Althouse: "The Rich Spend More Time With Friends, the Poor Spend More Time With Family."

May 11, 2016

"The Rich Spend More Time With Friends, the Poor Spend More Time With Family."

The rich also spend more time alone.

27 comments:

The Godfather said...: The linked article doesn't define "rich" and "poor", and I'm not going to pay to read the full report. Fitzgerald said The rich are different, and Hemingway is reported to have said, Yes, they have more money. I'll buy that (or, if I were rich, I'd employ somebody to say that, and if I were poor I'd ask my Uncle Herbie to say that).; 5/11/16, 4:34 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: The rich have more time and more control over their time, full stop. It's one good reason to be rich.; 5/11/16, 4:44 PM
Rob said...: The facts about the purported exchange between Hemingway and Fitzgerald are quite interesting, and not quite as commonly believed. In any event, note that Fitzgerald was talking not about the rich but about the very rich--and there is a difference.; 5/11/16, 4:52 PM
Michael K said...: Baron Hilton said, "Money isn't everything but it does help to keep the children close."

I guess that's what it means.; 5/11/16, 5:24 PM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: You get what you pay for.; 5/11/16, 5:34 PM
traditionalguy said...: The family that plays golf together stays together. And playing with my son and son's friends is always an eye opener.

Best advice is to have friends some from several generations, whenever possible.; 5/11/16, 5:51 PM
whitney said...: Being alone is the greatest luxury of them all; 5/11/16, 5:59 PM
mikee said...: The rich also generally spend more money than the poor.; 5/11/16, 6:06 PM
Fernandinande said...: Whether you're rich or poor, it's good to have money.

The rich also spend more time alone.

As Steve Sailer says: "The worst problem with being poor in today’s America is not that you can’t afford to buy enough food, it’s that you can’t afford to get away from other poor people."; 5/11/16, 6:37 PM
alan markus said...: This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.; 5/11/16, 6:37 PM
Anonymous said...: It's all about networking.; 5/11/16, 6:52 PM
Lewis Wetzel said...: It's published in Social Psychological and Personality Science.
Hmm.
"Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test"
http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248; 5/11/16, 7:18 PM
Fernandinande said...: Terry said...
"Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test"

Widely reported analysis that said much research couldn’t be reproduced is riddled with its own replication errors, researchers say"

And so it goes...; 5/11/16, 8:09 PM
Birkel said...: "AReasonableMan":

Name all the bad reasons to be rich.

Or name a single thing that is bad about being rich.; 5/11/16, 8:09 PM
Phil 314 said...: Maybe the rich time alone is driving home in the car while the poor are on the bus; 5/11/16, 8:14 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 5/11/16, 8:36 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: Birkel said...
Or name a single thing that is bad about being rich.

Like any group there are individual differences, but obsessive materialism is not uncommon. No shortage of unhappy rich families.; 5/11/16, 9:10 PM
Birkel said...: "AReasonableMan":

You failed to show causation. Try again?; 5/11/16, 9:12 PM
Carol said...: I think a lot of wealthier people who got that way through work and investment probably get easily bored with family. My father was like that, all obsessed with his career and accumulating property, and trying various hobbies - golfing, photography, painting, woodworking, ham radio, then computers. Only later did he begin to find us interesting.

I can't fault him for that. His money ended up paying for us fuckups.; 5/11/16, 9:33 PM
Paul said...: The rich also spend more money.....; 5/11/16, 9:48 PM
William said...: A single thing that is bad about being rich: hubris. Very few poor people die in Ferrari accidents.; 5/11/16, 9:50 PM
William said...: Gerald and Sarah Murphy were rich, if not beyond the dreams of avarice, then certainly beyond the dreams of Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The Murphys were generous with their time and money to those writers. They were poorly repaid. Fitzgerald featured them as the Divers couple in Tender Is The Night and Hemingway disparaged them as "pilot fish"........The Murphys had two boys. One of them contracted TB. They took him to a sanitarium where he continued to waste away. While he was dying, the other little boy contracted mastoiditis and died a sudden, painful death. There are lots of problems money doesn't solve--although it rarely makes any problem worse.; 5/11/16, 10:03 PM
Big Mike said...: Since I tend to spend my time with family, this confirms that I'm poor.; 5/11/16, 10:24 PM
Birkel said...: Too much power is a problem. Sycophants rarely help one avoid trouble. Therefore power should be dispersed.

Money may sometimes deliver power. But enough about Nancy Pelosi marrying a very rich man.; 5/11/16, 10:24 PM
JCC said...: If we're talking about the genuine poor, they generally live closely together, in rental property rather than something owned. Spending time together is not a choice. This seems to be another case of seeing data and trying to draw esoteric conclusions, when the solution may be far more simple.

Drive through any really poor neighborhood. See lots of tenements. Lots of bars and churches.

Lightbulb.; 5/12/16, 6:39 AM
Sydney said...: I once attended a class on working with the poor- the very poor. It was based on a program called "Bridges out of Poverty." They made this very argument. Poor people have a different skill set than rich people. One of those skill sets is how we rely on others. Rich people value connections among friends and associates and use them easily. Poor people value connections among family. So, if you have an employee or a patient from a very poor background, they are much more susceptible to things their family says to them than rich people or people from middle class backgrounds. For example, a drug user who is trying to come clean may have trouble because his family resents his trying to improve himself (especially if they are drug users.) The conversation may go like, "Oh, who do you think you are? Too good to take heroin, pot, whatever, with us? Well, just wait until you need someone to watch your kids, give you a ride, etc."
The person who taught the class runs a shelter for the homeless, so I tend to think she knew what she was talking about.; 5/12/16, 8:36 AM
mockturtle said...: I should think it depends on whether they are 'old money' rich or nouveau riche.; 5/12/16, 10:28 AM