Reply to I have a problem with the definition of Rich

Forum Index » Political Discussion

Reply to "I have a problem with the definition of Rich"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I'm a writer and a few years ago did a whole series on how much $ it takes for people to *feel* wealthy, regardless of the numbers.

What I found, unsurprisingly: basically, most people don't feel wealthy, no matter how much $ they have. That's largely because people generally evaluate themselves against people who have more than they do, rather than people who have less. Also, people are very aware of what they don't have and tend not to be so conscious of what they do have.

People who do feel wealthy tended, I found, to be people who made a conscious decision to have an unusual relationship with money. People who'd suffered difficult circumstances at some point in their lives, and then later chose to make radical changes in their lives. There seemed to be a relationship between the act of choosing a particular life and the feeling of having enough.

Here's a recent study showing that people think they would feel wealthy if they had twice as much as they now have: http://www.cnbc.com/id/48240956/What_Does_It_Take_to_Feel_Wealthy

So: no sense beating up on people who say they don't feel wealthy, even when they make objectively high amounts of money. It's human.

It's also not very helpful, policy-wise, since the subjective sense of not having enough tends never to go away. Hard to get people who already feel strapped to think they are among the wealthy and can afford to pay more in taxes or take less in benefits. (Not very helpful in the policy sense if you have a liberal agenda, that is. If you are an anti-tax person then this natural human feeling is very helpful, policy-wise.)[/quote]

Based on that link, we should not talk about "wealthy" at all.  It is apparent that "wealthy" means "how much the guy ahead of me has".[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics