow upbringing-related. I've never felt the "making money feels good" thing. Sure, it feels great to have a surplus on my bank account, so that I don't have to worry about not having money for food, or buying quality computing equipment when I need it, or helping a friend in need. But the act of making money? It always felt to me (and still feels today) as a period of grinding you have to endure, a painful sacrifice, that will ensure the bank balance will maintain its level.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  >>All I can say is that earning money gives me the most concrete measure of achievement I've found. You make money when you generate value for someone. It's OK to tie it to a sense of achievement, but at the end of the day you also have to remember to generate value for yourself.
- intended 10y ago
  In school, one conversation with a close friend made it clear what this was about. I'd been brought up with a strong influence from my father who believed the pursuit of wealth for wealthy sake was pointless. It mattered what you did as a person than what you earned. My ideal job would be to become a scientist. My friend told me that he wanted to earn money, not because he wanted to be rich, but because he liked seeing that number go up. He knew that it was a straight up numeric increment for him. Now that's a relatively deep insight for a teen, which applies to everything from gaming to work. It's obvious and direct behavioral reinforcement. Oddly it doesn't explain why he grew up to be a scientist (bio-analytics/genomics) and I ended up wading into finance and business. Maybe self awareness is the pre requisite to being more comfortable with less than comfortable choices.
Swizec 10y ago
Is it perhaps because the type of person who gets rich is more likely to be the type of person who enjoys the work they do in and of itself?
zhemao 10y ago
It does implicitly answer the "why". If you have more choice in what you work on, you can choose work that you enjoy. If you enjoy your work, you'll do more of it. It's no longer a paradox when you take into account the fact that high-earning professionals consider work to be "fun".

freehunter 10y ago

Also many hourly workers don't get to pick their own hours. I know when I was stocking shelves, I only got to work the hours my manager scheduled me for. If I wanted to work more hours to make more money, I didn't have that option. I've got a friend who is a mechanic as well, and it's the same thing there. He only gets to work extra if they have extra work. If they don't have work for him, he goes home (and clocks out). I'm salaried, and I had several weeks earlier this year where I struggled to put in more than 5-10 hours a week of actual work because business was slow. I still got paid the same amount, though, and was still "on the clock". So it looks like I have less free time than my hourly friends because I'm still at work while they're at home playing video games.

douche 10y ago
We under-occupied salary workers just play our video games at the office... /s
- freehunter 10y ago
  My wife gets jealous when she finds me playing Civilization during work hours (I work from home). But then she's upset when I'm on the phone with a client until 9pm and I miss dinner. Those hours pretty much balance out over the year, though.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - kiiski 10y ago
    > But then she's upset To be fair, from her point of view your hours playing Civilization might not balance out her having dinner alone.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      She has no problem cashing my paychecks though! All joking aside, it is certainly a downside to the job I do, but she understands. "Upset" is kind of a hyperbolic word to use, she fully supports the work I do as it affords us a lot of freedoms we might not have otherwise. I can't say how often we've turned a business trip into a vacation just by switching the credit card on file with the hotel to my personal card, or left for vacation in the middle of the work day as long as I bring my phone and take my calls from the passenger seat. Not to mention she doesn't have to work full time, so she can pursue her own dreams and hobbies. Not that any of that matters to you, I just didn't want anyone thinking I was being selfish or insensitive to my wife's feelings.

connoredel 10y ago

I think your point #2 is right on. This article is wondering why recent observations are not behaving the "backward bending supply curve of labour" [1]. But this curve assumes a constant return on hours worked (i.e. a constant wage). If it really behaves more like overtime -- where additional hours are worth more but only if you've already worked a certain amount -- then the marginal hourly wage can rise as the marginal leisure value rises, and the equilibrium is pushed further out. In other words, it changes that curve to strictly increasing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_of_labour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backward_bending_supply_curve_...

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]