7 ms·

I really disagree with this. Far from being more than anybody needs, a million dollars is actually not enough to secure a dignified existence in the US. Sure.

by simon_ 16y ago

I really disagree with this. Far from being more than anybody needs, a million dollars is actually not enough to secure a dignified existence in the US. Sure... a "trip to Thailand" doesn't require a million dollars, but what if you want: Not to face bankruptcy if a major health problem arises? Not to worry about the cost of college for your children? To own a small home in NYC or SF? To afford competent legal representation if the need arises? And that doesn't even touch the reasons people want to be rich - like private jets and angel investing and art collecting and space tourism, etc. Have some imagination!

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
A million dollars is actually not enough to secure a dignified existence in the US. Nonsense: http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/08/how-to-retire-at-30-on-1-million/ http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/08/how-to-retire-at-30-on-1-mil... Not to face bankruptcy if a major health problem arises? Health insurance isn't that expensive unless you have a pre-existing condition [1]. I won't talk about the college and home ownership questions other than to say that families have figured out how to live happy, healthy lives on far, far less. Go to a good state school, get some scholarships, don't live in Manhattan. And you're only making my point: you don't really want the money. You want the things that you think only an abnormally large amount of money can buy. Sorry, but that just seems like lazy thinking to me. 1. And my sincere condolences to those that do. Seriously, that sucks and we need to fix the system somehow.
- Alex3917 16y ago
  The cost of raising a kid right now if you want them to have a typical upper middle class upbringing is somewhere between 800k - 1.6M (2007 dollars) from birth to age 17. The exact figure depends on whether you want to send them to private school, whether you are feeding them all organic food, and a couple other things. Even the most basic middle class (no after school sports, summer camp, etc.) upbringing costs $500,000 - $635,000 from birth through college, with the range mostly depending on whether they go to a public or private university. source: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117288281789725533-WZk_5xPQiihWpVM8_WCB9I_GjM0_20070402.html?mod=tff_article http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117288281789725533-WZ... edit: The second set of figures was from p.6 of Parenting, Inc., which I believe come from here: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2009.pdf http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2009.pdf You can actually read the entire opening of Parenting, Inc. for free on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Inc-Pamela-Paul/dp/B003V1WDFA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292874053&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Inc-Pamela-Paul/dp/B003V1WDF...
  - tptacek 16y ago
    It does not cost us anything resembling $66,000/yr (no, wait: 2 kids - $120k/year [?!]) to provide two school-age children with an absurdly privileged upbringing. I suspect college tuition is queering those numbers.
    - jessriedel 16y ago
      Four years of full tuition at an Ivy League school is $200k, so that doesn't even explain the absurd numbers. (And at Princeton, for instance, less than half of the students pay full price.)
    - m4wk3r 16y ago
      there's also the opportunity cost of spending the money on child-rearing for 17 years and not letting it sit and accrue interest somewhere. great use of "queering", by the way.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - damoncali 16y ago
      True, but take a more reasonable number like $20k/year/kid, factor in the time value of money and you can quite reasonably hit a future value of half a million or more to get a single kid to college (let alone through it). In other words, what would you have if you invested the cost of children for 17 years? a shitton of money. (Granted, $20k/year is a hefty spend on a kid where I come from).
    - cookiecaper 16y ago
      Why is college tuition even considered an expense that parents have to shoulder? If you're rich enough and you want to pay the tuition, then that's just great, but is it really so bad to imagine that someone hovering around 20 would work for something useful for themselves? Sure, it's nice to have rich parents who will pay your expenses so you can "focus on school" (heh), but it's by no means a requirement.
      - 16y ago
- tptacek 16y ago
  We did fix that problem. Everyone will have to buy health insurance, and insurers will in large part be prevented from rejecting people for preexisting conditions.
  - defen 16y ago
    I'm not a constitutional scholar so I have no idea how big of a deal this is, but: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-13/politics/health.care_1_health-insurance-health-care-federal-judge http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-13/politics/health.care_1_he...
    - tptacek 16y ago
      No opinion I can give about this will result in anything less than 48 comments of pointless political argument about the Commerce Clause and health care and moral hazard and libertarianism and how someone's mom was totally able to haggle perfectly good health care out of a hospitals for pennies on the dollar and it's all the fault of people who consume HFCS and let's just bypass all that.
      - Vivtek 16y ago
        Dammit, this kind of comment is why you have all the karma it's physically possible to have.
- narkee 16y ago
  Of course you want things money can buy - that's implicit when someone says they want money. Because we all know that money has no intrinsic value, and saying we want money is a little easier than saying we want a magic genie that will give us things for free.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  I won't talk about the college and home ownership questions other than to say that families have figured out how to live happy, healthy lives on far, far less. Go to a good state school, get some scholarships, don't live in Manhattan. This is a poor answer. Just because other people are happy with something doesn't mean everyone is. What do you mean "don't live in Mahnattan"? I want to live in Manhattan. Who are you to say which of my desires are valid and invalid?
  - mseebach 16y ago
    He didn't say that, he said that you don't need to live in Manhattan to have a dignified life. Nobody contests that a million dollars can buy you a lot of very nice things. The point is that too many people spend too much time fretting about going to Thailand when they get a million dollars, while completely missing the fact that a trip to Thailand is maybe $1000. It's mostly a question of priorities, and if you make your whole life about getting a million dollars, guess what happens once you get there? You're likely to start obsessing about five million, rather than retire to that beach in Thailand.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Maybe, but his thesis that most people say that want a million dollars but don't actually want the things that cost a million dollars is unsupported. I was playing devil's advocate (I probably don't want to live in Manhattan) but the idea is that none of us really know how many people actually want things that cost a million dollars and how many people just want what he terms "freedom."
  - tptacek 16y ago
    The bearer of bad news about statistics, demographics, and what the rest of the country gets by happily on.
  - sp4rki 16y ago
    Your dreams and desires have nothing to do with living a fulfilling "dignified" life. His answer is so full of truth. You don't need to live in Manhattan to be happy, the same way you don't need to be in the bay area to start a successful startup. If you think that the only way to be happy (in your case) is to live in Manhattan, then you have bigger problems with your priorities than the amount of money you need to live comfortably. I've love to buy a sporty Jaguar coupe which costs around 110k over here, but since I don't have that kind of money to spend on a car I make due with my 1998 truck. I'm happy. I'll probably buy a 370z in the next six months. It's not a Jaguar, but I will still be happy and live a free and dignified life.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  Suppose you're 30 say and expect to live till you're 80 and to spend US median income (50K/yr) on your survival, then you expect to spend 2.5 million in your remaining lifetime. Having an extra-million to spend on consumption would put you at the ~70K/year level. That's something like a move from middle to barely-upper-middle class consumption levels. So 1 million doesn't give you an abnormal amount of money to spend unless you spend it all in one place or something. And your article on "how to retire..." isn't about how to retire at all but how to work with a million dollars and make a fair income, which is fine and good as long as you acknowledge that the person has to ... A) be moderately competent, B) be willing to accept some risks and discomforts (living Texas for example...) C) be willing to keep working (sure, maybe not that hard but still it involves effort, it's not friggin "retirement" in the normal sense).
- didip 16y ago
  "pre-existing condition" what does it mean? And how can old people avoid having pre-existing condition? Does that mean one has to be insured continuously to make sure no pre-existing condition arises in-between insurance gap? I'm new in the States and I hear this term is mentioned a lot.
  - ams6110 16y ago
    Yes, generally by staying continually insured you avoid waiting periods for coverage of pre-existing conditions. Old people are on Medicare which doesn't, to my knowledge, exclude pre-existing conditions.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Insurance is based on statistics. The insurance company is making a bet across a large number of people that the people will pay them more than they'll have to pay out. If you're already afflicted with some illness (a 'preexisting condition') then the insurance company has a pretty good idea of what you'll cost them: more than someone like me, who's young and relatively healthy. So naturally, the rate for someone like this is significantly higher. This becomes a problem when people think of 'insurance' as something that's a prerequisite for life rather than what it is, insurance. This is partially because as more and more people received insurance, the price kept rising and rising, because the individuals don't see them: they only see the deductible. By now, costs are getting to be so high that it's become a reality: you pretty much have to have insurance, because if you don't, and you get seriously ill, you're pretty fucked. Like, "will be owing money the rest of your life." You hear "pre-existing condition" a lot because it became a political buzzword used to explain why Republicans want to kill your grandma.
    - ams6110 16y ago
      People get all worked up about pre-existing conditions but how many people expect to be able to buy collision insurance after they've run their car into a tree? Home insurance after their house has burned to the ground? That's not insurance... that's a bail-out.
joe_the_user 16y ago
I live very simply, avoiding all unnecessary luxuries. I prefer to make my bicycle my main means of transportation and I prefer to cook my own food (being one of the best cook I know helps...). Yet I entirely agree with your statement. A million dollars is "not enough to secure a dignified existence in the US" because... ... Human beings require a community for a dignified existence. Yes, a million won't guard against a health emergency... human beings indeed sometimes suddenly need the full-time attention of a dozen other people for a long time and if that attention comes from only money, it has to be a lot of it. If you're counting on only money to secure your dignified existence, you're going to need a awful lot of it, enough to secure the mere existence of maybe a dozen people...
brown9-2 16y ago
Not to face bankruptcy if a major health problem arises? Not to worry about the cost of college for your children? To own a small home in NYC or SF? To afford competent legal representation if the need arises? Surely this isn't the definition of "a dignified existence in the US", is it?
- p_nathan 16y ago
  I have no idea. It's not the definition of "dignified existence in the US" for anyone I respect, that's for sure.
binaryfinery 16y ago
Was that his point? My take-away was "don't wait for a million dollars to do the things you've always wanted."
berntb 16y ago
There are two levels. On the first level, you can retire, buy health insurance and not have any worries. A million would be enough. I would live on a diving boat cruising over coral reefs and code games between dives. (I'd also hire my gf to cook.) >>And that doesn't even touch the reasons people want to be rich - like private jets and angel investing and art collecting and space tourism, etc. On the second level, you can get what is high status among the really cool and rich nerds -- your own space program. (-: Well, some people without taste waste that opportunity on curing diseases that kill millions a year, sigh. :-)
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  On the first level, you can retire, buy health insurance and not have any worries. A million would be enough. I would live on a diving boat cruising over coral reefs and code games between dives. (I'd also hire my gf to cook.) This also contradicts the claim that someone wanting a million dollars is wanting "an usual amount of money". With a million dollars you can either: A. Not work and live on pitance but in the location of your choosing. B. Add your labor to the money and make whatever income your business skill allows you to make. These both might be fine activities but neither is activity beyond one's wildest dreams. One 10million, one can live an upper-middle class America lifestyle anyplace in the world. That would indeed be great but it pretty close to "merely" moving to the next income bracket if one raised median income in the US.
  - berntb 16y ago
    My attempted point was that my dreams are small. :-) I'd still write code, but with better weather that allows some othet hobbies -- and no stress. Maybe I would hire a few people and start a business. Not a big difference, really. To get real change in what I do, I'd need a bilion so I could emulate Musk. I doubt I'd be good at it.
eru 16y ago
Just take your million and move to the UK. That will give you health insurance, if nothing else.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

by simon_ 16y ago

ryanwaggoner 16y ago

A million dollars is actually not enough to secure a dignified existence in the US. Nonsense: http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/08/how-to-retire-at-30-on-1-million/ http://ryanwaggoner.com/2010/08/how-to-retire-at-30-on-1-mil... Not to face bankruptcy if a major health problem arises? Health insurance isn't that expensive unless you have a pre-existing condition [1]. I won't talk about the college and home ownership questions other than to say that families have figured out how to live happy, healthy lives on far, far less. Go to a good state school, get some scholarships, don't live in Manhattan. And you're only making my point: you don't really want the money. You want the things that you think only an abnormally large amount of money can buy. Sorry, but that just seems like lazy thinking to me. 1. And my sincere condolences to those that do. Seriously, that sucks and we need to fix the system somehow.

Alex3917 16y ago
The cost of raising a kid right now if you want them to have a typical upper middle class upbringing is somewhere between 800k - 1.6M (2007 dollars) from birth to age 17. The exact figure depends on whether you want to send them to private school, whether you are feeding them all organic food, and a couple other things. Even the most basic middle class (no after school sports, summer camp, etc.) upbringing costs $500,000 - $635,000 from birth through college, with the range mostly depending on whether they go to a public or private university. source: http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117288281789725533-WZk_5xPQiihWpVM8_WCB9I_GjM0_20070402.html?mod=tff_article http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117288281789725533-WZ... edit: The second set of figures was from p.6 of Parenting, Inc., which I believe come from here: http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2009.pdf http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/Publications/CRC/crc2009.pdf You can actually read the entire opening of Parenting, Inc. for free on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Inc-Pamela-Paul/dp/B003V1WDFA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292874053&sr=8-1 http://www.amazon.com/Parenting-Inc-Pamela-Paul/dp/B003V1WDF...
- tptacek 16y ago
  It does not cost us anything resembling $66,000/yr (no, wait: 2 kids - $120k/year [?!]) to provide two school-age children with an absurdly privileged upbringing. I suspect college tuition is queering those numbers.
  - jessriedel 16y ago
    Four years of full tuition at an Ivy League school is $200k, so that doesn't even explain the absurd numbers. (And at Princeton, for instance, less than half of the students pay full price.)
  - m4wk3r 16y ago
    there's also the opportunity cost of spending the money on child-rearing for 17 years and not letting it sit and accrue interest somewhere. great use of "queering", by the way.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - damoncali 16y ago
    True, but take a more reasonable number like $20k/year/kid, factor in the time value of money and you can quite reasonably hit a future value of half a million or more to get a single kid to college (let alone through it). In other words, what would you have if you invested the cost of children for 17 years? a shitton of money. (Granted, $20k/year is a hefty spend on a kid where I come from).
  - cookiecaper 16y ago
    Why is college tuition even considered an expense that parents have to shoulder? If you're rich enough and you want to pay the tuition, then that's just great, but is it really so bad to imagine that someone hovering around 20 would work for something useful for themselves? Sure, it's nice to have rich parents who will pay your expenses so you can "focus on school" (heh), but it's by no means a requirement.
    - 16y ago
tptacek 16y ago
We did fix that problem. Everyone will have to buy health insurance, and insurers will in large part be prevented from rejecting people for preexisting conditions.
- defen 16y ago
  I'm not a constitutional scholar so I have no idea how big of a deal this is, but: http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-13/politics/health.care_1_health-insurance-health-care-federal-judge http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-13/politics/health.care_1_he...
  - tptacek 16y ago
    No opinion I can give about this will result in anything less than 48 comments of pointless political argument about the Commerce Clause and health care and moral hazard and libertarianism and how someone's mom was totally able to haggle perfectly good health care out of a hospitals for pennies on the dollar and it's all the fault of people who consume HFCS and let's just bypass all that.
    - Vivtek 16y ago
      Dammit, this kind of comment is why you have all the karma it's physically possible to have.
narkee 16y ago
Of course you want things money can buy - that's implicit when someone says they want money. Because we all know that money has no intrinsic value, and saying we want money is a little easier than saying we want a magic genie that will give us things for free.
Locke1689 16y ago
I won't talk about the college and home ownership questions other than to say that families have figured out how to live happy, healthy lives on far, far less. Go to a good state school, get some scholarships, don't live in Manhattan. This is a poor answer. Just because other people are happy with something doesn't mean everyone is. What do you mean "don't live in Mahnattan"? I want to live in Manhattan. Who are you to say which of my desires are valid and invalid?
- mseebach 16y ago
  He didn't say that, he said that you don't need to live in Manhattan to have a dignified life. Nobody contests that a million dollars can buy you a lot of very nice things. The point is that too many people spend too much time fretting about going to Thailand when they get a million dollars, while completely missing the fact that a trip to Thailand is maybe $1000. It's mostly a question of priorities, and if you make your whole life about getting a million dollars, guess what happens once you get there? You're likely to start obsessing about five million, rather than retire to that beach in Thailand.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    Maybe, but his thesis that most people say that want a million dollars but don't actually want the things that cost a million dollars is unsupported. I was playing devil's advocate (I probably don't want to live in Manhattan) but the idea is that none of us really know how many people actually want things that cost a million dollars and how many people just want what he terms "freedom."
- tptacek 16y ago
  The bearer of bad news about statistics, demographics, and what the rest of the country gets by happily on.
- sp4rki 16y ago
  Your dreams and desires have nothing to do with living a fulfilling "dignified" life. His answer is so full of truth. You don't need to live in Manhattan to be happy, the same way you don't need to be in the bay area to start a successful startup. If you think that the only way to be happy (in your case) is to live in Manhattan, then you have bigger problems with your priorities than the amount of money you need to live comfortably. I've love to buy a sporty Jaguar coupe which costs around 110k over here, but since I don't have that kind of money to spend on a car I make due with my 1998 truck. I'm happy. I'll probably buy a 370z in the next six months. It's not a Jaguar, but I will still be happy and live a free and dignified life.
joe_the_user 16y ago
Suppose you're 30 say and expect to live till you're 80 and to spend US median income (50K/yr) on your survival, then you expect to spend 2.5 million in your remaining lifetime. Having an extra-million to spend on consumption would put you at the ~70K/year level. That's something like a move from middle to barely-upper-middle class consumption levels. So 1 million doesn't give you an abnormal amount of money to spend unless you spend it all in one place or something. And your article on "how to retire..." isn't about how to retire at all but how to work with a million dollars and make a fair income, which is fine and good as long as you acknowledge that the person has to ... A) be moderately competent, B) be willing to accept some risks and discomforts (living Texas for example...) C) be willing to keep working (sure, maybe not that hard but still it involves effort, it's not friggin "retirement" in the normal sense).
didip 16y ago
"pre-existing condition" what does it mean? And how can old people avoid having pre-existing condition? Does that mean one has to be insured continuously to make sure no pre-existing condition arises in-between insurance gap? I'm new in the States and I hear this term is mentioned a lot.
- ams6110 16y ago
  Yes, generally by staying continually insured you avoid waiting periods for coverage of pre-existing conditions. Old people are on Medicare which doesn't, to my knowledge, exclude pre-existing conditions.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Insurance is based on statistics. The insurance company is making a bet across a large number of people that the people will pay them more than they'll have to pay out. If you're already afflicted with some illness (a 'preexisting condition') then the insurance company has a pretty good idea of what you'll cost them: more than someone like me, who's young and relatively healthy. So naturally, the rate for someone like this is significantly higher. This becomes a problem when people think of 'insurance' as something that's a prerequisite for life rather than what it is, insurance. This is partially because as more and more people received insurance, the price kept rising and rising, because the individuals don't see them: they only see the deductible. By now, costs are getting to be so high that it's become a reality: you pretty much have to have insurance, because if you don't, and you get seriously ill, you're pretty fucked. Like, "will be owing money the rest of your life." You hear "pre-existing condition" a lot because it became a political buzzword used to explain why Republicans want to kill your grandma.
  - ams6110 16y ago
    People get all worked up about pre-existing conditions but how many people expect to be able to buy collision insurance after they've run their car into a tree? Home insurance after their house has burned to the ground? That's not insurance... that's a bail-out.

joe_the_user 16y ago

I live very simply, avoiding all unnecessary luxuries. I prefer to make my bicycle my main means of transportation and I prefer to cook my own food (being one of the best cook I know helps...). Yet I entirely agree with your statement. A million dollars is "not enough to secure a dignified existence in the US" because... ... Human beings require a community for a dignified existence. Yes, a million won't guard against a health emergency... human beings indeed sometimes suddenly need the full-time attention of a dozen other people for a long time and if that attention comes from only money, it has to be a lot of it. If you're counting on only money to secure your dignified existence, you're going to need a awful lot of it, enough to secure the mere existence of maybe a dozen people...

brown9-2 16y ago

Not to face bankruptcy if a major health problem arises? Not to worry about the cost of college for your children? To own a small home in NYC or SF? To afford competent legal representation if the need arises? Surely this isn't the definition of "a dignified existence in the US", is it?

p_nathan 16y ago
I have no idea. It's not the definition of "dignified existence in the US" for anyone I respect, that's for sure.

binaryfinery 16y ago

Was that his point? My take-away was "don't wait for a million dollars to do the things you've always wanted."

berntb 16y ago

There are two levels. On the first level, you can retire, buy health insurance and not have any worries. A million would be enough. I would live on a diving boat cruising over coral reefs and code games between dives. (I'd also hire my gf to cook.) >>And that doesn't even touch the reasons people want to be rich - like private jets and angel investing and art collecting and space tourism, etc. On the second level, you can get what is high status among the really cool and rich nerds -- your own space program. (-: Well, some people without taste waste that opportunity on curing diseases that kill millions a year, sigh. :-)

joe_the_user 16y ago
On the first level, you can retire, buy health insurance and not have any worries. A million would be enough. I would live on a diving boat cruising over coral reefs and code games between dives. (I'd also hire my gf to cook.) This also contradicts the claim that someone wanting a million dollars is wanting "an usual amount of money". With a million dollars you can either: A. Not work and live on pitance but in the location of your choosing. B. Add your labor to the money and make whatever income your business skill allows you to make. These both might be fine activities but neither is activity beyond one's wildest dreams. One 10million, one can live an upper-middle class America lifestyle anyplace in the world. That would indeed be great but it pretty close to "merely" moving to the next income bracket if one raised median income in the US.
- berntb 16y ago
  My attempted point was that my dreams are small. :-) I'd still write code, but with better weather that allows some othet hobbies -- and no stress. Maybe I would hire a few people and start a business. Not a big difference, really. To get real change in what I do, I'd need a bilion so I could emulate Musk. I doubt I'd be good at it.

eru 16y ago

Just take your million and move to the UK. That will give you health insurance, if nothing else.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]