Pursuing your passion

This is how I feel reading Oppenheimer's biography. He came from an affluent family and apparently never had to worry about paying the bills, being free to fully dedicate himself to the things that interested him. The guy was a genius, no doubt about that... I just feel that we would have a lot more geniuses out there if we didn't have to work so much in order to enjoy so little.
- There are definitely people out there capable of major contributions to human culture and knowledge toiling in a sweat shop or picking fruit.
- “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”
  Stephen Jay Gould
  
  That's some Girl Next Door shit. He just want to get Samnang to the US so he can cure cancer
- Well Einstein had to work in a patent office.

I’m not jealous of rich people’s possessions or lifestyle. I’m worried about the power they wield over other people’s lives. Their power to affect the laws that get passed, their power to close down stores and factories and lay off all the workers, their power to kick people out of their homes.

The closer I get to my retirement the more I realize how much of my life has been wasted at my job. It's sad really.
- I hear you there. Time is all we really have and it's an extremely limited quantity.

I'm envious of the rich because they'll never know the struggle of having to choose between gas in the car to get to work, or paying your bills so the heat stays on.
It's the security that I want. If I could quit my job tomorrow and all my bills would be convered and all my debts (and their related payments) suspended, and I was given enough to put food on the table.... Then I'd be a lot happier. I'd know that I'll never have to submit to some dickhead boss trying to push me around so I can be underpaid and go home late to my cold house because I don't make enough to keep it warm.
The future is stupid.
- That was most of the past, too
  It was really only like 30-40 years when things were good economically for the average person. Every couple hundred years we get little blips like that for certain geographic areas.
  
  It's not so bad in Europe. Getting worse, but we have strong unions, so it takes longer.
- I went from homeless to 6 figures and security is exactly what drove me so hard. It's such a relief to just keep my bills and mortgage on autopay and never even think about it. I still feel like an imposter when I go to the grocery store and don't have to keep track of how much every item costs to ensure I have enough to cover it.
  I'm not rich by most definitions but getting to a point of real stability makes life so much easier. Granted I still worry all the time that I'll be fired and I have backup plans upon backup plans in case shit hits the fan.

I mean fair but I’m also definitely jealous of the things they have
- Like what, Baldur's Gate III? I can buy that myself.

I'm not jealous of anyone, good on you. What I do have a problem with is when the rich refuse to pay their fair share of taxes. Not only do they don't want to pay a fair share, while using our society, they use that money they saved cheesing the system to subvert politicans and our system to pay even less and squeeze people even more.
All that said I also think billionaires shouldn't be a a thing. Past 1000 million dollars you should be taxed at 99%.
- Not just that but I don't think massive amounts of wealth concentrated into a small number of hands is good for a democracy.
- While I agree with your message on taxation, I don't think any billionaires actually earn a billion dollars that could be taxed like that.
  Our media fawns over their wealth which is assets, their business value and the like, not actual income that could be taxed. I definitely agree with a wealth tax though, but I don't know if that operates in the same way as a progressive income tax works, as in "after x amount you owe y% and then z% after another total dollar amount."
  
  Wealth tax. No one needs more money. You've won capitalism. Now you can compete in a high score of who gives back most to society, and pretend it's actually you that is doing the good deed.
- What does that fix though? Government is a little more funded, so what? If thieves were rampant, the solution isn’t taxing the thieves.
  Billionaires leech off of the working class and we should just tax them? No, we need to address the underlying mechanisms that allow them to do that. If someone actually did $1 billion worth of labor, they deserve the billion, and probably a prize for being the first
  
  It would not fix our problems, but it may help discredit the austerity narrative promulgated by the ruling class, and also erode some of its power to repress more meaningful change.

Image Transcription:
X/Twitter post by user lauren🌙 @lanaskittens reading: I'm not jealous of rich people bc of the things they have, I'm jealous of rich people because they get to pursue their passions in life without having to work a gruelling 40+ hours a week job literally just to get by
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Some well off people work way more than 40 hours per week to be wealthy. Not all of them are living the dream (so to speak) - they also can be stuck.
What the super rich people get is time. They have people to take care of all the crap the rest of us deal with - shopping, fixing the car, booking holidays, cooking, cleaning…
Yeah… I’d rather be wealthy than not.

They spawned in GodMode

what if their passion is working and it's more than 40 hours
- is workaholism a passion or an addiction, a way to distract yourself from having to experience the painful realities of looking at yourself in the mirror with vulnerability and honesty?
- This is it. Although the selfmade millionaires are few and not many they are complete workaholics. The ones who inherited wealth are the ones screwing around and spending their money.
  
  At a certain point these individuals aren't really contributing much. They're keeping themselves busy with unnecessary meetings, networking activities, etc.
  If upper management takes a month off work at a steady company, not a lot of things slow down.
  In Dutch there's this joke: "netwerken is net werken." Roughly translates to "networking is almost like work."
  
  Nobody's "selfmade". That's a myth perpetuated by Forbes, WSJ and the like to decrease resentment towards the people whose boots they lick for a living.
  In reality, no matter how hard you work, you need the help of others to be successful and to be downright RICH, you need a whole lot of luck too.

I don't have to work 40h a week to get by...
I work a lot more, but for my own leisure...
I live in France.

I feel that

"If you aren't rich (right now), its because your parents did not worked enough."

Where do the people who worked 40+ hours a week jobs and worked up to being rich go?
- They're not the people the post is talking about. It's the trust fund babies who just get everything for free, are given super well paying jobs because of their parents, and just never have to struggle.
  Not their fault, just sucks to be on the other end of it
- You know that's only 10 people right?
  
  I understand the sentiment, but depending on what you consider "rich" that, IMO, is very, very wrong.

Rich people works too. Source: know rich people.
- I guess it depends. A doctor can be considered rich and certainly works long hours, whereas a trust fund kid can just travel the world on mommy and daddy's dime.
  
  Elon is rich right? That man is a workaholic. He sleeps in spaceX headquarter and Tesla factory. I think the problem with people nowadays, they are too dumb to differentiate.
- they're just like us!
  
  And one day I will be rich like them! Then people like me better watch their step…
- Quote mining.

Meanwhile me in Europe both working lightly for decent money (ironically for the US company), pursuing my hobbies and chilling out reading American antiworkers complaining about literally everything related to work. I suspect most of the complaints are from NEETs or similar individuals that worked 0 to 3 days of their life which makes it even funnier to me.
- Just curious, how many hours does the average European person work in a week? I see a lot of talk about vacation days but I've never seen someone mention how long the workweeks are.
  For comparison, the average work week in the US is 40 hours.
  
  40 hours work week and 26 paid vacation days in my country. Everything above 40h is paid 150 or 200% depending on circumstances but it's usually not obligatory to work like that as employers both don't want to pay more and they don't want to screw with people due to lack of workforce willing to do that shit.
- It's so nice that you well-off Europeans let Americans live rent free in your heads
  
  Hard to not think about that when you read Americans whining everywhere.

Lots of rich people are workaholics with a high tolerance for risk.
- A lot of risks are nullified by being rich
- I would bet most workaholics are not rich, and neither are most risk takers.

It seems so easy for them, if you ignore all the work it took for them to get rich in the first place.
- Hard work doesn’t make rich people, exploitation does.
  
  Exploitation and a shitload of luck. Mostly exploitation, though.
- Yeah, all the hard work Elon did to reach the egg cell before the other sperm cells in order to be born as the son of an Emerald Mine owner was truly remarkable.
  
  Oh and what about when Elon got investment funds to help create Paypal because he had the money to gamble and afford to fail or not fail! I loved that part of the hard work. And the part where he controlled the media to believe he was a genius with an engineering degree despite not having one. Those are my favorites.
  
  Everyone is Elon, good job.

I enjoy working because I’m not lazy. Hard work pays off and makes me feel complete.
- Hard work definitely pays off but not necessarily for the person working
- If humans weren't lazy (get more with less) we'd still be smashing sticks and stones. Laziness and creativity are inherent to the human development. If the only focus was working hard and it'd pay off the poor fella cleaning the Dhaka sewage would be a billionaire. Surprising that on the face of so much evidence to the contrary the gospel of work hard and get salvation is still a thing.
- Sorry mate but I just don't believe you. You're either being dishonest or coming from a narrow perspective. Maybe you just find fulfillment in the mere idea of being productive but most people likely don't share that outlook. Working hard at [insert local supermarket chain or big box store] just isn't fulfilling unless it's somehow directly related to one's passion.
- Twitter is that way sir
- If hard work actually paid off, every donkey would be a millionaire.
- A lot of hard work also doesn't pay off and rather just destroys body's and minds.
- I enjoy working
  Bull shit. No one enjoys being exploited. You’re essentially a slave unless you own your own business.
  
  Real slaves would strongly disagree.
  
  You're a slave if you mindlessly watch YouTube etc. etc. cause it grows their business. Working for a company, you are paid to live your life on the side, and you can invest this to build your dream life. Working hard for companies warrants you a promotion, increasing this money. I can start a business.