The New York Times has a sad story, “In Silicon Valley, Millionaires Who Don’t Feel Rich.” It’s about how all these Silicon Valley executives, who are millionaires, don’t feel like millionaires because all the people around them are richer then they are.
These people are among the top 2% most wealthy people in the country and whats drives them is wanting more wealth.
If I ever got like this, I hope my friends would be grounded enough in reality that they’d beat me up or kick me in the head.
Some quotes from the article:
Silicon Valley is thick with those who might be called working-class millionaires — nose-to-the-grindstone people like Mr. Steger who, much to their surprise, are still working as hard as ever even as they find themselves among the fortunate few…
But many such accomplished and ambitious members of the digital elite still do not think of themselves as particularly fortunate, in part because they are surrounded by people with more wealth — often a lot more.
…those with a few million dollars often see their accumulated wealth as puny, a reflection of their modest status in the new Gilded Age, when hundreds of thousands of people have accumulated much vaster fortunes.
“Everyone around here looks at the people above them,” said Gary Kremen, the 43-year-old founder of Match.com, a popular online dating service. “It’s just like Wall Street, where there are all these financial guys worth $7 million wondering what’s so special about them when there are all these guys worth in the hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Isn’t it strange how we’re never satisfied with what we have?
I’m basically a poor working class boy from the north of England. My needs are modest but my life is rich. Sure, I’d like more, but I don’t need more.
To slightly mis-quote Buddha ‘Do not dwell on fruitless comparisons – find comfort in your own achievements’
I’ll bet people in the third world say the same thing about you and me.