quote:you have a 401k don't you? Life insurance? A mortgage, tuition payments, other loans, parents to take care of, children to care for, a car? I'd call that a different kind of money.
Those are different kinds of expenses. They are not, however, paid for with a different kind of money.
So instead of ranking need for money, it looks like you are ranking the urgency of expenses, and putting travel and parties above tuition and covering the needs multiple people instead of one.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: Can't disagree, I just think younger people have a larger need/want of loose cash.
Orin, you are really completely out of touch.
A) Read my response to Kat.
B) Don't talk to me that way.
I'm sorry if you choose to take offense, but you're posts do indicate that you have a really unrealistic idea of what its like to be in the 30 - 50 age group. Believe it or not, your desires for "loose cash" to indulge your hedonistic fancies don't magically disappear on your 30th birthday or at the birth of your first child. Peoples priorities change, but their wants don't really change, at least not in my experience.
If people want adventure when their 25, they will probably still want adventure when their 35, 45, 55 and 85. It may be lower down on their priority list when they're 35 and have two kids to take care of, but that isn't because they stopped wanting adventure. Changing your priorities isn't the same as changing what you want.
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posted
I didn't choose to take offense. I took offense. You chose not to apologize. You then chose to insult me further, and to patronize me as if I was your petulant nephew. I choose not to respond to you further. You can choose later to speak civilly to me, and I will take offense if you do not.
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posted
I can see what Ori is saying from a certain perspective.
On an absolute scale, older people generally need and want more money than younger people. However, if you are looking at discretionary spending (things like trips, tech goodies, eating out, etc.), I could see saying that younger people often want money for this discretionary purpose more.
That is, it's often a bigger deal to a younger person without kids that they have new, cool gadgets or can take off on a fun trip or whatever. I think that many younger, childless people see this sort of spending as closer to something they need than older people with children, who are more likely to see this spending as luxuries that are not essential.
As I said, in an absolute sense, the idea that young people want or need more money than older people is crazy. However, I think it can be said that often the perspective of how vital discretionary spending is can be be different between the younger and childless versus the older parents.
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posted
You mean, between people who have not yet matured and those who have? You're right -- hopefully maturity and perspective do come with age.
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That raises the question of whether putting something lower on the priority list actually means you want it less.
I mean, there are lots of things that are lower on my priority list now, but that doesn't mean I don't want to do them and I wouldn't be thrilled with the extra cash to do them. When I do have the cash after fulfilling all my fixed expenses, I don't think I am less happy with the activity or the result than someone with fewer fixed expenses in the first place.
I think the mistake here is thinking that because someone doesn't indulge a desire, the desire wasn't that strong in the first place, and that they wouldn't indulge if their circumstances changed.
In other words, the possesion of wisdom doesn't obviate the strength of desire.
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MrSquicky, I think its valid to say that most young single Americans put a higher priority on entertainment and adventure than do older people with families. I don't think its valid to say that older people want those things less.
I think its valid to say less mature people have a harder time being content if they don't get everything they want, immediately. I don't think its valid to say that more mature people want less. Being content with less and wanting less are not the same.
Look at the things that 40 and 50 somethings do when their kids become independent and they finally have more discretionary spending. Exotic vacations, more nights on the town, and expensive new toys that people get for a "mid-life crisis" are a pretty good indication that they have always wanted those things. Look at the number of retirees that buy a mobile home and tour the world or take up expensive hobbies. I haven't seen any evidence that peoples desires for "discretionary spending" decrease with age. It certainly takes a lower priority in their life when they are trying to support a family, but that doesn't mean they want it any less.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: That raises the question of whether putting something lower on the priority list actually means you want it less.
I'm going with yes... but that's just one way of looking at it.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: That raises the question of whether putting something lower on the priority list actually means you want it less.
I'm going with yes... but that's just one way of looking at it.
I'll be interested in hearing your opinion on that in 20 years.
Speaking from my personal experience, its not true. The correlation between how high something is on my spending priority list and how much I want it is pretty low if you look at it over time. Certainly at any given instant, its fair to say that the things I want most are highest on my priority list. But for me at least, desire is not a conserved quantity.
There have been times in my life where the #1 thing on my spending priority list wasn't something I actually want very much and other times where item #20 on the list was something I wanted badly. The fact that a certain kind of spending was the top of my priority list 20 years ago and is now quite far down is no indication of how much I wanted it now or then.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Did you read my first post on this page? How do you respond to it?
I restrained my urge to tell you that pretending to not understand what other people are talking about is not the same thing as arguing. That was going to be my response, since you asked.
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posted
Rabbit, I'm not necessarily saying that the older parents desire is less. I think maybe the best way to put it is that they view the absence of these things as less bad than the younger, childless people.
I don't know that this is just about maturity, although that's definitely part of it. In the remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, Dennis Leary's cop character has a great line about how he doesn't really care about art theft when compared to real crimes like murder, etc. To him, this art stuff is something that silly rich people care about. But, for someone who lives in that world, where murders and such aren't really an issue, art theft is this huge thing.
I see this as a similar situation. When I was in my early 20s, I spent the majority of my non-work time and my money doing what comes down to discretionary activities. I didn't have to worry about things like making mortgage payments, paying for my kids' school and doctor's visits and all that other kid stuff.
It's like, I didn't see the "real" crimes, so I sort of had the luxury of being concerned about the art theft. Something that would have curtailed my discretionary activities would have been a bigger deal then than it is now that I have a lot of those other concerns and especially later, when I start a family, because the discretionary activities made up a much larger part of my life and I didn't have other, more important things to compare them to.
Now, I certainly want to do all those discretionary things I used to do. Honestly, for some of them, I think I want to do them more. But, I'm saving for a house that I can raise a family in and hopefully live in for the next 50 or so years, and that's much more important to me right now.
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posted
I quoted. I am seriously not pretending - you say that young people want money more, and that all those grown up things are a different kind of money. And yet, for both groups, we are talking about a single paycheck, source of money.
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posted
I for one don't appreciate the dismissive attitude shown here for people who choose not to own a home or have children. I don't intend to do these things, and the thing I desire money to spend on the most is time and space to create music. Maybe everyone should be a tad less dismissive of us awful cretins without children.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I quoted. I am seriously not pretending - you say that young people want money more, and that all those grown up things are a different kind of money. And yet, for both groups, we are talking about a single paycheck, source of money.
Yeah, you don't have a lot of subtlety. Have someone explain it to you, because you wouldn't like my explanation. It would be condescending and mean.
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posted
Often times, older people with houses and children also have spouses on whom they can rely or at least share the burden. If one income is less, sometimes the other makes up for the shortfall.
Single folks are on their own.
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posted
Ori, I think you might do a better job of making your case that this perspective isn't coming mostly from immaturity if your behavior were more mature here.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Often times, older people with houses and children also have spouses on whom they can rely or at least share the burden. If one income is less, sometimes the other makes up for the shortfall.
Single folks are on their own.
I know in the Catholic school systems, where teacher pay is often pretty darn low, teaching is often considered almost something a couple does, where the other spouse is subsidizing the teacher. I know personally of teachers who have left to teach in the higher paying public school system or left teaching altogether because, as a single person, they weren't earning enough money to really support themselves in any sort of comfort.
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posted
I'm not arguing my perspective doesn't come from immaturity. Nowhere do I attempt such an argument. I don't believe that. Why do you think I do? Did I say something to indicate I thought this? Seriously.
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errr...I don't think you understand what I wrote. You seem to be objecting to people thinking that you believe what you wrote in large part because you lack maturity. I'm saying that, even outside this opinion, your behavior is giving people a lot of reason to believe this.
I guess I'm saying is, if you don't want people to view you as like a "petulant nephew", you might want to try acting more like an adult.
---
edit: I'm not sure. I thought when I went to write this, your post was talking about me thinking that you were arguing your opinion rested on maturity. I may have misread or you may have edited in the interim. With the wording the way it is now, I'm not sure I understand your objections. If you acknowledge that you are being immature, why are you upset when other people point this out?
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posted
I seem to be objecting to that? Really? Show me where I seem to be objecting to that? Because I'm pretty sure I don't object to that.
I object to being patronized, yes. That has little to do with the money discussion. Don't conflate the sideplay with the rest, please.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: ... I know in the Catholic school systems, where teacher pay is often pretty darn low, teaching is often considered almost something a couple does ...
Huh. Interesting.
Meanwhile:
quote:Unemployed, non-religious educators are turning to Catholicism in an attempt to secure a coveted teaching position, even it means lying in confession about whether they've had pre-marital sex, some have revealed.
...
The oversupply of qualified, unemployed teachers in Ontario has been a well-documented problem. According to the Ontario College of Teachers, there were about 12,200 new teachers in the province in 2009, but only about 5,000 positions.
“What you can see, fairly quickly, is you have twice as many teachers as you do job opportunities and that has been going on for a number of years now,” said Frank McIntyre, a researcher for the college, who added the gap has been accelerating since 2005.
posted
To me, there is a major disconnect between espousing what you know is an immature perspective and being upset when you are patronized for this. I guess I don't understand what you are expecting from people. Do you want people to take this opinion that you acknowledge comes from your immaturity seriously?
Honestly, I don't really get what the point of arguing from a perspective that you openly admit is invalid is.
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: Often times, older people with houses and children also have spouses on whom they can rely or at least share the burden. If one income is less, sometimes the other makes up for the shortfall.
Single folks are on their own.
I know in the Catholic school systems, where teacher pay is often pretty darn low, teaching is often considered almost something a couple does, where the other spouse is subsidizing the teacher. I know personally of teachers who have left to teach in the higher paying public school system or left teaching altogether because, as a single person, they weren't earning enough money to really support themselves in any sort of comfort.
I was a parochial school librarian for a while. I couldn't afford it for long. This was in 1992 and I was making $500/month. I had to supplement my income with a second job as that didn't cover rent in a studio.
This wasn't such a problem when most of the teachers were religious.
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quote:Originally posted by Orincoro: I seem to be objecting to that? Really? Show me where I seem to be objecting to that? Because I'm pretty sure I don't object to that.
Well I said.
quote:I'm sorry if you choose to take offense, but you're posts do indicate that you have a really unrealistic idea of what its like to be in the 30 - 50 age group.
Or in other words -- you are young and immature.
You responded with
quote:I didn't choose to take offense. I took offense. You chose not to apologize. You then chose to insult me further, and to patronize me as if I was your petulant nephew. I choose not to respond to you further. You can choose later to speak civilly to me, and I will take offense if you do not.
It sure seemed to me that you were taking offense at my saying you were immature.
One of the most obvious implications of being immature is that you will eventually become mature and that your behavior and attitudes will change. Its pretty irrational to claim you don't object to being called immature, you just object to being treated like maturation might change the way you think and act.
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quote:Originally posted by MrSquicky: Honestly, I don't really get what the point of arguing from a perspective that you openly admit is invalid is.
To freely admit I lack my full maturity does not mean I concede that anything I have to say is invalid. Difference between immaturity as a pejorative term or not- I'm free to admit I lack experience, but I am equally free to claim that my perspective is a valid one in my eyes, and not one apart from any I could hold. I can only be myself, after all- I don't consider myself an incomplete person for being young. I don't like being treated as if that is automatically the case.
quote: It sure seemed to me that you were taking offense at my saying you were immature.
No, I took offense at being told I was out of touch. I took particular offense at that considering that I scrape every month to make enough money to pay my rent, and can't afford anything I'm talking about in this thread when it comes to leisure activities. That pissed me off. It would piss you off too if you were in my position.
quote: Its pretty irrational to claim you don't object to being called immature, you just object to being treated like maturation might change the way you think and act.
I object, have always objected to, the notion that your age confers upon you an unassailable wisdom in comparison with anyone but yourself, when you yourself were young. For my own part, I have never grown as wise as I believed I would be by the time I was xx years old- at least never in the ways I or anyone else expected. Certainly the patronizing commentary of older family members foretold a future that simply did not come to pass. I object, at the base, to the idea that maturation will make me think the way *you* do. That is the conceit of all condescending "been there, done thats." I have no problem at all arguing from the standpoint of superiority due to specific experience, mind you- that's the kind of thing a person can back up with action. This is not such a case. But how can you show someone that you know more about what they will want in the future? How can you guess how attitudes will change? Why treat a person as if their views, perhaps not set in stone, are therefore "invalid" as it was put? Really it's probably the only area of my life, when it came to judging my expectations against what I was *told* to expect, in which I turned out to be right more often than anyone who ever shared "advice" with me. It's a good thing, I guess- at least I can offer my own high school students the thought that nobody really knows what they want, so they're really a lot more free than they think to follow their own passions. Usually though, they do have somebody in their lives feeding them a crock of utter bullshit.
posted
I think most of the people on this thread define "want" for material things differently than I do. For me, it's true by definition that the things that you want the most are the things that are highest on your spending list. In fact, I'll admit to being somewhat unable to understand the counterfactual that some of you on this thread seem to be espousing. If you want item A more than you want item B, why would you purchase item B instead of item A? Is this a discount rate thing, a passing fancy thing, or something else?
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posted
When creating a spending list, do you not have to prioritize via some combination of "want" and "need?"
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: I think most of the people on this thread define "want" for material things differently than I do. For me, it's true by definition that the things that you want the most are the things that are highest on your spending list. In fact, I'll admit to being somewhat unable to understand the counterfactual that some of you on this thread seem to be espousing. If you want item A more than you want item B, why would you purchase item B instead of item A? Is this a discount rate thing, a passing fancy thing, or something else?
The comparison isn't between how much you want item A and how much you want item B, it's between how much you want item A and how much someone who doesn't need/want item B wants item A. The fact that I now want to pay for my kids' health insurance more than I want a trip to London doesn't mean that I want the the trip to London less than someone who doesn't have kids does.
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quote:Originally posted by Mucus: I was answering the question in abstract.
You might have *seemed* to be answering the question in the abstract. It all depends on how you define "question," and "was" and "I" and "abstract" and "in."
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posted
An item is always deferrable only relative to other items. If you get a limited time offer, then you can choose to move it to the top of your want list, or you can choose to ignore the offer in favor of the items you already have at the top, depending on how that limited time offer ranks in your eyes.
Let's say, for instance, our house's A/C needs repairing (true) and Apple has recently come out with a shiny new product, the iPad (also true). With a summer in DC coming on, I want the A/C to work now. And I want an iPad because they're perfect for browsing the net and reading books and they're shiny. Wanting the AC fixed is time-limited to some extent (since you only need it for about four months of the year and when next year rolls around our finances & thus budget constraint will be different).
One of those things might seem to be a luxury good, and the other a necessity, but, really, I need neither one. Fans and hanging out in the basement work just as well as an A/C. In the case of our household, my husband and I decided we'd rather get an iPad than fix the A/C.
There are very, very few things I need - and all of the things I need (food, decent housing, certain medicines, etc) are actually also at the top of my want list - but I rarely think about them as such, since I have no problem fulfilling those wants now, and see no reason (given my consumption-smoothing behaviors via savings) that I'll be unable to fill those desires in the future.
Interpersonal comparisons of wants are always difficult (thus economists prefer to just talk about Pareto Optimal situations, but I'd say that people's life decisions are somewhat informative. I want a life with kids in my life (biological or not), more than I want fancy vacations regularly, so I'm going to plan for the first which will mean (to some extent) giving up the second. If someone makes the decision to not have kids in their life in order to have regular fancy vacations, I think they have a good claim to wanting a trip to London more than I want a trip to London.
Of course, that's assuming that all of these decisions are always up to us, which, of course, they're not. But we can incorporate that somewhat into our considerations by thinking about life events probabilistically. Anyways, a model doesn't have to work 100% of the time for it to be useful.
Generally, I think people talk too much about needing something or other. You almost always don't need that whatever. You just want it. Don't lie to yourself about it.
(In the case of children's health insurance, mortgage, etc, it's almost always a case that you chose to constrain yourself in the past by choosing some want, and the costs are just coming due now. Again, you wanted kids, you wanted to own a house, etc.)
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: An item is always deferrable only relative to other items. If you get a limited time offer, then you can choose to move it to the top of your want list, or you can choose to ignore the offer in favor of the items you already have at the top, depending on how that limited time offer ranks in your eyes. ...
Or you could choose to purchase it without changing the order of your want list.
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posted
By definition, if you purchase it, you wanted it more than everything on the list you haven't yet purchased (modulo all relevant variables, including price).
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: (In the case of children's health insurance, mortgage, etc, it's almost always a case that you chose to constrain yourself in the past by choosing some want, and the costs are just coming due now. Again, you wanted kids, you wanted to own a house, etc.)
I'm not convinced it's "almost always." For those particular examples, sure. But the person with a congenital illness that requires regular medication only partially covered by insurance didn't choose to have that expense. And the person whose aging mother requires care doesn't necessarily value his or her parents more than the more-free-to-travel person whose parents are still able to live independently. Were the two people's circumstances reversed, their choices might be also.
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quote:Originally posted by Jhai: (In the case of children's health insurance, mortgage, etc, it's almost always a case that you chose to constrain yourself in the past by choosing some want, and the costs are just coming due now. Again, you wanted kids, you wanted to own a house, etc.)
I'm not convinced it's "almost always." For those particular examples, sure. But the person with a congenital illness that requires regular medication only partially covered by insurance didn't choose to have that expense. And the person whose aging mother requires care doesn't necessarily value his or her parents more than the more-free-to-travel person whose parents are still able to live independently. Were the two people's circumstances reversed, their choices might be also.
If we're going to drill down to that point of life constraints - things we can't possibly control, because of the life that we were dealt - then we're basically at the point where we're talking about the things that determine our desires and options, not our choices given those desires and options. I'm constrained by my inability to act, which means I can't make it big in Hollywood, which means a whole bunch of choice that I might like to have aren't available to me. My friend has a gene that makes cilantro taste like soap, which means she can't enjoy a wide array of tasty dishes, while I can. I have a genetic disorder which racks up the medical expenses, with or without insurance (but more without, of course), while others don't.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying that those sort of things don't matter for quality of life. What I am saying is those sort of things are the given that we act upon when making our choices. "I want medicine because my genetic condition makes me value it highly, and you don't want that medicine, because you don't have that genetic condition" isn't much different than "I want kids because my personality and upbringing make me value them and you don't want kids because your personality and upbringing make you value them less".
For the vast majority of us in developed nations, our choices are incredibly broad, our quality of life is incredibly high, and most of our so called "needs" are actually wants that we've structured our lives around.
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posted
True, but not relevant. You suggested previous posters were "espousing a counterfactual" by suggesting that they wanted A more than B but purchased B anyway. I pointed out that that was not what people were actually saying. You used that as a springboard into your discussion of needs vs, wants. Which is a fine topic, but a different one than whether desire for recreational spending decreases when one takes on other respnsibilites or is only deferred with no lessening of desire.
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posted
dkw, I was responding to statements like this from The Rabbit:
quote:There have been times in my life where the #1 thing on my spending priority list wasn't something I actually want very much and other times where item #20 on the list was something I wanted badly. The fact that a certain kind of spending was the top of my priority list 20 years ago and is now quite far down is no indication of how much I wanted it now or then.
The idea that where something is on your priority list is not a direct function of how much you want it is false, to my understanding of the word "want". If it's it's at the top of your list, it's what you want most. Whether you're happy about the constraints that led to your wants or not is rather irrelevant to that point. I'd like to not want candy and junk food; nonetheless, I do want it.
Regarding interpersonal comparisons of desires, like I said, there's a reason most economists won't touch that one with a ten foot pole. You say you want a widget really badly, I say I want it more, you disagree, saying you want it more... the argument isn't going to go anywhere. However, like I said, I think that, for most people in developed nations, our choices are open enough that looking at how people prioritize their lives can give you good idea of how highly they rank things, and thus give you insight into how badly they want something. I have a coworker who tells me how badly she wants to get in shape, but doesn't do anything about it, ever, other than talk. I don't think it's wrong of me to assume this first coworker wants to get in shape less than the one who has reprioritized his life since January in order to go to the gym five days a week before work. Actions speak louder than words, as they say.
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posted
Fortunately there are still people around who enjoy the sorts of conversations that economists won't touch with a ten-foot pole.
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: [QUOTE]Originally posted by Jhai: [qb] The comparison isn't between how much you want item A and how much you want item B, it's between how much you want item A and how much someone who doesn't need/want item B wants item A.
Almost but not quite. The comparison is between how much a particular individual wants item A and item B now and how much that same individual would want item A under circumstances in which that same person would have a greater desire for B.
Let me use Jhai's air conditioning vs iPad example. Imagine that circumstances were different. Perhaps Jhai was working out of a home office, or had an elderly parent living with her. Those circumstances would likely make fixing the air conditioning a higher priority but those things wouldn't likely affect how much you wanted the iPad.
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posted
Rabbit: economists don't work with absolute want, only relative want. There are good reasons for this, notably that absolute want is a metaphysical expression (possibly approximated by psychological indicators across time, but our ability to measure the brain is horrible), while relative want is possible to measure (at least in pairwise signs, and often in more detail) in the real world.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Rabbit: economists don't work with absolute want, only relative want.
And again I express how glad I am that conversation at Hatrack is not limited to topics that economists will work with.
I am much more interested in the conversation Rabbit is offering about whether the desire for "hedonistic pleasures" decreases when one takes on other responsibilities or is merely deferred with no decrease in desire than I am in discussing whether someone who works out wants to lose weight more than someone who pigs out. If that relegates me to the metaphysical conversation ghetto, so be it.
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posted
That is definitely an interesting discussion. However, for the purposes of talking about the practical impact of teacher pay on decision making, I suspect the economic conceptualization of want is more useful.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Rabbit: economists don't work with absolute want, only relative want. There are good reasons for this, notably that absolute want is a metaphysical expression (possibly approximated by psychological indicators across time, but our ability to measure the brain is horrible), while relative want is possible to measure (at least in pairwise signs, and often in more detail) in the real world.
Pffffff!!. We aren't talking about economic theory here, we are talking about people and life satisfaction. Want is a fundamentally subjective thing so its not at all surprising that you can't find an objective measure of it. That, however, doesn't make it unimportant or uninteresting, in fact quite the opposite.
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