the marginal utility of money

[BiscayneSunrise]

Re: the marginal utility of money

I'm not sure why blaze is getting so much push back on this idea of 1M being more meaningful than 10M. It's econ 101. Diminishing returns.

1M and the income that helped get you there places one in about, what?, the 95 percentile of the US population. It gets you everything you need and almost everything you reasonably want. That additional 9M just gets you the trophy house, the big yacht and the Net Jet membership.

The thing is that the first million is the hardest. By then you have things figured out (the education, the professional contacts, the investing insight, etc) so getting the next incremental million really doesn't require that much extra effort.

Additionally, people that get to that 1 M level usually love what they do or are so driven that they can't/won't quit regardless of their net worth.

[blazespinnaker]

Re: the marginal utility of money

Please provide some economic proof that this is possible.

Your standard of living will improve from advances in Alt Energy and Robotics produced at Universities or University grads. We need to funnel as much of society's money towards these universities.

Student loans is one way of doing that.

[c1ue]

Re: the marginal utility of money

Your standard of living will improve from advances in Alt Energy and Robotics produced at Universities or University grads. We need to funnel as much of society's money towards these universities.

Student loans is one way of doing that.

You should be in politics. This simplistic thinking is much of how we are in our present state.

Student loans by themselves don't encourage innovation.

How much innovation - outside of FIRE re-engineering - comes out of Business Administration schools?

As for much of society's money - it is already headed that way. The cost of a top 20 school by and large runs to more than $100K for a 4 year undergraduate program.

The idea that the 2000 undergraduates that feed eventually into the 10 PhDs that actually research, by paying $100K each undergraduate, is exactly a pyramid scheme by which the 'name' universities benefit from.

It is affordability that permits the large undergraduate classes.

Loans aren't affordability.

[DSpencer]

Re: the marginal utility of money

I think the people at colleges deserve to be paid lots of money. Teachers are among the most important people in any society and learning is one of the great achievements anyone can do.

Government plays a critical role in solving our problems, of course that solution might be they have to first fire 90% of all government employees and re-structure our taxation system radically to tax carbon and consumption, but regardless, they are the solution.

Government is not the enemy. But while government is always the solution a big part of that is to understand that government is also about standing back and letting people experiment as well. That is a great challenge .. when to parent and when to let go.

I suppose this is the age old disagreement that will never be solved on an internet message board...

Government is the cause of many, if not most, of our problems. Government is the solution to few, if any, of our problems.

The government is not supposed to be our collective parent. That's what actual parents are for.

You're entitled to your own opinion and obviously yours differs from mine. The frustrating thing for people in my position is that you believe that you're entitled to your opinion and also entitled to control my life, business and bank account to have your opinion put into action at the expense of mine.

As for the compensation of teachers...Both my mom and sister are public school teachers and I place a high value on education. I still think it's ridiculous to demand that all teachers be paid 100k+ for providing this "priceless" service.

Do you realize how many people already want to be teachers for 50k or less? Am I the only person who went to school in the US and had at least a couple of mediocre or worse teachers? Also, just because the service is valuable does not mean the cost should be huge. I need food to live so should all farmers be millionaires?

I guess these concepts of supply, demand and prices are meaningless if central planning by you and the benevolent government can cure all of our problems.

I don't mean to be too antagonistic and I do agree with your original post for the most part. The reality is that even a "poor" person in the US today has luxuries (TV, medicine, A/C, etc) that even a king didn't have 1000 years ago. The reason is not government though, it is technology.