7 ms·

Star jugglers do not make a killing, unfortunately. A man with a not unreasonable claim to "best juggler in the world" gave it up and became a concrete contract

Star jugglers do not make a killing, unfortunately. A man with a not unreasonable claim to "best juggler in the world" gave it up and became a concrete contractor. Salaries at Cirque start at $50k.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
https://www.macfound.org/fellows/403/ https://www.macfound.org/fellows/403/
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Correct me if I'm wrong: I believe that's a one-time award of $500,000, not "millions."
  - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
    Actually you are incorrect. Moschen won the grant in 1990. Adjusting for inflation, that is just over a million dollars in 2019. Even despite this, your comment strongly indicates taking a rather pedantic position. If you are suggesting that the mere amount of the grant somehow counters the spirit of the discussion, I’d say that’s extremely incorrect and a strict adherence to some threshold like “millions” would be totally missing the point.
    - DoreenMichele 7y ago
      It's a one time grant that seems to be given sort of randomly, by which I mean I don't believe people apply for it. You just kind of get surprised one day to learn that these folks think you are spiffy. Good for him, but I really don't see that as a rebuttal to "wages are so low for this occupation that people really good at this choose to do other things as a job." It's a bit like saying "Well, just do what you love anyway! You could totes win the lottery as a way to keep a roof over your head!" Well, kudos to the lottery winners! But most folks would like a paycheck they can kind of count on that covers their needs reasonably adequately without hoping for a windfall out of the blue as the solution to their problems.
      - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
        The whole thread is specifically about lottery winners. This is an example of such a thing happening due to juggling skill. It refutes the idea there are no such examples that result from juggling skill.
        DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Only in the sense that Paul Graham talks about successful startups "doing everything right and winning the lottery." There is a certain amount of luck in anything, but being a statistical outlier for income isn't the same as "winning the lottery," which is basically random chance. And the reason it matters is because earned income encourages people to develop useful skills that the world desires (so as to presumably make the world a better place). Telling people they can actually make bank at X if they keep applying themselves is telling people "You don't have to be a pie-in-the-sky idealist to make the world a better place. You can do things the world actually values, be really good at them and get paid excellent money, so: win/win!" The Nobel Prize and even MacArthur grant are intended to reward people after the fact for making the world a better place. Part of the point is to empower them to keep doing what they believe in and not give up and go do something else for pay that would be less beneficial to the world at large. It may help encourage some folks to keep at the thing they believe in despite the low pay, but it's not a plan you can take to your accountant for how you will make your retirement work: "I'll just be amazingly good and then get a random windfall. It's Fine!" I'm a freelance writer. Like a lot of writers, I work for peanuts. I don't expect to be the next JK Rowling, but I can learn from her (she rewrote the first chapter of the first book like twenty times) and I've applied myself and gotten better. My pay has been gradually going up. Because of how publishing works, JK Rowling's financial success is somewhere between salary of a million annually and random grant out of the blue. Plenty of people think writers must be nuts because most writing pays so poorly. (I have been repeatedly told to "get a real job" if I don't like being poor.) But there's still a difference between that and your "win the lottery" framing for this discussion. It's really not the same thing.
        mlthoughts2018 7y ago
harry8 7y ago
Penn Jilette is the biggest star in juggling that I know of. He seems to make pretty good money in so far as one can infer these things.
- foota 7y ago
  I would say that he's more like an entertainer that can juggle.
  - setr 7y ago
    That's probably a better description for "star" x than being the best at x.
  - puranjay 7y ago
    Well to be honest, your juggling has to be entertaining if you want to make money off it
davidkuhta 7y ago
In fairness, I suspect it depends on what you're juggling. I could envision someone juggling management of an electric car company and a space exploration technologies company making bank.
- Judgmentality 7y ago
  I think it's far more likely this person would realize juggling so much is harder than he thought, and it all comes crashing down in the end (including his net worth).
  - hndamien 7y ago
    Not if they are a professional juggler.

Star jugglers do not make a killing, unfortunately. A man with a not unreasonable claim to "best juggler in the world" gave it up and became a concrete contractor. Salaries at Cirque start at $50k.

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

https://www.macfound.org/fellows/403/ https://www.macfound.org/fellows/403/

DoreenMichele 7y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong: I believe that's a one-time award of $500,000, not "millions."
- mlthoughts2018 7y ago
  Actually you are incorrect. Moschen won the grant in 1990. Adjusting for inflation, that is just over a million dollars in 2019. Even despite this, your comment strongly indicates taking a rather pedantic position. If you are suggesting that the mere amount of the grant somehow counters the spirit of the discussion, I’d say that’s extremely incorrect and a strict adherence to some threshold like “millions” would be totally missing the point.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    It's a one time grant that seems to be given sort of randomly, by which I mean I don't believe people apply for it. You just kind of get surprised one day to learn that these folks think you are spiffy. Good for him, but I really don't see that as a rebuttal to "wages are so low for this occupation that people really good at this choose to do other things as a job." It's a bit like saying "Well, just do what you love anyway! You could totes win the lottery as a way to keep a roof over your head!" Well, kudos to the lottery winners! But most folks would like a paycheck they can kind of count on that covers their needs reasonably adequately without hoping for a windfall out of the blue as the solution to their problems.
    - mlthoughts2018 7y ago
      The whole thread is specifically about lottery winners. This is an example of such a thing happening due to juggling skill. It refutes the idea there are no such examples that result from juggling skill.
      - DoreenMichele 7y ago
        Only in the sense that Paul Graham talks about successful startups "doing everything right and winning the lottery." There is a certain amount of luck in anything, but being a statistical outlier for income isn't the same as "winning the lottery," which is basically random chance. And the reason it matters is because earned income encourages people to develop useful skills that the world desires (so as to presumably make the world a better place). Telling people they can actually make bank at X if they keep applying themselves is telling people "You don't have to be a pie-in-the-sky idealist to make the world a better place. You can do things the world actually values, be really good at them and get paid excellent money, so: win/win!" The Nobel Prize and even MacArthur grant are intended to reward people after the fact for making the world a better place. Part of the point is to empower them to keep doing what they believe in and not give up and go do something else for pay that would be less beneficial to the world at large. It may help encourage some folks to keep at the thing they believe in despite the low pay, but it's not a plan you can take to your accountant for how you will make your retirement work: "I'll just be amazingly good and then get a random windfall. It's Fine!" I'm a freelance writer. Like a lot of writers, I work for peanuts. I don't expect to be the next JK Rowling, but I can learn from her (she rewrote the first chapter of the first book like twenty times) and I've applied myself and gotten better. My pay has been gradually going up. Because of how publishing works, JK Rowling's financial success is somewhere between salary of a million annually and random grant out of the blue. Plenty of people think writers must be nuts because most writing pays so poorly. (I have been repeatedly told to "get a real job" if I don't like being poor.) But there's still a difference between that and your "win the lottery" framing for this discussion. It's really not the same thing.
        mlthoughts2018 7y ago

harry8 7y ago

Penn Jilette is the biggest star in juggling that I know of. He seems to make pretty good money in so far as one can infer these things.

foota 7y ago
I would say that he's more like an entertainer that can juggle.
- setr 7y ago
  That's probably a better description for "star" x than being the best at x.
- puranjay 7y ago
  Well to be honest, your juggling has to be entertaining if you want to make money off it

davidkuhta 7y ago

In fairness, I suspect it depends on what you're juggling. I could envision someone juggling management of an electric car company and a space exploration technologies company making bank.

Judgmentality 7y ago
I think it's far more likely this person would realize juggling so much is harder than he thought, and it all comes crashing down in the end (including his net worth).
- hndamien 7y ago
  Not if they are a professional juggler.