At the extreme- Few people are personally envious of Jeff Bezos having a nicer house/car/boat/vacation. But the way some people in my small middle class hometown react to someone who lives in the same town/hood, kids going to same school driving a $40k car when they drive a $25k car is kind of comically deranged.
In the grand scheme of things past a certain income level as a lump sum cost, they are not a large expense compared to housing. Nor is their monthly cost if financed particularly expensive next to the ongoing forever cost of insuring, fueling/charging, maintaining and garaging them. Nor is driving around in a relatively decent & recent model vs trying to keep an old model in working order with all the maintenance costs.
If you make 6 figures / live in a HCOL area, then the difference in a $25k or $40k or $50k car over the course of a 10 year life is kind of whatever. The insurance, maintenance and gas/charge over that 10 years probably adds up to $30k at a bare minimum. Your house probably cost $1M.
Even if you trade-in every 4~5 years at the end of the warranty period to minimize random maintenance costs, then maybe you eat like $3-4k/year of depreciation during ownership.. again not a huge number to have a reliable, safe, modern car at all times.
The real outsized car costs are incurred with car nerds who max out on having more cars than drivers, and/or "upgrading" every year, constantly eating max depreciation.
“People like you more when you are working towards something, not when you have it.” - Drake
Net worth goes from $0 to $1 million: Ecstasy. Net worth goes from $10 million to $1 million: Despondency. Can we agree that all wealth is relative?
A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.
The last one is the biggest mindfuck to me because I can relate to it so much. Every single online MMO I play I'm happy making tiny amounts of money and watching the balance go up. I don't care much for upgrading to bigger and better things or end-game content. I played this game called Tibia pretty seriously for a period of time and then got bored and was going to stop. There were a few months where the only thing I would do is log in, do about 6 daily quests I enjoyed doing that were dead easy, collect my 1000gp or however much it was and walk around town for a bit debating if I want to level up before quitting.
I think that's more because when going down on income (regardless of the starting amount and difference), that usually comes with having to resign from some luxuries on that way. While earning more means experiencing luxuries you couldn't afford before.
Like, moving from public transport to nice car vs the other way around. Or living in cramped apartment vs nice house.
> A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.
I would not say a lot; I think there might be some self-selection when people focus on making money that might just become their hobby and so have higher motivation to earn more and more vs focusing on other areas in life.
The few well-off people I know don't exactly feel like ones making money for money sake
> The last one is the biggest mindfuck to me because I can relate to it so much. Every single online MMO I play I'm happy making tiny amounts of money and watching the balance go up. I don't care much for upgrading to bigger and better things or end-game content. I played this game called Tibia pretty seriously for a period of time and then got bored and was going to stop. There were a few months where the only thing I would do is log in, do about 6 daily quests I enjoyed doing that were dead easy, collect my 1000gp or however much it was and walk around town for a bit debating if I want to level up before quitting.
I am complete opposite. When I was seriously raiding in WoW (we were usually somewhere in top 5 guilds on our server) I still did just enough to have money for any gear/consumables I needed.
Same in other areas, I need to have some end goal, else I don't have all that much motivation for work or getting better pay. Else I'd just burn money on random crap (I got better with that over the years)
> A lot of people like making money more than they enjoy having money. The change, not the accumulated amount, is the thrill.
Dunno, to me it looks more like people just want to have enough to not need to work 40 hours/week anymore. "Thrill" is probably about billionaires like Musk, not people getting towards a million in saving.
Haven't heard anybody mention Tibia since I was in grade school. Grade 8, probably.
> Loss aversion in behavioral economics refers to a phenomenon where a real or potential loss is perceived by individuals as psychologically or emotionally more severe than an equivalent gain.
For the frugal family members offended by he spending flex, they may be happy to see this instead.
Still though, $200 for (half) of dinner, on a card giving 5% Cashback is $4,000, and that doesn't have to be spent in one month.
It's generous, but not cash in your face.
Everything is a luxury. Everything is a waste of money. Nobody should have fun or enjoy something.
Sorry life didn't work out for you, but I didn't work hard to stare at walls and be bitter.
I do find in my circles though that the loudest voices are also the ones who scoffed at my switch to an EV, but fly on vacations 3x/year, so some of it is clearly fashion & posturing.
And some of it is counterintuitive as we see Germany shut down nuclear plants for "green" reasons, only to have to spin back up some coal.
I've read that Poland is having issues where the grid will only support so much, so they need to disable or dial back the renewable energy sources because it's impossible to turn down or off a coal firing plant.
So you end up with multi-year backlogs just to get grid connected with new clean energy generation.
As I understand it, a typical strategy for a power company is:
- nuclear or similar for the base load that's always required
- solar and wind as available
- weather forecasting to determine how much solar and wind will be available
- demand forecasting to determine how much power will be required at any given time
- natural gas to meet predicted solar and wind shortfalls
- RICE engines and battery storage to handle unexpected fluctuations
- contracts to buy and sell power with other nearby power companies
I think we are there. We don't need new breakthroughs we need more manufacturing capacity.
LFPs are both cheap and work great for a grid storage and now CATL is announcing new sodium batteries which are pretty ideal for grid storage (cheap and long life).
I'm guessing sweet spot would be something like "big, economically efficient battery per street of houses + solar on every house", but as it would be shared it needs investment and power company have very little incentive for it
Nowhere did I say humans are a foreign entity. I said our existence does harm to ecosystems all over the globe. That is a fact. We also, uniquely, have the ability to choose* whether or not we do that harm, which oxygenating bacteria did not. So here I am, advising someone to do less harm because doing harm causes them pain, and you're saying... what? That choosing to counteract the harm we've done is foolish and illogical? That makes no sense.
For example, whenever we go to visit them we get a hotel or rent a car. Perfectly normal right? Well to some of my in-laws that's "Throwing money around and in our faces" Even though the alternative is sleeping on the floor in their home and begging them for rides.
And, I get it. They can't afford to grab a hotel and car like we can so it does look like a crazy luxury.
I'll grab tabs and pay for things, I don't really care. I never have. But I was somewhat surprised to find people just generally upset when I do things for myself.