Are you ~not interested~ in money?

Anybody who works as a freelance journalist can safely say they're not excessively interested in money. Or if they are then they're going the wrong way about it.

Disappointed that poll options aren't song titles TBH

C.R.E.A.M.
Money Is Not Our God
To Hell With Poverty!

Etc

Not sure which would measurably improve my happiness more, though. £97 million in a trust fund, or Thom Yorke in my... y'know.

WAIT WHO AM I KIDDING.

(I should ban myself from mine own thread. I'll stop that now.)

x-post to Sick

Would the £97 million allow you to put Thom Yorke in your... y'know... though? Is the question.

Actually my mum, who plays the lottery religiously, says "i'd never want that much money" whenever anyone actually wins any large amount, errrrrr, playing the lottery

maybe not thom yorke - he wouldn't even play concerts in china or hong kong because he doesn't support the chinese regime

If you play the lottery, I suppose you should plan for winning a very large sum. Although I wouldn't spend too much time "planning".

China is not, as far as I know, a reasonable comparison for MB's... y'know.

Well, he took £4 million to play Coachella so I wonder if he'd take £97 million to play in ~my~ Coachella...?

depends on your... 's human rights records

Put your £97 million down, flip it, and reverse it.

I'd pick up a Flag Post if I made the joke I'm dying to make right now. So you are all spared it. And also spared rhyming "vagina" with "China."

Let's move on. Swiftly.

Oh, I think I already did on another thread...

OMG at ~my~ Coachella

Best vaginal euphemism, will use

not worrying about money is a luxury i can't afford

Put your £97 million down, flip it, and reverse it.
― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy), Thursday, 19 April 2012 14:30 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ Elizabeth II Regina

I remember reading a story about diddy, diddy was dissatisfied, why, well it was because that despite all of diddy's wealth, on some mornings he would wake up and there would be crust on his lips, you know, the kind that sometimes forms, and no matter how much money he had he couldn't make that problem go away

has he not heard of creme de la mer?

diddy is like the gatsby of (...)

is that a .. coachella?

Alright, alright, enough with the coochella jokes.

Though perhaps we have established that although not everyone in interested in money, sex is a much more universal motivating factor, and sex jokes have a near universal interest. Sigh.

that's because money's no joke

Also, I took "I'm not that interested in money" to mean "money is not my primary motivation" and "money is not in itself inherently interesting" - lots of people seemed to interpret that statement in quite different ways.

this is how I took it to mean so I voted (a), but also because the majority of totally loaded people I know are fairly miserable/unhappy and it's abundantly clear to me that past a certain point money doesn't just NOT buy happiness, it actively contributes to your unhappiness.

i know some rather happy loaded people. maybe money is some multiplication function for happiness? or just irrelevant altogether?

Money is a magnification factor for damn near everything, both good and bad.

I continue to hold to the theory that once you get lifted out of poverty to the point where basic needs and creature comforts are no longer a concern (not having enough money to get these things met is a sure-fire cause of unhappiness) then there is a pretty much a disconnect between more money and happiness.

Happiness and unhappiness seem to be spread in the same proportions in the middle class and the super-rich. Which leads me to think it is something other than money itself which causes happiness.

Feeling like a broken record at this point, though.

^^ I agree entirely with Ms. Boom on this point.

Money does multiply power, but power doesn't make a person happy, only powerful. Power allows one to materially propagate one's values and ideas into the world, which covers both the power to do good and the power to spread misery and disfunction. The money is just the vehicle for these, not the determiner.

I think you're right, MB, but I don't think very many people in this day and age of income stagnation, under-employment, etc, can imagine being anywhere near the point where more money would begin to result in diminishing returns. It's a fantasy for most of us to even contemplate.

would still love a boat, though

Yes, Laurel, I do get that. That the huge disparities in income inequality and years of recession and austerity measures have pushed huge numbers of people under that line of "basic needs and creature comforts not getting met."

It's just (yeah, call me LOL hippie for this) I feel this kind of sadness at the idea, that people seem to respond by fantasising "I want unimaginable amounts of money/to join the super-rich" rather than fantasising about the hippie-socialist-paradise where money matters... less. I'm not going to tell other people what their fantasies should be, but it just seems to me "why do you want to jump in with that thing that is causing the exact problem you are suffering under?" but I'm hardly the first person to have noticed that one. The fantasies of the desperate, annoying over-privileged idealists since 1848.

But this is the argument that I've been having with my brother since I was 15 and he was 17.

I just get annoyed when people essentially accuse me of *lying* for having different priorities or ideals.

in the article about the spanx billionaire, she said that crazy wealth lets you be who you really are. so if you are really a happy person shackled by non-crazy-wealth, it's totally conceivable that crazy wealth can let you truly express your true happiness. maybe the real reason happiness drops off after a certain income level is that most people are truly in their heart of hearts just upper-middle-class.

No, that's bullshit. I'm sure that crazy wealth can let you express who you truly are. But if *who you truly are* is a mean, paranoid, grudge-holding asshole, then even crazy wealth isn't going to make you happy. Most people need circumstances and constraints to hold back ~who they truly are~ in order to be properly functioning members of a community or family or group of people.

Yes, that's cynical and not entirely serious, but still.

i'm just eating a box of prunes here and i'm thinking if i had a billion dollars my true nature would have me eating a burrito instead, SOCIETY BE DAMNED

(i ended up buying a meatball sandwich as befits my non-billionaire status)
i was thinking that the fast food analog of the thread question is if the small medium and supersize drinks were all the same price, which one do you get?

i'm only interested in money to pay my rent and student loans and feed myself.

I'd love to be rich, because I'd have a shit-ton of fun travelling with my friends and starting my own small record label and having an art gallery and stuff.

But since my predilection toward money is "I'd use it to have a ball," I'll never rich. Unless I hit the lottery.

I can see potential money traps, though - right now when I see real estate porn I think the $6mn places in NYC are generally pretty amazing, but once I hit the lotto would I suddenly need a $20mn place and would that feel inadequate compared to my neighbors in $40mn places?

^^^ reading my mind
xpost

well the trick is to buy your apartment and all the apartments around it, so you can't be jealous of your neighbors

Owning a minor league baseball team would be fun.

brewster's millions made it seem like a drag. typical hollywood un-romanticization?

voted 'i don't care about social stats'

Paraphrasing Citizen Kane because I can't be arsed to google the correct quote:

"Yes, sir. This newspaper is losing two million dollars a year. At that rate I'll be flat broke... in 130 years!"

This was when Charles Foster Kane was still young, foolish and bubbling over with exuberance. Later, of course, he gets his comeuppance.

After reading a Lucy Mangan op-ed piece which had me gnashing my teeth with frustration at its heteronormativity and also its assumption that all adult women are in ~relationships~ (let alone relationships with men) I suddenly had to wonder if this question was gendered.

Because perhaps "I wouldn't want that much money" takes on a different meaning if uttered by a man or a woman, on account of how women and men are socialised to *think* about money.

And I have read depressing studies about how, when the same job is advertised at a pay grade of £25k it will get twice as many female applicants at one advertised at £50k - whether because women lack the confidence to apply for presumably more senior roles with more responsibility, or because we fear that well paid a role will consume more time that we have, or if it's because women are socialised not to think of ourselves as worth too much, and fear that we'll be slapped down as ~unmarriagable ballbusters~ if we earn more money than our male counterparts, etc. etc etc.

I suddenly realised that it was just weird that I asked this question, given my bents and my interests, and never wondered if there was a gendered aspect to it.

imo the whole thing becomes a lot more nuanced in ways that the question doesn't really address when you have a spouse and kids and can literally watch on a day to day basis how being someone who is ~not interested~ in money can be pretty shitty for the people that you love and that not caring about money is its own kind of selfishness

this was how i interpreted "caveats" and it is horribly otm

but hey, money is still shit to me

A poll of how much people earn relative to their partners might be interesting. Same as, less than, more than, partner doesn't work but I do, I don't work but partner does, etc. So many permutations to consider though -cohabiting, mortgages, etc etc.

prolly mostly less than as we are all wasting all our days on ilx rather than doing actual work.

yeah but i'm still getting paid tbf

until they sack my gedrunken ass

There you go again with the "assuming everyone has partners" thing when "living alone" is the fastest rising group in most Western countries. (read that in several new sources recently - that Erik K-something's research.)

Not that living alone is automatically indicative of being un-partnered, but it's becoming increasingly true that partnered is no longer the default state for western adults.

so did I just vote "I completely agree" that I'm interested in money or "I completely agree" that I'm not interested in money?

who's bright idea was it to stick ~not~ in the thread title?

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

caveats win in a landlside

otoh, money-loving disagreement wins in a landslide

Prince told me in a dream that money can be used to buy heaven

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqgu3Z9N6t4

http://wfmu.org/365/2003/256.shtml