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I propose a counter article:
Why billionaires should not exist: “Mansions, supercars, megayachts and tax avoidance are not that fulfilling”
Get rid of excess money ? Turns out being extremely rich isn’t that rewarding, especially once everyone knows.
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There are two things I cannot imagine.
1: Ever running out of interesting things to do, hobbies to try, books to read, people to meet, or places to visit.
2: Ever having enough money to be able to not work.
I’ve had the ”if you had infinite money" discussion with tons of people and am absolutely floored at the number of people that say they would get a job just to have something to do or to keep from getting bored. I’m like dude I have .003% of the time I want to do all the dumb shit I want to do. I could never in a million years imagine myself being like “yooo I am soooo bored having unlimited free time and money. I’m gonna go apply at the gas station”
I get the argument for getting a job, though. Here is my perspective: I would find something I could do part te, and that I felt was really useful. I have consideredany times working in a nursing home with elderly people - being able to help them and hopefully even bring them some joy would benefit me, because my personal sense of purpose is tied to collaborating and giving back to the community around me. Plus, it’s the type of job no one wants to do; if money weren’t an issue, and I didn’t have to put in 40+ hours a week, I would be happy to pick it up.
Exactly. I wouldn’t be working in some office job; I’d be volunteering my time to give back to the community, keep me active, and maybe make some friends. All part of keeping from becoming a weird hermit, which is my natural instinct.
I already own more books, movies, music, and video games than I will ever complete before I die, based on current trajectories. Now if I didn’t have to work…
This makes me sad… mostly because it describes me perfectly.
I know right! I’m working part time at my university and I really like my job, but I didn’t realize the best part until December came along and I had a whole month off. I’m sure it’d be even more appreciated by someone who was working full time or had kids at home.
OH MY FUCKING GOD I THOUGHT THIS WAS A SHITPOST THIS IS A REAL ARTICLE
The Economist is truly awful. Just deep throating capitalism in every article.
It’s kinda funny watching neoliberal zealots try to rationalise how their economic system eating itself is actually a good thing.
Well, kinda funny in a you’d-cry-if-you-didn’t-laugh way, since we’re all in it
My favorite was watching Chris Matthew’s lose his shit when Bernie won California. Literally cried on air and for some reason was also antisemetic?? Anywho would love to see more of the former from them.
All we can hope is that China will be a better superpower than the US was 🤷♂️ the collapse of the west seems inevitable.
What makes you think china won’t collapse along with them? Our economies are tied at the hip and they are sitting on a massive debt bomb with their real estate woes.
They already resolved the real estate issue, without any crisis. And you might not know cause this isn’t news in the US, but China has been massively offloading all its US debt and dollar reserves. They are preparing to decouple, the US has been threatening to do it for so long. But the fact is, the US and the West will suffer much more than China. They are pivoting to a service and tech economy, and will become the new US of a new “global south” pole.
The image that China is a “manufacturing” hub for the west is super outdated.
They already resolved the real estate issue, without any crisis
Nope. Most definitely not. Never heard of Evergrande have you?
Tankies gonna tankie.
This is bait
Tbf I wouldn’t really expect much from a newspaper going by “the economist”
Bartleby is satirical
Oh thank god
Is it? I found this page and nothing indicates it’s satirical at first glance (and no way I’m registering to read that).
“Thoughts on management and the world of work, in the spirit of the “scrivener” of Herman Melville’s 1853 novel” from https://www.economist.com/bartleby
Even there, though, nothing explicitly states it’s satire. I found the column’s introduction and even there it doesn’t seem ironic at all.
I got a taste of early “retirement” thanks to Covid. Being unemployed can be stressful, and having less money is also not great, but god it was amazing.
It hurt my finances a bunch, but it changed something in me for the better, and it changed my perspective on my career. Work is still important to support myself and my family, but it is not part of my identity and self worth.
Going months without my family, pets, and hobbies is simply not an option. But going months without work would be great to do again, if the money were not an issue. And I really like my new position and the company!
The more practical version of that is: fuck long hours, stress, and fighting for a promotion to managing or whatever. I’d get a bit more money but enjoy my life less.
I feel like I would probably spend much of my time contributing to existing open source code or try making games if I did not have to work for a living. I do like what I am doing but when it becomes the only thing I am doing, its not so great.
Have you tried alternating that with a run in the park
I don’t like running, I go to the gym once a week or so mostly for health benefits
I would never trust a publication that doesn’t use the Oxford comma.
One poll this year found that almost one in three Americans say they may never retire. The majority of the nevers said they could not afford to give up a full-time job, especially when inflation was eating into an already measly Social Security cheque. But suppose you are one of the lucky ones who can choose to step aside. Should you do it? …
But can anything truly replace the framework and buzz of being part of the action? You can have a packed diary devoid of deadlines, meetings and spreadsheets and flourish as a consumer of theatre matinees, art exhibitions and badminton lessons. Hobbies are all well and good for many. But for the extremely driven, they can feel pointless and even slightly embarrassing.
That is because there is depth in being useful. And excitement, even in significantly lower doses than are typical earlier in a career, can act as an anti-ageing serum. Whenever Mr Armani is told to retire and enjoy the fruits of his labour, he replies “absolutely not”. Instead he is clearly energised by being involved in the running of the business day to day, signing off on every design, document and figure.
Who exactly is this article being written for?
Clearly, it’s not written towards anyone working the average job. It presupposes that your job must be the most fulfilling and useful thing you could do.
It even calls out tech professionals as retiring early. But how many programmers can’t think of a more useful or fulfilling open source project to work on than what they do at their day job?
I know that headline must be incredibly infuriating for a public like lemmy, * but *, personally I have some conflicts about the whole retirement concept since it starts a chain of cognitive decline and isolation (this is a source but there are many more: https://bmcgeriatr.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12877-017-0556-7)
I’m not saying that people should be working forever, I just wonder if there could be some optional way for some elder people to contribute to society in a way that feels meaningful? Are there jobs where they could fit and have that feeling of fulfillment? Understand that I have met a fair amount of old people that felt useless and was just “waiting to die” in a depressive way. In some ways jobs can be a source of happiness if people isn’t being exploited. What I’m thinking about would be optional and with less hours involved
On the other hand, maybe what I’m describing is not necessarily a “job position for old people” per se, maybe if we as a society invested more in quality of life for the elder I believe we could make them happier. I feel terrible that we’re barely doing anything for the loneliness problem…
A cool project idea that popped up a few years ago in China was a home-to-home food delivery service. Basically, a grandmother whose grandchild lives in another city can cook her grandma-level food and the delivery guys would pick it up and bring it to students in the area. Probably embedded in an extractive economic model, but the core idea was quite nice.
In Japan I see many elderly guys work as traffic assistants, eg to help children get to school safely. Can be annoying at times and I don’t know how/if they get paid, but definitely gives them something to do and connects them to other people.
Lots of non profits are desperate for people. The elderly don’t have to camp on jobs that the young need for fear of having nothing to do.
I took one month off on unpaid leave. Not only did it confirm that I didn’t miss a thing from my bullshit software dev job, those were 4 busy and productive weeks, with many projects I had left on hold. Plus, I felt much better in terms of health. It allowed me to taper off an SSRI. And I lost weight too!
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Why did you taper off?
It might not be what they’re talking about, but SSRI is a type of antidepressant
I’m aware :)
Omg sorry, I misread your comment to say “what did you taper off.”
I had been trying to go off my antidepressants for a while, and tapering it off is the recommended way to do it. However, there are still side effects, and dealing with the side effects while having to stay on my normal work routine and stress was too much for me.
I think they woefully underestimate how fulfilling naps are
I envy you nap people, everyone in my family takes naps. I take a nap, wake up with a headache, then can’t properly go to sleep later. My body’s like ‘you slept for 20mins? Nah, you’re gonna need another cup of coffee now.’
Always prepare your naps in the following way.
- Have water and maybe something sweet nearby to help wake you up.
- Have a timer on so you do not sleep too long.
- Have a pillow or something allowing you to sit up a little bit afterwards.
Then just schedule some time after your timer goes off where you just ease into the pain of being sentient again. It is also possible to drink coffee before you nap, since the effects of caffeine will not kick in before after you wake up. Regarding the first point it is also really sweet (pun intended) to put say a small piece of chocolate on your tongue and just sit up and close your eyes.
Lastly, you just have to learn what works for you. Falling asleep is also not mandatory for resting well!
Software engineer here. There are so many projects that I’d love to contribute to, but can’t because my regular job gets me so mentally exhausted and I can only switch context so much. My job is fulfilling, don’t get me wrong, but there are so many other projects that are desperately in need of help but can’t get any because it’s not profitable.
I’m looking forward to the day that I switch to a more relaxing job so I can do some more side projects. I know exactly what my retirement is going to look like. Fuck the economists for telling us what’s important and what isn’t. They only think about one thing: money. And as long as it makes money, it has purpose in the world. They can’t possibly fathom that there are important things in the world that don’t fit into their one dimensional economic view of the world. Fuck them so hard!
i imagine there are a lot of people, if not most, who feel like you do… it seems like enormous untapped creative potential waiting to be harnessed by the internet…
When my Italian ancestor became a naturalized US citizen 5 years too late back in the late 1800s and now I can’t get an EU passport
solution: learn hungarian (that place is a shithole but it works to get eu citizenship)
Impossible fucking language though, isn’t it? One of my colleagues is natively Hungarian and even he says he doesn’t like speaking his language because of how hard it is.
I probably shouldn’t extrapolate from a single data point, but that’s all that I know about it
At least you’re aware you’re extrapolating from single data point. That’s more than most.
I’m fine! I can get citizenship elsewhere! My father was a naturalized American citizen! He came from… England. Fuck.
Thank god my great-great-great-father lived in bumfuck nowhere and never bothered naturalising. Living in Europe while it lasts really is nice…
pls ignore me crying in my cutoff by 5 years corner 💔
Bro I’m gonna retire next fucking year YEET THAT CAREER the whole idea of working to make someone else money is DUMB buh bye
uh oh, sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays
I believe you’d get you’d get your ass kicked for saying something like that, man.
Start your own business then…
Have you considered just being born rich?
Or, you know, enjoy retirement.
Maybe you want to work your ass off until you die. Not everyone does.
Why don’t you mind yours and let them enjoy their retirement rather than taking on unnecessary debt and awful hours to compete in a market designed to benefit megacorps over small businesses regardless of all the empty rhetoric from both parties?
Lordy, say one thing that doesn’t toe the line, and people get uppity real fast.
Maybe it’s less a line to be toed and more your utter tonedeafness. Also, “uppity” is perhaps not the best word choice since that’s usually used as a racist and/or classist dog whistle…
Aaaaangry people angry.
On a lighter note, how do you make your coffee?
And following up on that tangent, how do you like your coffee?
People not retiring is actually a huge problem for younger generations. Jobs get locked up on old retirees that should have left the workforce and it becomes a shortage of work for the young professionals trying to get into a full time position.
This is bad advice regardless of how you look at it.
Personally, I won’t be retiring. Not because of the shareholders, and not because I have some insane work ethic. Simply put, I can’t afford it, and the way things are going, it’s entirely possible I never will. Stagnant wages, out of control inflation, shrinkflation, and other inflation-type things… No ability to save any significant money, etc etc.
The only thing I have going for me is that me and my brother bought a house together, which should be paid off in full by the time I hit 65 or so. If that stays on track, then I won’t have rent/mortgage to pay, and the relief that will bring to my finances might be enough for me to retire on the meager income of my social assistance pension… With inflation the way it is though, I expect that pension will not be enough to pay for everything I need (property taxes, heat, power, etc for the house, plus groceries, car, etc for myself). So I’ll be working until they find me dead at my keyboard during lunch break.
My retirement is going to be 1 ounce of 00 buckshot, applied orally.
I’ve worked for the last 30 years. I’ll have to work for another 30. I just hope that my hands aren’t shaking too badly and my mind is still sharp enough to remember what to do when I’m at retirement.
I’m willing to take that risk.
