Be gifty instead of wanty

5402-ites,

To clarify my point about work ethic, I don't think that what you're doing, Julia, is in principle anti-work. You're not leaving your job because you'd rather not work, period, but because you want a better job than the one you have, and a desire for advancement/improvement is not incompatible with a strong work ethic. I think it's this kind of attitude that is explicitly anti-work--that it's better to do nothing/live off other people indefinitely than to settle for work that you think insults your dignity. (Also I think that dude in the article who was living off his home equity is like, "Damn." right now.) In some ways, I guess it's only a short distance from trying to improve your employment situation and acting out of a misplaced sense of entitlement, but I think there has to be a significant difference between the two, or else everyone who ever asked for a raise or promotion was just being a self-important twit and there would be no innovation or entrepreneurs. Possibly the difference is as simple as the fact that, when you were looking for your first job after college, you took that temp job at Labyrinth so that you would not be doing nothing.

Even the idea of living off savings because you have them is kind of questionable. On the one hand, I agree with Becky that having parents who can help you out is a good thing that you shouldn't be ashamed of. Certainly from the perspective of the parents themselves, who have worked and saved for the explicit purpose of cushioning their children's lives, this is a privilege they've earned. But that still doesn't mean it's ok not to work in some capacity. Wouldn't that mean that the super-rich and their children should just, ahem, spend their lives throwing parties featuring fire-jugglers in Greenwich Village apartments that were purchased for them by their parents? I think there's probably something to condemnations of the socialite lifestyle as meaningless and dissolute, and apparently, the super-rich sometimes agree that working is its own good, separate from the financial remuneration. Now, what qualifies as "work" is probably subject to debate, since it's kind of hard to sympathize with the trust fund child who watches Netflix all day while claiming to be an "aspiring filmmaker," but I'd include loose or unofficial productive arrangements like grad school and home-making in the category.

Now, about those chickens, Becky, do your parents already have them? Are they laying eggs? Can I see pictures? Can I raise chickens too? That sounds a lot more exciting than my current compost project. I am very intrigued. In general, I think somewhere between Becky's idea of curtailing wants, and Alex's point about directing wants to other people, there may be a good philosophy of saving. I sympathize with the pleasure of sitting atop a growing savings account, and the peace of mind that savings brings. But I also experience the Michelle/Alex pleasure of finding a great deal (and then, like Alex, telling everyone who will listen about it). There is something about the self-restraint aspect of saving that must be good, but not in a yuppies running marathons to "test themselves" kind of way (though that is commendably Puritan in a way, I guess) or people who are obsessed with sustainability and only use as much energy as they can convert from their own poop way. In other words, though saving might be a good way to practice discipline, it's not good for asceticism's sake. (On the other hand, this should be eliminated from being as an example of thrift of any kind. "A cab is never more economical"--is there a real person who needs to be told this?)

Maybe the problem is that it can't be all about you, and if it is, it's probably misguided no matter how you construe it. As I said in the comments (which I decided I don't like b/c they disrupt the flow, sorry Alex), I don't think simply saving in order to spend, one item at a time (even in retirement) is a good framework for saving. It might work to keep you out of debt, but it's just an incentive to good behavior for the wrong reasons, since it still makes acquiring stuff for the sake of stuff the main goal of the process, and this is what seemed unsustainable and unjustifiable to me in my first post.

I am with Becky's parents on consumerism, at least in spirit (although I think the simply anti-consumption view has been superseded by the view that we should consume ironically in order to undermine consumerism, but I don't think that will work). I was v. impressed in college by Becky's apathy towards acquiring stuff, and I always wished I could just buy a pair of jeans every three years and then not think about clothes again. I still think that, for the most part, an active interest in acquiring a lot of expensive stuff is a sign of unseriousness and lack of substance in a person, even though I know several very smart people who are into expensive stuff like fashion. At the same time, the danger of undertaking an explicit campaign to eliminate your material desires is that you might become as insufferable about your moderation as you would have been about your lavish spending (like the people who feel compelled to remind you constantly about how awesome they are for not watching TV--actually, I sometimes do this too).

I've found though that giving people gifts actually helps moderate my own desires, since then I give other people the things I like, so I can't get them for myself. Maybe this also connects to Alex's point about saving to be generous with your friends and family. This is actually Aristotle's justification for earning money in the Ethics--the poor man cannot be generous, and generosity is one of the requirements for virtue, and virtue for happiness. Also, it recalls the mostly antiquated idea of the "family fortune"--the stockpile that reflected not just your current individual status, but your family's honor, your ancestors' lives, and your hope for your descendants. If you thought about this as the goal of savings, you might have reason to save without your savings leading to whatever dissolution accompanies lavish spending and insatiable acquisition. Obviously, none of us is about to found an aristocratic line and buy a family estate to grow it on, but maybe some vestige of this idea still holds true in our concern about being generous with our families and friends.

Also, why have all our views about saving converged? Have we insidiously influenced each other by living together? Is this like how I made Julia study more, and Julia made me clean the hair out of my brush more often? Does this validate my view that this study can only be evidence that most college students are stupid or oblivious, because if they were paying any attention, they'd have to be influenced by their professors?

Finally, Alex would like me to add that, despite my public endorsement of thrift, I failed to open a flexible spending account because I refused to be bothered by the paperwork. I am a bad person.

--Rita