<story><title>“People simply empty out”</title><url>http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>homosaur</author><text>100K is the point where you have the illusion of financial freedom because you can purchase a BMW, buy a nice home in a bland cul-de-sac with a bunch of nameless white dudes, and it&amp;#x27;s not until you&amp;#x27;re in your 40s and you&amp;#x27;re in danger to losing the job to a robot or a whipper-snapper that you understand that kind of &amp;quot;freedom&amp;quot; is actually enslavement. You made the wrong choice because you wasted your life buying plastic.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t make 100K but I did recently have what you might call a religious epiphany about my job, my finances, and freedom. Luckily for me, I have little debt and actually like my job a lot so I&amp;#x27;m not the hole some folks are, God bless them all.&lt;p&gt;I just hope most of us aren&amp;#x27;t Bukowski&amp;#x27;s age when we realize we were building useless bullshit for useless people in order to buy useless plastic garbage. I know some of us are doing important work, but many of us are not.&lt;p&gt;Jeez, guys, we get one chance at this. Most people are destined to live anonymous lives so at the very least try to enjoy it.</text></item><item><author>orofino</author><text>I always kind of shake my head at this. On a board with many people making 100k+ per year, who are the &amp;quot;societal overlords&amp;quot; you&amp;#x27;re referencing. Sure there are people that make much more than that, but anything beyond 80k allows a person to save quite a bit and &amp;quot;quit&amp;quot; the rat race earlier if they like.</text></item><item><author>VexXtreme</author><text>&amp;gt; Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the &amp;quot;Golden Years&amp;quot;. If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you&amp;#x27;re age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won&amp;#x27;t be a waste; you cash it in all at the end!&lt;p&gt;And this exact kind of thinking is what the societal overlords want you to subscribe to. Give them the best years of your life to get a degree of freedom later in your life, when the freedom won&amp;#x27;t matter anymore anyway, cause you&amp;#x27;ll be pissing in your diapers and be limited to a very small subset of things a healthy young person can do.&lt;p&gt;I see it this way: when you&amp;#x27;re retired and old, the overall potential of what you can do with your life is much lower than that of when you were in your 20s and 30s. Why is that? Because an old person with the same amount of time and money can do much less with those resources than a young person.&lt;p&gt;When you live your life like a run off the mill robot, living your life according to a set of societal expectations and rules set by other people, what&amp;#x27;s the point of such a life anyway?&lt;p&gt;PS. OP, I wasn&amp;#x27;t addressing you, in case you feel I&amp;#x27;ve attacked your point, I am just furthering it :)</text></item><item><author>_delirium</author><text>Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the &amp;quot;Golden Years&amp;quot;. If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you&amp;#x27;re age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won&amp;#x27;t be a waste; you cash it in all at the end!&lt;p&gt;A Scandinavian psychologist somewhat recently proposed a typically Scandinavian reversal of this: he suggested people should work to age 80, but work proportionally less in all the years up to there. Basically redirect the pension system to subsidize more early-age vacation and less pension.&lt;p&gt;edit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cphpost.dk/business/researcher-advocates-25-hour-working-week-%E2%80%93-until-age-80&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;cphpost.dk&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;researcher-advocates-25-hour-work...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>blackhole</author><text>I feel like too many people get sucked into the idea of furthering their career, to the point that they forget to further their own life.&lt;p&gt;What is the point of existence if we never get around to experiencing it?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed, it is the things we do not.&amp;quot; - Randy Pausch&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kokotko</author><text>I think more and more Gen Y people in advanced European countries see owning a car as a failure - you are a fool for wasting money, when transportation can be done cheaply and also often for free. You are basically penalized for owning a car by high taxes, and for those few occassions in a year when you need a car (moving stuff) it&amp;#x27;s easy enough to rent. Spending your life in traffic jams is just a plain fail.&lt;p&gt;Having to wear a nice suit is also a failure. I would never consider working anywhere where I have to wear a suit.&lt;p&gt;Edit: My overarching point being that attitudes are changing. The &amp;#x27;American dream&amp;#x27; doesn&amp;#x27;t really apply anymore, and especially not everywhere.</text></comment>
<story><title>“People simply empty out”</title><url>http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/10/people-simply-empty-out.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>homosaur</author><text>100K is the point where you have the illusion of financial freedom because you can purchase a BMW, buy a nice home in a bland cul-de-sac with a bunch of nameless white dudes, and it&amp;#x27;s not until you&amp;#x27;re in your 40s and you&amp;#x27;re in danger to losing the job to a robot or a whipper-snapper that you understand that kind of &amp;quot;freedom&amp;quot; is actually enslavement. You made the wrong choice because you wasted your life buying plastic.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t make 100K but I did recently have what you might call a religious epiphany about my job, my finances, and freedom. Luckily for me, I have little debt and actually like my job a lot so I&amp;#x27;m not the hole some folks are, God bless them all.&lt;p&gt;I just hope most of us aren&amp;#x27;t Bukowski&amp;#x27;s age when we realize we were building useless bullshit for useless people in order to buy useless plastic garbage. I know some of us are doing important work, but many of us are not.&lt;p&gt;Jeez, guys, we get one chance at this. Most people are destined to live anonymous lives so at the very least try to enjoy it.</text></item><item><author>orofino</author><text>I always kind of shake my head at this. On a board with many people making 100k+ per year, who are the &amp;quot;societal overlords&amp;quot; you&amp;#x27;re referencing. Sure there are people that make much more than that, but anything beyond 80k allows a person to save quite a bit and &amp;quot;quit&amp;quot; the rat race earlier if they like.</text></item><item><author>VexXtreme</author><text>&amp;gt; Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the &amp;quot;Golden Years&amp;quot;. If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you&amp;#x27;re age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won&amp;#x27;t be a waste; you cash it in all at the end!&lt;p&gt;And this exact kind of thinking is what the societal overlords want you to subscribe to. Give them the best years of your life to get a degree of freedom later in your life, when the freedom won&amp;#x27;t matter anymore anyway, cause you&amp;#x27;ll be pissing in your diapers and be limited to a very small subset of things a healthy young person can do.&lt;p&gt;I see it this way: when you&amp;#x27;re retired and old, the overall potential of what you can do with your life is much lower than that of when you were in your 20s and 30s. Why is that? Because an old person with the same amount of time and money can do much less with those resources than a young person.&lt;p&gt;When you live your life like a run off the mill robot, living your life according to a set of societal expectations and rules set by other people, what&amp;#x27;s the point of such a life anyway?&lt;p&gt;PS. OP, I wasn&amp;#x27;t addressing you, in case you feel I&amp;#x27;ve attacked your point, I am just furthering it :)</text></item><item><author>_delirium</author><text>Hence the somewhat curious (and I think, very American) idea of the &amp;quot;Golden Years&amp;quot;. If you put your head down and work hard, taking no vacations, until you&amp;#x27;re age 65, then you flip 180 degrees in the other direction and retire into a life of full-time leisure. So if you live long enough, it really won&amp;#x27;t be a waste; you cash it in all at the end!&lt;p&gt;A Scandinavian psychologist somewhat recently proposed a typically Scandinavian reversal of this: he suggested people should work to age 80, but work proportionally less in all the years up to there. Basically redirect the pension system to subsidize more early-age vacation and less pension.&lt;p&gt;edit: &lt;a href=&quot;http://cphpost.dk/business/researcher-advocates-25-hour-working-week-%E2%80%93-until-age-80&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;cphpost.dk&amp;#x2F;business&amp;#x2F;researcher-advocates-25-hour-work...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>blackhole</author><text>I feel like too many people get sucked into the idea of furthering their career, to the point that they forget to further their own life.&lt;p&gt;What is the point of existence if we never get around to experiencing it?&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;It&amp;#x27;s not the things we do in life that we regret on our death bed, it is the things we do not.&amp;quot; - Randy Pausch&lt;/i&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>orofino</author><text>Here&amp;#x27;s the problem though - you don&amp;#x27;t need to buy the BMW or the suburban McMansion. Save that money instead and when you&amp;#x27;re in your 40 you can tell the boss that he should give you job to a whipper-snapper, you&amp;#x27;re headed to Thailand.&lt;p&gt;No one holds a gun to the consumer&amp;#x27;s head, they just convince themselves they need thing. Then they whine when they haven&amp;#x27;t saved more than 300k for retirement at age 50 and social security is looking rocky.</text></comment>