Poll: Do people really need $100,000/£100,000 a year salleries?

[cystemic]

need and want are two different things, if someone has a big family to support or someone has a disability that they need to care for, then yes, you'd NEED the money. wanting it isn't a bad thing as long as you work hard for it and spend it on suitable things

 

[Sakurazaki1023]

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How much money you earn is up to the company. What you do with it is your problem. If a person who earned $200k per year wanted to, they could donate $100k of it to cancer research or something. Or they could keep it for themselves and improve their quality of life. Neither decision is wrong.

I wish more CEOs would try something like that. It would be nice to know that some businessmen are still sane and moral individuals...

As an aspiring engineer, my salary will most likely start around 65k (entry level) and be up around 90-100k by the time I'm in my late 20s. 100k per household is slightly high for middle class where I live, but think it's a pretty good salary for a middle class family with 1-2 kids.

hey same here! and i would agree to that. if you save (like im going to do, i'm going to live like a frickin cave troll my first 4-5 years saving money and investing it) then that money can last you a long time very comfortably.

That's my strategy, live like a college student for a few years to build up about 30-40k in savings. I'm used to being on a tight budget and since I'm single I can afford to wait for a while before I buy a house (I'll stick to an apartment near my job). Most young adults can live off of a 20-30k salary without any problem, so with 65k coming in I can afford to save quite a bit every year while still maintaining my hobbies. You'd be surprised how much you can save in interest if you pay for your car without a loan.

 

[BrownGaijin]

I don't really need per se, however I probably won't complain about not having enough money for the rest of my life. Probably.

 

[WolfThomas]

My father probably earns many times 100k a year. Does he need it? Probably not. Does he deserve it? Definitely, he's a surgeon, spent roughly 15 years in training and works (and has worked in the past) some pretty crazy hours. All of this to do a job that requires incredible finesse and has a significant chance of legal action if it goes wrong.

If such salaries weren't offered to such difficult jobs we wouldn't have people wanting to do them. Good intentions can only take you so far.

 

[SpAc3man]

Yes and I plan on having that. I have worked damn hard to even get into an excellent course at uni and even harder to be selected for my second year of the course. I will be rewarded in the long term.

 

[4173]

£100k =/= $100k

And no, but do people really need TV, the internet, cars and electricity?

If that's what their employer deems them to be worth then that's what they are worth.

Concur. Need is a pretty sticky concept until we bring it down to foraging for berries and sleeping in a cave.

 

[Rooker]

Not necessarily, no. But there are exceptions to it. The hundred grand salary should be reserved for the most valuable workers, not the guys that tend to make the money while screwing over his coworkers with bad ideas that boost the cabinet's income.

I myself don't even want to ever get that high. I would be happy with no more than sixty grand a year. My dad raised my sister and I and could tuck enough away to go on vacations, pay for a home and do many other things with that income. We couldn't get everything we ever wanted, but that was fine. Debt was not a threat to the household.

 

[p3t3r]

well depends i come form a family of 4 kids and we all play multiple travel sports with detenest fees and braces and stuff. i know my mom had to start working again even though my dad makes quite a bit of money

 

[4173]

100k seems to be an amount that will let you be comfortable but not excessively rich.

i dont think money changes you, it just allows you to be who you really are.

Science says otherwise. The current thinking is as your wage increases you enter into different societal groups based on your income (i.e. richer areas of cities or whatever) and become exposed to their habits. The part of you that wants to fit it wants the things they have, or better just to present dominance over them, so that you can increase your standing.

The more money you get the more retarded bullshit you'll piss it away on just to show how awesome you are.

Not 100% sure I know the research you're referring to. In fact, some clever guys over at Princeton came out with an interesting paper last September [http://science.slashdot.org/story/10/09/07/1519221/Researchers-Say-Happiness-Costs-75k] that pretty much implies people are increasingly un-happy as their yearly wage drops further and further below 75k, but above that there's no measurable difference. Kinda like a plateau rising up to 75k and then pretty much levelling off.

Being economically secure isn't the same as being happy because you are rich. I think dickens once said "A man who earns 20 pounds every year with a annual costs of one shilling less is in heaven, a man with one shilling more is in hell".

Nigerians are happier than americans: http://ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=6629

As standard of life increase in China happiness is decreasing: http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/04/why-chinese-are-getting-richer-but-not.php

Increasing your standard of life depresses you: http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9E0DEFD61538F934A3575AC0A9659C8B63

Incredibly rich people consider salary caps evil: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/nyregion/06pay.html?_r=2

Add to this the way people will spend money on vanity things a la "Keeping up with the Joneses".

Are you saying that having a bit more money will make you sadder? Or rich people have problems being happy?

Now, don't get me wrong, I realize that having lots of money doesn't bring lasting happiness. But anyone who has had to worry about paying bills or getting gas in their car can tell you that financial security does make someone happy, especially when they've been unstable for years. My dad only recently got a good-paying job, and he's happier than he's been in years. Today was his first paycheck, I might add.

What I'm saying is that having extra money can't bring lasting happiness, but if a person handles it right then it can bring a sort of satisfying financial contentedness that's, sadly, quite rare in this world.

The rich are often unhappy because they constantly work toward getting more money, it's the only thing they care about yet it doesn't ever make them any happier anymore. So they work and work and work and never pay attention to something that might make them more joyous (a wife, maybe, or companionship of some sort, a kid, some friends, etc.)

Also, I'm not saying that it's fair for sports players to earn millions per year, but many of you need to remember that most of them only play for a few years. They earn a lifetime's salary in a very short amount of time, and then usually quit. Remember that before you go slighting them again.

Correlation is not causation. Being financially stable doesn't make you happy, losing the stresses of being financially unstable allows you to feel good. If you had been working pay of $100,000 in debt and, by chance, got enough to undo your debt and keep you leaving comfortably wouldn't you dance for joy? The second you realised that financial stability was going to end wouldn't the world crash down around your ears? Don't marry symptom and cause when they don't fit together, find the link.

I didn't marry symptom and cause. No, correlation does not necessarily equal causation, but going from financial hell to complete financial stability generally makes a person happy, if not for just a time.

You seem hellbent on making sure that more money = less happiness. Apply your own logic to your own findings. Those people you mentioned getting unhappier as they got richer? "Correlation does not equal causation".

I'm sorry to say, friend, but I was making a point that finally rising out of a great financial trouble is a great feeling; it would make anyone happy. It would make any family happy. That's not correlation and causation, buddy, that's human emotion, that's how any person would react.

They may be happier on pure elation for a while, but eventually they will have new problems befitting their wealth. Whether or not those problems make them as unhappy as the problems they had when they were poor is the question. I don't think one can make an objective scale, and tell someone they are more happy because they don't have problem X.

In some sense I am probably happier than a kid in 3rd World Africa since I don't concern myself with survival on a daily basis, but I really don't think that is the right question.

 

[Chemical Alia]

Right out of graduate school I took a job at Halliburton that payed over $100,000 a year (in Dallas, TX, much cheaper than the cost of living in the northeast I was used to). I ended up quitting after a month because the job was dull, and not using any of the skills I had spent years developing and hoping to make a career with. In my opinion, what my job involved was something I could have done as an intern in college, and the amount of money they offered was really insane.

Granted, it would have been nice if I stayed there a little longer, so I could pay back the $75k+ I owe in student loans, but I'm at a job that pays less than half of that now, and is much more challenging and rewarding. If anything, this job "deserves" more money, but I know that the competition drives the salaries and I'm just happy to be here.

 

[crux]

Seems most of the posters are from USA, yeah?

Just to throw in another perspective; I'm from Western Australia. I'm an electrician and work in the mines, now the earning potential for a tradesman out here is anywhere from $110K p/a to $160K p/a and that's base rate. I've seen sparkies work 16 hour night shifts for a year and gross $300k in the year.

Down side is we come back to town cashed up and push the price of living up for everyone else. Sparkies in the city (Perth) are on around $60K p/a.

Good position to be in no wonder people are coming here en mass.

 

[mikev7.0]

When you work you're selling away risk.

If the firm makes no money, the workers are still paid. The CEO? Not so much.

Modern finance is all about getting money that is proportional to the level of risk involved not the work. And it's how it should be. I'm paying you 60K a year and helping with your insurance and 401K you have no right to demand me give you more than the market will pay for your labor. I take the difference. Everything's good.

100K really isn't that much at all. Not everyone is stupid enough to be satisfied with living in a small apartment living on Ramen. They want to explore the world and invest in the arts and be a humanitarian or just go everywhere in a private jet. How dare you question how other people spend their money.

I might buy that about risk if not for the fact that where I'm from when the rich take outright STOOPID risks, their companies are deemed "too large to be allowed to fail" and we have to bail them out. Put another way, we are robbed legally.

Even worse those with the money can even buy elections and officials making the playing field not quite equal. For example it's a BAD idea in general to elect a President or person in high office who has as their running mate someone who makes a lot of money from military contracting.

However we have to work with what we have, so I believe the answer is to do everything you can to be wealthy but then use it in a 50/50 model (ala Andrew Carnegie) to create new jobs and fund Education and Science. Since that apparently is falling to the private sector as well. In other words? Become rich and then SHAME your peers. The "rich" bit may take some work (well, okay a lot) but the shame will come to them easily. It is their only real destiny. And hey, it's just like the rich say.....they earned it.

 

[RedEyesBlackGamer]

If you put yourself in the position to make it, you've earned it.
OP: Pounds do not equal dollars.

 

[FoAmY99]

They deserve whatever they could get in the free market or decide to pay themselves. Also how does a hefty salary make people bigotted.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

 

[Blind Sight]

They deserve whatever they could get in the free market or decide to pay themselves. Also how does a hefty salary make people bigotted.

The first post absolutely covered this. How does money make you bigotted? Tell me, if a man is given a vast amount of money, and then uses it for 'bad' things, who corrupted who? The man or his money? My guess is the one that actually has to make choices.

Well-read Escapists will realize I basically just stole that point from D'Anconia in Atlas Shrugged, but meh.

 

[theheroofaction]

My opinion, If you got it you earned it.

 

[WrcklessIntent]

My father is a chief sales rep at IBM and while I don't know his exact salary I know that he earns a little over 6 figures. He works pretty much every day of the week though and even on weekends when hes suppose to have "off" he still has to be on conference calls all day. Also I have 2 sisters and my mother is stay at home so I find it appropriate.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

Check out this video:


How much money you earn is up to the company. What you do with it is your problem. If a person who earned $200k per year wanted to, they could donate $100k of it to cancer research or something. Or they could keep it for themselves and improve their quality of life. Neither decision is wrong.

I wish more CEOs would try something like that. It would be nice to know that some businessmen are still sane and moral individuals...

As an aspiring engineer, my salary will most likely start around 65k (entry level) and be up around 90-100k by the time I'm in my late 20s. 100k per household is slightly high for middle class where I live, but think it's a pretty good salary for a middle class family with 1-2 kids.

hey same here! and i would agree to that. if you save (like im going to do, i'm going to live like a frickin cave troll my first 4-5 years saving money and investing it) then that money can last you a long time very comfortably.

That's my strategy, live like a college student for a few years to build up about 30-40k in savings. I'm used to being on a tight budget and since I'm single I can afford to wait for a while before I buy a house (I'll stick to an apartment near my job). Most young adults can live off of a 20-30k salary without any problem, so with 65k coming in I can afford to save quite a bit every year while still maintaining my hobbies. You'd be surprised how much you can save in interest if you pay for your car without a loan.

exactlyyy, i'm going to keep the car i have now plus get a cheap apartment (like my dorm is now) and save up a piss ton, and once i have a nice sum of cash to lean on, thats going straight into savings to build massive amounts of interest.

 

[Jkudo]

To live in downtown New York you need a lot more than that!!

Exactly, everywhere in New York is expensive 100k is nothing especially if you have kids(Dont have kids nor do i live in New York anymore).

 

[Chris646]

If I made that kind of money, I'd probably blow it all on video games, conventions, and Child's Play.
On-Topic:
If a person has made that amount in a year with hard work instead of lounging around doing nothing, then yes. They deserve it.