- Is it possible to be too rich?

Some wealth really is sickening - not only in how they waste it, but just in how they covet it. When you hear about the super-rich, that make millions of £'s a week (or sometimes even a day in the case of the big resource magnates), you really wonder why they want to squander all that wealth. It makes you sick with envy! Some people really struggle to get by with very modest means. As a debt-encumbered postgraduate I'm really envious of all these high-flying billionaires that make millions a week! My next 5 years seem to be 5 years of debt-payoff misery, for an amount of money that some of these people will make in the course of washing their hands! And of course there is absolutely no relationship between the amount of labour/effort they put in and the amount of money they are rewarded. The giant resource magnates become super-rich off the hard labour of miners, oil-rig men, etc. all the while doing nothing of any productive worth.
 
InKursion said:
And of course there is absolutely no relationship between the amount of labour/effort they put in and the amount of money they are rewarded. The giant resource magnates become super-rich off the hard labour of miners, oil-rig men, etc. all the while doing nothing of any productive worth.
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However some people invent things that are so brilliant that they can live of the invention wealthy having fun all the time. This scenario is very amazing.

Makes me happy to see people enjoy good life filled with good champaign.
 
If I came into billions I would still drive a Ford Mondeo Estate and still wear a £10 Casio watch.
One thing is true, there would be some OCUK posters who would get some very nice gifts because of the fun and all the help I've had here.
 
Dimple said:
If I came into billions I would still drive a Ford Mondeo Estate and still wear a £10 Casio watch.
One thing is true, there would be some OCUK posters who would get some very nice gifts because of the fun and all the help I've had here.
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Collecting supercars wouldn't interest me, but I wouldn't drive a Mondeo ;)

Depending on the limits of my wealth, I'd want to do something significant with it. For example, if money was literally no object, I'd pump loads in R&D and develop my own vehicles. They'd be as well engineered as humanly possible, with an eye on pushing efficiency as high as possible, maybe looking into alternative fuels, etc.

In other words, if you really have vast wealth, why not use it to shake things up a little. Make something really awesome.

If my wealth was more along the lines of "lottery winner", I'd be looking at splitting it with the family, having a nice house and one nice car, and investing in some local businesses/ good causes.
 
InKursion said:
Some wealth really is sickening - not only in how they waste it, but just in how they covet it. When you hear about the super-rich, that make millions of £'s a week (or sometimes even a day in the case of the big resource magnates), you really wonder why they want to squander all that wealth. It makes you sick with envy! Some people really struggle to get by with very modest means. As a debt-encumbered postgraduate I'm really envious of all these high-flying billionaires that make millions a week! My next 5 years seem to be 5 years of debt-payoff misery, for an amount of money that some of these people will make in the course of washing their hands! And of course there is absolutely no relationship between the amount of labour/effort they put in and the amount of money they are rewarded. The giant resource magnates become super-rich off the hard labour of miners, oil-rig men, etc. all the while doing nothing of any productive worth.
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You sound very jealous and are also massively generalizing.

many millionaires and especially billionaires give away vast mount of their wealth to charities or have at least have promised to give large parts of their estate away, e.g. Bill Gates.


You must also be a fool to think that most people that have made millions are lazy and work shy. The very reason people become so rich is by a combination of hard work, intelligence, planning, recognition of market opportunities, and a little luck thrown in. Nothing explicitly stops any child born in the UK to become the next big CEO or Branson. Free early education, incredibly cheap university education. The IT industry created a lot of super rich from people like Gates or Jobs who had exceedingly modest family backgrounds.


You seem bitter because you are an underpaid post-grad. I agree that post grad pay is terrible, especially in the UK - hence I did my PhD in Switzerland so could get a salary competitive with UK industry. I then made the choice to work in industry in part due to financial differences, post-docs in the US are lucky to get $50K, I get about twice that with a lot less stress and still get to work on fascinating problems and attend conferences...

The only people I have ever know to get seriously high pay check (anything > 100,00GBP) have all been well educated, most of them with a PhD, most of them working in high-tech, all of them have been incredibly intelligent and workaholics, working 70 hour weeks.
 
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InKursion said:
Some wealth really is sickening - not only in how they waste it, but just in how they covet it. When you hear about the super-rich, that make millions of £'s a week (or sometimes even a day in the case of the big resource magnates), you really wonder why they want to squander all that wealth. It makes you sick with envy! Some people really struggle to get by with very modest means. As a debt-encumbered postgraduate I'm really envious of all these high-flying billionaires that make millions a week! My next 5 years seem to be 5 years of debt-payoff misery, for an amount of money that some of these people will make in the course of washing their hands! And of course there is absolutely no relationship between the amount of labour/effort they put in and the amount of money they are rewarded. The giant resource magnates become super-rich off the hard labour of miners, oil-rig men, etc. all the while doing nothing of any productive worth.
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According to HSBC "Two thirds of the world's billionaires made their fortune from scratch".

Maybe they worked exceptionally hard and sacrificed a lot to get to the point of being a billionaire? Just because they have a lot of money does that mean they can't enjoy the fruits of their labour?
 
EdGey said:
The things just don't break.
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The straps do, and you can nornally buy a repalement strap but sooner or later the strap joints crumble, then you get left wiht a handy pocket watch for a few years until the battery dies - back to Argus to get another 5-8 years of cheap tie telling!:D
 
I've always maintained the thought that if I won multi millions on the lottery or came into a substantial large amount of money, I don't think I would ever stop working. I think I would cut down the working hours and maybe just go part time or something along the lines of that.

Even after winning or coming into all that money, paying all debts, buying a new big house, new car, long holiday/seeing the world and all of the other luxuries and benefits that money brings - say when I have settled down after a few weeks, end up being at home. Yes with the money I would be able to fund new hobbies and interests but even after doing all of that for a length of time I could picture myself just being at home and slowly getting bored and thinking of what to do next.

Now while back to reality, I would still be working full time. I've always enjoyed and thrived in my line of work, so even if I had all that money - I wouldn't give it up. I would also probably fund myself to take up more training and even go to university and maybe start a business and watch it grow.

I just couldn't picture myself not going to work ever again for the rest of my life. So during the week I would still work to an extent and then party like an animal during the weekends (by that I mean 4 day weekends) :p:p

Liam
 
D.P. said:
The straps do, and you can nornally buy a repalement strap but sooner or later the strap joints crumble, then you get left wiht a handy pocket watch for a few years until the battery dies - back to Argus to get another 5-8 years of cheap tie telling!:D
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This Argus some sort of Scottish watch retailer? Also I don't need to buy something to look at a tie, I use my eyes. ;) :p :D
 
D.P. said:
The straps do, and you can nornally buy a repalement strap but sooner or later the strap joints crumble, then you get left wiht a handy pocket watch for a few years until the battery dies - back to Argus to get another 5-8 years of cheap tie telling!:D
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True but it costs about £1 every 3 years to replace the strap.
 
alx said:
According to HSBC "Two thirds of the world's billionaires made their fortune from scratch".

Maybe they worked exceptionally hard and sacrificed a lot to get to the point of being a billionaire? Just because they have a lot of money does that mean they can't enjoy the fruits of their labour?
Click to expand...

Sorry I think I didn't make my attitude clear...

What I mean is that once you start making mega-millions, i.e. once you reach the top-tier of a luxury lifestyle, these mega-rich people tend to just have the money continuously rolling in after that. I'm not saying they got rich for nothing - of course not - but what I am saying is of course I am jealous of the fact that mega-rich people make millions of $'s a week for doing effectively nothing! Little facts that float around the internet, like Bill Gates making so many thousands of $'s a minute that it's not worth his time to bend over and pick up a $100 note, etc.etc. (we've all heard them) -- that is just insane to me. I'm not saying these people are lazy or unintelligent or do not deserve their success. Of course not. What I'm saying is that the mega-rich's wealth tends to snowball so they accrue more wealth than they even know what to do with. Compare that to the tonnes of earnest, hard-working individuals that have just as much intelligence and just as much of a work ethic but will never find themselves in such a fortunate position (and a lot of life's outcome is fortune, let's face it...) and it does seem a little unfair. Granted, not 'unfair' in the sense that 'they got something for nothing!', but unfair in that their wealth just seems to grow and grow whereas life for ordinary people never really takes off like that.

Also I do tend to think that we in Western societies - America especially, but also post-Thatcherite Britain - tend to valorize the super-rich a little too much. Some of the above posts in response to me have a kind of veneration for people that have managed to become successful CEO's, as if they are demi-Gods. Most of the time they were just shrewd/intelligent, or other times they could have been opportunistic and even exploitative. But that's just an aside... I don't doubt many super-rich and successful people deserve to be at the top of their career ladder. My point was more that, according to principles of labour, these people that earn millions now for sitting around comfortably doing nothing are literally just reaping the profits of their workers for not doing much (even if they did set-up the company). Think of Australia's richest woman, who owns the giant mining/ore company. She makes millions of dollars a week - what does she actually do for that money? Is it really that much more important and demanding than the miners stuck down in the shafts for 8 hours a day? Because she gets paid about 1,000,000x more than them.
 
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