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Why Don't Rich People Just Stop Working?
- OminousWeapons 5y agoBecause being somewhat of a workaholic or craving power / money / achievement is how they got to be wealthy in the first place. This is roughly akin to asking "why don't strong and fit people stop going to the gym?"
- 0_____0 5y agoBut unlike going to the gym, acquiring a certain level of wealth gives you the means to continue to accumulate wealth. At the point that you're worth $10MM, you could live an upper middle class existence indefinitely with even a fairly pedestrian set of investments.
- boyadjian 5y agorichness is not only money, it's human relations, quality of life, all things that need some kind of work
- 0_____0 5y agoTrue but I don't think the article was referencing work that goes into maintaining social standing, rather direct professional work.
- OminousWeapons 5y agoSure, you could, but the point is that they have a worldview which prioritizes work and achievement which is why they keep pushing. The work / achievement / resource obtainment is the goal itself, not quality of life as others would define it.
- ericmcer 5y agoIf people stayed fit after getting in shape one time I think most would stop, your metaphor only works if we made some kind of capital gains scenario for fitness.
- bko 5y agoI disagree. I enjoy the act of exercising and the immediate effects following excercise. Most people that are very into fitness or exercise enjoy it as well.
- OminousWeapons 5y agoI think you're missing the point though. These are people who aren't optimizing for quality of life as most people define it (i.e. work as little as possible and reap maximal rewards and time with people you care about). Work / achievement / solving problems / obtaining resources becomes the goal itself. It is never enough because you can always have more / there is always something else to do / there is always another problem to solve / there is always another company to start etc. Its the same thing for people who are serious about the gym. You can deadlift 600 lbs? Cool, now its time to try to get to 650. If you hit 650 it is time to plan for 700.
- rcoveson 5y agoNo, I really don't think they would. The gym is a lot of people's "third place[0]". Not to mention that exercise in particular releases happy chemicals independent of whether or not it is making/keeping you fit. 0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place
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- AndrewKemendo 5y agoI'm a lifetime "fitness person" and I know for myself and quite a few others like me that being fit is a side effect of exercise not the primary goal.
- ericmcer 5y agoI can understand hiking, soccer, whatever fun types of exercise. But you would keep lifting weights and doing cardio workouts when you could no longer make gains and it had no impact on your health/mood? Getting/staying strong is a pretty huge part of working out for me.
- ThePadawan 5y ago> "why don't strong and fit people stop going to the gym?" You know, in the beforetimes, I went to the gym and asked myself that question a lot. (Just usually more in the context of grumbling "why didn't this incredibly buff dude unload all these plates from this machine")
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- tommymachine 5y agoIt's not about the money it's about the process.
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- lisper 5y agoBecause it's not working that sucks. It's having to work that sucks.
- mathattack 5y agoYou can have a lot more fun when you have FU money: at that point it’s about creation, competition or whatever floats your boat.
- MattGaiser 5y agoOr just even having to work for someone specific as jobs are hard to get.
- brightball 5y agoNicely summed up.
- afroisalreadyin 5y agoThis is actually a great point. I would guess that once the pressure is off, you can work more creatively and elaborately, taking the time to understand what is puzzling for you or above your level. Which in turn makes you more eager to work, and much more effective at it.
- bokohut 5y agoA great comment supporting another great comment and yes, your "guess" is correct.
- randomopining 5y agoThat's my goal. Get to 500k savings and then decompress for a bit and really figure out something to work on that seems worthwhile that i want to build my future identity around.
- dllthomas 5y agoMuch like cooking.
- 5y ago
- m3kw9 5y agoThere is actually more meaning to life than earning vast amounts money, and spending it. Once you’ve earned enough, your natural self will seek the next meaning to life
- endisneigh 5y agoA better observation to make would be if people who receive a sudden windfall of money stop working.
- spoonjim 5y agoThere are plenty of these in Silicon Valley. Engineers who got rich at FB or Stripe or whatever and don’t work anymore. However because it’s considered déclassé to be in the idle class, they invent some things to put on their LinkedIn like Angel Investor or Startup Advisor.
- ttyprintk 5y agoThat’s right: This article is about millionaires who were raised by upper-middle class people. Either their parents or caregivers were not part of the leisure class. Some who were raised with money actually had influential child care providers who were obviously not millionaires themselves.
- lake_vincent 5y agoThe answer is always classes, folks. Because once you become a millionaire for the first time, you leave the middle class and realize that you are actually quite poor amongst the millionaire class, so you have to keep working to climb through the ranks of millionaires. It's a recursive algorithm, you see.
- HWR_14 5y agoThat answer seems to fail when you look at 2/3 examples just from the masthead (Musk and Zuckerberg). It's possible you could look at your ability to buy literally anything on the planet and feel jealous someone else's infinity is higher than yours, but that seems unlikely.
- grogenaut 5y agoMusk isn't really limiting himself to buying things just on this planet.
- kiba 5y agoMaybe that is a motivation for some of them, but not all of them. It's certainly not a motivation for billionaires like Elon Musk, who seemed singularly driven by his life mission.
- pasquinelli 5y agothat's not actually what classes are. class is not just a braket of incomes, it is a role in economic production. if you get your money by trading your work for it, you're working class. if you get your money by virtue of what you own, you're capitalist. a bit of both is what middle class is.
- bittercynic 5y agoThis is my preferred understanding of class as well, but I've noticed that my conversations are more enjoyable if I don't try to insist others use the term the 'right' way.
- 5y ago
- reubenswartz 5y agoLeBron has plenty of money. Why is he still playing basketball? :)
- jkepler 5y agoMaybe he enjoys playing basketball.
- jayzalowitz 5y agoHe definitely shouldn't become an actor
- reubenswartz 5y agoHaha. I can’t even bring myself to check that assertion. :) But for people in any domain at the top of their game, what else is as fulfilling?
- daxfohl 5y agoUnless you are a member of the Detroit Lions....
- reubenswartz 5y ago"top of their game". ;-)
- busterarm 5y agoWe have a real societal disconnect and it's clear that we don't communicate enough with our elder generations. While some people are content to retire and stay home in bed, not having something meaningful to do every day makes quite a lot of people absolutely miserable.
- HWR_14 5y agoBut that's not the option open to the uber-rich. Look at Tom from MySpace. He took a ton of money and is on a permanent vacation. He certainly seems to have a more enjoyable life than Zuckerberg. Although I guess he cannot afford the biggest yachts in the world.
- lbriner 5y agoI guess it depends on your interests outside of work and if you have any. Some people work so hard, they have nothing outside of work that they fit-in with. Its a bit like people who retire and spend their retirement years watching TV. Imagine, instead, you enjoyed sports, blogging, travelling, exploring etc. you could easily do that if you were super rich and not bother with work again.
- xeromal 5y agoNot everyone is a Myspace Tom and more enjoyable is your take on Zuck's situation. I bet Zuckerberg either likes creating new things more, accumulating power, or just keeping his baby moving. I'm sure he enjoys what he's doing. Then you have pure engineers like Torvolds or Carmack that just like being in the trenches.
- jcelerier 5y ago> He certainly seems to have a more enjoyable life than Zuckerberg. heh, Tom's life (according to https://www.hellomagazine.com/travel/2020111645793/tom-myspace-founder-travel-photographer/ https://www.hellomagazine.com/travel/2020111645793/tom-myspa...) would have myself commit seppuku in three weeks. I can barely stand five days of "do nothing productive" vacations. Would definitely choose "testify in front of congress" instead.
- fridif 5y agoBecause nothing in life is guaranteed.
- krapp 5y agoNothing in life is more guaranteed than the wealth of the elite. Beyond a certain point, at least. Nothing short of the collapse of Western civilization and the almighty dollar could make Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos anything less than rich beyond the dreams of avarice.
- pasquinelli 5y agorich people get rich from other people's work. so if the rich "work" it's to pretend that that isn't the arrangement; to maintain the illusion that they work for their money rather that owning the surplus value created by their workers.
- kiba 5y agoSounds like a rather cynical and false take. There are probably many reasons for why rich people work.
- gruez 5y agoThis reads like rich people fan fiction. Is there any evidence backing this?
- pasquinelli 5y agobacking which part?
- gruez 5y ago>if the rich "work" it's to pretend that that isn't the arrangement; to maintain the illusion that they work for their money rather that owning the surplus value created by their workers.
- pasquinelli 5y agono, i don't actually have access to their psyches. no one does, so what are you asking for? and what are you asking me for? have you asked others in this thread for evidence why they say rich people are competitive, for instance? seems to me i made a clear statement about how rich people are rich that is pretty hard to argue with, and it made you feel a way. i have no evidence for that either, just a human being considering the motivations of another human being given a set of facts.
- 5y ago
- racl101 5y agoI find that rich people, like the millionaires and billionaires, are driven people and driven not necessarily only by money. Extreme financial success is but a side effect of whatever is driving them whether it be building a huge company or a revolutionizing and industry. And if getting rich is not the end game whether entirely or partially then the work is never done. They are still on a mission and there are more challenges and more worlds to conquer.
- lbriner 5y agoWe had a talk once from a man who had sold his company at around 23 years old for several million, a lot to a young man. He said he thought he would live the dream, travel the world, go and do whatever he wanted, waking up at 10am every day and having a cooked breakfast! Then he realised how boring and lonely it was. His friends were all at work while he was "free" and most people don't want to sit by themself at a bar in Tahiti, even if you can afford the drinks! He quickly went back to working/advising companies and found it much more engaging.
- brendoelfrendo 5y agoSounds to me like he left a lot of options on the table. There's a lot more out there than working in corporate or sitting alone at a bar in Tahiti. I'd love to be able to get creative and indulge hobbies as full-time work; it'd be nice to brew beer, or write a book, or take up woodworking, without having to worry about financing or making a profit from any of those activities.
- jinushaun 5y agoLots of down votes, but I totally agree. I have more hobbies than time. I would not be one of those people bored during retirement.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y agoRight? There's so many things I enjoy and would really like to spend more time doing and getting good at. As it is I am constantly having to force myself to abandon some in favor of others. My job just takes about 50hrs of every single week from me and fills it with meaningless drudgery to make someone else money.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- burkaman 5y agoWell they sort of do, in that they usually stop working for other people and stop working on anything they don't enjoy. If you're rich enough that you can design your own "job" and delegate anything you don't want to do, it's not really the same concept that most people associate with "work".
- ttyprintk 5y agoI think that’s an easy approach for the purposes of conversation. Work includes both innovation and toil. What is stopping you from hiring someone to take care of your toil?
- mam2 5y agoThey do. For a year and then after doing nothing or maybe a roubd trip around the world they want to redo somehhing. The feeling of succes is better than.. nothing. Plus they dont feel like they are forced too anyway
- cm2012 5y agoI'm the type people might think is ambitious, I own a business with a high valuation, I've worked hard for a long time, I'm very skilled in my field. But I only work hard for the reward. Once I cash out and have FU money, I am done working forever. Life is so short, I just want to focus on family, health and pleasure. I understand that most other ambitious people aren't like that but personally I don't get it.
- ghaff 5y agoI doubt you're atypical. Based on the smattering of people I know who were able and wanted to retire in, say, their forties to some point on the FIRE spectrum, they pretty much were retired. Oh, they might do the occasional advising or angel investing, might teach a class somewhere on the side, but were mostly retired. (That said, I also know even not so young "retirees" who pop up here there and everywhere doing various consulting and so forth.
- tommymachine 5y agoWait until you've been sitting on your butt not doing any work for a few months and see if you aren't bored as hell.
- TuringNYC 5y agoSome people enjoy work. Some people want impact, not money. They may be driven by their worldview and being able to further it. Some people worry about getting stale if they dont do anything. Free time can get boring, one values free time more when they have less of it.
- yamazakiwi 5y agoAnd some people pretend to do all those things so that they can hopefully one day do nothing at all.
- brightball 5y agoAnother suggestion not mentioned in the article...maybe the fact that they can afford to use their own free time for anything they want leads them to doing exactly that? Bill Gates leaving Microsoft to focus on the foundation? - AKA, he wants to focus on making the world a better place Elon used all that Paypal money and started SpaceX and Tesla? - Also, wants to focus on making the world a better place If I were Zuckerberg, personally I wouldn't trust all of the power that Facebook has in somebody else's hands...ever. The kids still have to go to school. Even if you took a year off to say, travel the world or something along those lines...you're going to get bored eventually. Either you'll pick up a hobby (Jimmy Carter and his furniture building) or you will focus on working on something that you care about. The difference is that you're doing it because you want to, not because you have to. At that point...it's not really work anymore.
- nly 5y agoThey do. The three faces in the picture at the top of the article are famous billionaire outliers. Plenty of modestly wealthy people (say net worth of >$5M) lead lives of complete leisure.
- Berobero 5y agoThis article is a jumble of broad strokes of conjecture with effectively zero empirical substance that vaguely alludes the just nature of the "meritocracy"; I have a hard time not interpreting it as a puff piece for the status quo.
- ghaff 5y agoYes. There are likely a ton of people you've never heard of who received a fairly modest inheritance, won the startup lottery, or was just successful at the right Big Tech, finance, or law firm who decided to ride off into the sunset in their 40s. I know some of them. Some are quite well off. Others are just willing to live modestly, perhaps off some sort of early retirement pension.
- smeeth 5y agoIt will never cease to amaze me how much people project their own feelings about work and life onto others. Just because ~you~ hate ~your~ work and can't see value in it beyond [money, status, narcissism, power, etc] doesn't mean that's how everyone else values work and the other parts of life. Sheesh.
- bluetomcat 5y agoBecause they've had it too good for too long and then it's rather hard to imagine what life would be after moving to the middle of nowhere, to have to cook yourself, to drive a boring car, to cut social connections with interesting and influential people and stay encapsulated in your family instead, etc.
- duxup 5y agoI remember when I visited the CEO's office at my first "real" job. I was sitting with my boss waiting for the CEO to show up to his massive (quiet) office with comfortable furnature, secretary who was busy organizing his personal and professional life (she asked us about gifts for his grand kids since we "knew computers"), drinks and food at the ready nearby... I said something like "Man I would find work pretty dang nice if I was up here". My boss said something like "Yeah but these guys work all the time." I couldn't help but think... yeah it would still be pretty easy to work all the time in this environment. That's not to say they're not stressed or etc, but if you have the option to work comfortably ... I can see why you might continue to work if your conditions are good. Meanwhile I go back to my cube with constant noise, folks looking over my shoulder, planning business my trip in regular people class (not 1st) and so on. These folks aren't "just working" they didn't take up a job at McDonald's... they choose to work in a different world too I suspect.
- ghaff 5y agoI don't know how large the company was, but at a big company, the CEO is probably not actually in that nice office all that much. They're on planes, in airports, scheduled in meetings from breakfast through dinner, on late night calls, etc. I'm not saying they have a "bad" like and they're well-paid for it but it's not particularly relaxing or flexible.
- randycupertino 5y agoSo what gift did you recommend for the grandchildren?
- duxup 5y agoCEO asked us about it too. We discussed the pros and cons of laptops vs desktops and etc (this was when laptops were still a big tradeoff vs a desktop in power and etc). IIRC we recommended a nice desktop for the kids that could be upgraded / changed they were inclined but also plenty useful if they chose not to. Also told him to get a nicer monitor than they were thinking.
- eplanit 5y agoI had a very wealthy 73 year-old client once -- one of the most interesting of all. He had built up a collection of businesses around the world, and at 73 was (and is still) flying around the world to make deals. He is like a savant in that if he is awake, then he's busy working. It was very common to send him an e-mail at 10 or 11pm, to which he would immediately reply, and then wake up the next morning at 7am to find he'd already sent a new e-mail a few minutes earlier. I noticed that nothing stressed him -- he would push people and get angry and annoyed, but it was all externalized and not internalized. He's worth billions, but never does _anything_ that normal people would consider fun. For him, the work is his fun. I have great respect for the work and the success, but it's hollow in context of it all.
- katzgrau 5y agoSome reasons: * Because it's something to do. Being retired is boring. * Because whatever they're doing is providing some meaning (even if it's just getting richer and building on their ego) * To stay relevant/up to date * Their spouse is still working, and why not? * Because they have friends who retired and degraded health wise (it seems to happen in older age) and they don't want that
- swiftcoder 5y agoIf you actually want to stop working when you have enough, you'll quickly discover that society doesn't count "enough" as "rich". Signed, someone semi-retired from tech
- nly 5y agoI agree with you, it's all in the framing. According to Expatistan[0] a typical family of four in the US need $55K/yr just to cover living expenses. At a SWR of 3% (Reasonable if you're young and looking to ride out a lot of market variance before you shuffle off rock) that means you need ~$1.8M fully invested just to live a typical middle class existence. If you say you have $2M in the bank some might say you're 'rich'. If you say you earn $55K/year most people certainly won't. The best case scenario of course, is to have both. [0] https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/united-states https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/united-sta...
- thescriptkiddie 5y agoThey largely do, it's just that we don't hear about it. The ones we do hear about enjoy the celebrity.
- GDC7 5y agoBecause when JFK died the world stood still for a hot minute and then everybody resumed their activities as if nothing had happened Same with MLK, Diana Spencer, Michael Jackson, John Lennon etc. Even if you are #1 of 8.000.000.000 you are still only 1/8.000.000.000 Bezos and Branson didn't need to go up in their own rocketship, but they did so to occupy the airwaves. Same reason why Musk tweets like a maniac These people are like the person who climbs the Everest "because it's there", but instead of mt. Everest they see the total amount of daily waking hours that the 8 billion people on the planet spend doing their own activities and then seek to monopolize that time forcing people to genuflect and idolize them and their products. In the past those who had this sort of social standing were forced to live in the moment. Roman emperors woke up greatful that they were not assassinated during the night, and went to bed equally greatful that they managed to stay alive. Today you have people with 100B dollars and 40 years of life ahead of them! Humans were never made to live in this way. We are in uncharted territory. I don't know if we would ever be able to analyze brains in real time or postmortem but we probably won't like what we'll find in there.
- rsynnott 5y agoWhile I'm not rich, I have a strong need to be doing something productive most of the time. I can't imagine that changing if I won the lottery.
- rektide 5y agothey're probably in positions of power & get to order people around. why give up power? and being rich their risk of failure is immaterial. if expectations ever exceed their desire they could stop, so they can negotiate & put in as much or little real effort as they please. amsuingly from a serendipity perrspective, our made-it founder-ceo raised this question out of no where in his opener talk, pretty recently at a mid year all hands. i dont really remember the response he offered? i like it, seems like probably about 60% covers what he said.
- boyadjian 5y agoWhy would you "stop working", when you have a wonderful job ? Rich people almost always have interesting jobs, so no reason to stop
- jdc0589 5y agothis was a good read, its definitely a weird societal position. Most people's spending catches up, or at least increases, with their wealth. Completely ignoring the whole keeping up with peers aspect (who are also wealthy now) and even power/wealth craving, most people aren't content just realistically living within the perpetual means provided to them by their accumulated wealth. Additionally, a lot of people that think they'd be content not working and living a simpler life, actually aren't when they give it a try. I'm extremely biased, but I always end up citing hobbies as the problem and solution in this kind of situation. Ask a friend what they'd do if they didn't have to "work" any more. Most of them are going to tell you that they have no clue and haven't thought about it, or tell you about something that isn't actually feasible to be your primary activity without a steady traditional income stream. I'm mostly talking about people that barely qualify for this discussion in the 1-5m wealth range. As mentioned in the article, this is generally plenty to satisfy general FIRE requirements, and even tradition retirement requirements. But most people in that wealth range would also have to change their lifestyle to safely make retirement happen, and that's a tough sell when most people get their dopamine fix and sense of enjoyment/relaxation from expensive vacations, fancy dinners, new cars, new gadgets, stuff directly tied to spending money with no return.
- kangnkodos 5y ago"Many people with a large amount of money, perhaps a million or two, consider themselves middle class when clearly they could even retire and live off their passive income" If you have a million dollars, stop working, invest the money, you can safely draw about 35K per year for a long time. This is based on long term historic returns of the stock market. There are different definitions of middle class in the US. The first one I found, Pew 2019, said the range was 46k - 137K. So living off the passive income of a million dollars puts you well below middle class.
- Cycl0ps 5y agoA quick search shows average returns across the market sit around 8-11%. If we say 5% to be conservative, 1M returns $50'000 each year. That's not bad. That's a house in a quiet neighborhood with no worries about food, or debt. You're not living without a budget, but you could live without working.
- kangnkodos 5y agoIn the last ten years or so, returns have been extremely high. If you look back at all the data available, you get a number closer to 3.5% or maybe at the most 4%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_study https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_study
- docflabby 5y agoWhat else would they do instead? I think most people with unlimited financial backing would pursue what truely interests and excites them, might be projects, more money, parties, power. Money buys the freedom to do that. Theres plenty of stories of people inheriting money and just spending it all on partying and hedonism. And others where they just study in education their whole life.
- tppiotrowski 5y agoHaving a seat at THE table: wealth allows you to influence the direction of the world. Be a thought leader. Zero sum game: every day that I don't work, others are getting head. Either everyone has to quit or we all need to keep going.
- coding123 5y agoAlso, apparently if you stop working you die a lot earlier.
- sparrish 5y agoOne of the only thing people with power and money fear is losing their power and money, which drives them to accumulate more.
- racking7 5y agoI think a lot of the comments here are missing the point, and the author doesn't help by putting Zuck/Musk/Gaga at the top. It seems to me the author's point is: Why do people who reach a certain level of wealth keep grinding away at jobs they may not like? For the sake of argument, lets exclude those who shift and work on what they care about. I think he's talking about those who do not necessarily love what they do. This group would be millionaires, and using his numbers are the top 0.005% globally (40M/7B). His answer is that they continue to strive for money because they look towards the next class above them and to provide for their children. I agree with the author in that people are seeking higher and higher status, and I agree with a peer comment that people get used to luxury. But I would add that that this striving for climbing the class ladder is both endemic in the culture of the US as well as accessible. In many other places in the world there are stricter controls on upward class mobility. I'd posit that people continue on in this because they don't really create a philosophy of life or pay that much attention to how to live until they are much older. It's easy to just keep doing the same thing, especially if it provides a luxurious life. It is a subjective value statement on what to do when you reach that point that is clearly different for everyone.
- Abrownn 5y agoThis article is stolen from another blog. OP is a serial content thief who rehosts other peoples content on Vocal.Media for ad revenue. They're now targetting HN with their spam and they were busted the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509445 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28509445 and again last night: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538985 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28538985 Edit: and now this one too, pew pew! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28540643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28540643 Edit 2: to clarify, this article was stolen from here: https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life-culture/why-dont-rich-people-just-stop-working https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life-culture/why-dont-rich-...
- akvadrako 5y agoThis is a good reason to always read the comments before clicking on an article.
- Abrownn 5y agoFunny, I came from Reddit where I chased this guy out from and they suffer the exact opposite problem. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbz49j/new-study-finds-that-most-redditors-dont-actually-read-the-articles-they-vote-on https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/vbz49j/new-study-...
- dang 5y agoAll: please email hn@ycombinator.com if you see abuse like this. Protecting the quality of the site is our #1 priority and we can't address problems we don't know about! Fortunately I randomly ran across this post and have done the needful.
- Abrownn 5y agoThank you for the note! I'm not a regular user here and don't know how the moderation/administration of posts works here, so the email is greatly appreciated.
- sys_64738 5y agoI'd rather be bored out of my mind than have to work. Lucky for rich folk they can do what they want whereas most of us need to work to live.