6 ms·

True story, as an american, most people I grew up with are not working corporate jobs. Of my cousins, probably 60% are willfully unemployed and refuse to work f

• binarymax 4y ago
  "They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products." ...Is this not working?
  • TotoHorner 4y ago
    Also, day trading isn’t some way to make you money. It’s a great way to lose money while you think you’re working though.
  • ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
    Its barely working. Maybe 5-15 hours a week. The income is actually surprising though, can range 5k-15k a month
    • EliRivers 4y ago
      Can't deny that while I work full-time, I certainly produce the vast majority of the value I produce in a fraction of that time. 5-15 hours seems about right; if anything, closer to 5 than 15.
    • muro 4y ago
      Sounds pretty smart, if they can get so much money for only so little time.
    • PopAlongKid 4y ago
      >The income is actually surprising though, can range 5k-15k a month Is that gross, or after paying income and Social Security & Medicare tax, like wage earners do?
    • euix 4y ago
      I am really curious what gigs at 5-15 hours a week is paying out 5k-15k a month. I can think of some potential lucrative consulting?
      • dghughes 4y ago
        Nigerian Prince?
      • ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
        Day trading, a big one is advertising agencies. Basically call every doctors office etc and offer to run FB ads for them for 1k-2k a month pay + ad costs. Then find a few other clients and just relax.
        • solumunus 4y ago
          Day traders work way longer hours than that, the clue is in the name. I think your friends are you just BS'ing you about where their income comes from. The amount of "day traders" who are just wealthy gambling addicts who in reality lose money long term is too damn high.
        • scottLobster 4y ago
          This is your regularly scheduled PSA that day trading is essentially a high-effort casino and <1% of day traders make money reliably. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhHOmZVAqBE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhHOmZVAqBE
      • YetAnotherNick 4y ago
        But people who could make 250$ per hour don't want to work lol. Scalability of work on output is definitely not linear. If I had to work 10 hours a week on anything I want I would definitely perform much better in 4 weeks than a person working 40 hours a week for someone else can perform.
        • acover 4y ago
          There's also the reverse in team size. 2 people @ 20 hours a week < 1 person @ 40 hours a week. Obviously depends on the task.
    • p0nce 4y ago
      So they are actually creating maybe more added value that way. Working as intended.
    • bodge5000 4y ago
      The idea of making half that with those kind of hours seems insane to me. I know these people exist, but have no idea how. If anyone has any specific examples of what they're doing, I'd greatly appreciate it
    • triceratops 4y ago
      If I could consistently make $5k/month working 5h/week I'd quit my job in a heartbeat.
      • deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    • lazyant 4y ago
      and this is a bad thing? sounds like micro-entrepreneurs to me
    • rqtwteye 4y ago
      If they make 5k-15k with that amount of work and freedom I’d say they are the smart ones and people working the 40h+ corporate job are the suckers.
      • edgyquant 4y ago
        I made decent money swing trading stocks with python for a while. I became a better programmer, but it was soulless and lonely so I went for a job at a startup where I get the same freedom plus get to be with people who are more/less experienced. There is more to a job than just money. The lonely financial gig is not for everyone
  • BurningFrog 4y ago
    It is working, but I think the distinction is you don't have a boss you're working for.
  • baandam 4y ago
• loandbehold 4y ago
  I know people like that. Typically they make passive income from their assets (stocks and real estate). But they don't want to admit it, so they make up fake jobs like "day trading and selling online products".
  • jerf 4y ago
    Keep an eye out on these people. Lots of things were possible in a 0% interest rate environment that aren't now. This could be brilliant people working an incredible job they don't need to work full time on, or they may be the individual version of a corporation surviving only because the interest rate environment is 0%. They don't even have to be directly taking out loans to do it themselves, only taking advantage of economic conditions created by cheap money. "Stocks" haven't been a great source of passive income this year, and "real estate" is showing signs of having just passed its peak. These easy jobs may not survive these things contracting. Of course, if they're walking off with cash rather than debt, they may still be among the winners of the whole 0% interest regime.
    • trinsic2 4y ago
      I haven't worked for the corporate world since 2004. When I got back from a trip to Europe I realized I was working myself into the ground and decided to take the hit and start my own business. Now I set my own hours. I think that the time off from work during the pandemic is making others reconsider working for someone else. I laughed out loud when I read some corporate slave droning on about people don't want to work. Stop treating people like cogs in a wheel and create something that society values thats ethical. And maybe, just maybe, you will retain people who actually care about what you do.
      • fallingknife 4y ago
        Well, it worked out for you, but starting your own business is usually exactly the wrong move for someone who doesn't want to work themself into the ground.
        • 4y ago
• adamsmith143 4y ago
  Duck syndrome. You aren't there when they can't pay their rent because they didn't sell enough widgets on Amazon that month.
• chasd00 4y ago
  i know people who do this. But, ironically, they work way harder than i do at my corporate job and my job is pretty demanding. Also, they don't have any kind of health isn nor retirement plan or anything else except cash to pay bills and whatever is left over.
  • ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
    Yeah this is accurate of their situations. Very little savings, no retirement. But I will say, alot of them are early 30s now and have fulfilling lives and good relationships/friendships. They have developed themselves along avenues that are hard to do when working full time. Really makes me wonder
• francisofascii 4y ago
  > and have had no trouble dating That's the part I find most fascinating. I just can't fathom how that will work out down the road.
  • Der_Einzige 4y ago
    Given what I've seen based on how subreddits like r/purplepilldebate talk about desirability of a random Google researcher making 300K a year, the average FAANG engineer should take their current total comp and divide it by 5 to understand how they will be treated by women. Women in the dating market know "the odds are good" (that he is a good provider) and that the "goods are odd" (this guy interacted with 5% of the women that his peers did in university) The phenomenon of the lonely cringy dating posts on blind will only get worse.
  • symlinkk 4y ago
    It will work out just fine, the only thing that matters when you date is your physical appearance and social skills. Money has no bearing at all, you know how many women broke dudes in bands pull?
• TeeMassive 4y ago
  Then the Covid abusive and indiscriminate restrictions happened. The freelancers and small businesses owners and workers were forced to shut down and isolate while the managerial class could remote work on their laptops near the pool side or in their chalet. Who was the most targeted and impacted? Who benefited the most? Who enacted, supported and profited from the measures? Really makes you think.
• mschuster91 4y ago
  > Of my cousins, probably 60% are willfully unemployed and refuse to work for anyone. They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products. Anything to not have to work. They don't have to work conventionally, with a micro-managing boss from hell, with a rigid 9-to-5 ass in seat mentality, no way of ever getting that wage raise carrot their upper management holds in front of them for years, dystopian corporate bullshit (anything from spyware on the computer to waiting days for a simple IT ticket to be resolved) and most importantly: large parts of the profit they generate never ever ending up in their own pockets. Instead, they work on their own risk, have a way better ratio of "amount of money per profit generated" and have a way better quality of life.
• varispeed 4y ago
  The huge disincentive to work is the amount of tax you have to pay. In my country, if you are successful, you can easily get to a point to pay over 50% tax on what you make, which effectively means you work most of the year for the tax man and not yourself. It may sound selfish, but if you look at the poor quality of public services and if you need to see a doctor you still have to go private, because NHS is crap, you'll feel miserable. People simply don't want to be cheated by the state, so they rather choose odd cash in hand jobs.
  • aSanchezStern 4y ago
    > which effectively means you work most of the year for the tax man and not yourself That would be true, if we lived in a world where your gross salary corresponded linearly to the amount of work you did. In that world, the hardest-working CEO would make 3x (maybe in some extreme cases 5x) what the laziest server made. But instead we live in a world where the "successful" make 100x-1000x, because that money isn't coming from their effort, it's coming from a combination of government subsidies (you may not be using the NHS, but the poor people who make your job possible certaintly are) and extreme power imbalances in market conditions that allow them to pay the people on the ground creating the value very little.
    • varispeed 4y ago
      Not sure how your point makes any sense. Worker is contracted to work 9 to 5. Regardless if they WFH and put their feet up for the entire year doing nothing, or they work their bottom off, the majority of time they are required to commit is paid to the tax man.
• JohnFen 4y ago
  > They make money through odd jobs, day trading, selling online products. That sounds like working to me.