There is a degree to which the following is true: My duty to my family is to acquire as much wealth from the market as possible.
Which is to say: Always be interviewing. My job is to find the best-paying job, and bring in the moneys. So that we can do whatever we want with the money.
There's a degree to which that's true.
How is it false?
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There is also a degree to which you have a duty to care for yourself, which may or may not overlap with what you say above.
ReplyDeleteThe marginal utility of money decreases as the amount you have increases. Even if your goal is utility maximization picking money as the thing to maximize is a choice only an economist could love.
ReplyDeleteI'd say the real obligation is to maximize the degree to which you are most effectively taking care of your family. If your salary was doubled but you were effectively never home, are you really benefiting them?
ReplyDeleteI just came from an assignment where my wife said, more than once, that it would have been easier if I was deployed, because then at least I'd stop occasionally being home to get in the way and they could have built a schedule that didn't have to account for me. Now I'm in a place with an actual proper "normal human work week," and everyone seems to love it. I'm not getting paid any more (that's not how salary works in the military) but our quality of life is better because of the improved time together and lowered stress.
tl;dr not all forms of compensation are monetary.
Agreeing with others, there are other duties you have that might supersede this duty (raising kids, being a good partner, community obligations, follow the law).
ReplyDeleteI'm also not sure how you've framed it is accurate. Why do you need to bring in the moneys? What is this 'whatever' you want to do with the money? If it's food, there are jobs that include free food. If it's opportunity, there are jobs that can connect you to a lot of opportunity (I heard one story of a very happy childhood where a parent worked at an amusement park and got to take in their kids after hours). Would it be better to live in an expensive apartment in a well-paying city, or a cheap house in a decently-paying town?
Tangential to this observation, I once made the arguement that privilege is the end result of generations of just such parental duty.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you are above comfortable survival income, your family will probably be way happier if you spend your spare time engaging in bonding with them to let them know how much you care about them. Loneliness is terrible. Don't force your family or yourself to endure it. Money will NOT make up the difference in happiness.
ReplyDeleteAlso, interviewing is stressfull and changing jobs is stressfull. You have, as others pointed out before, also a duty to yourself (and your family) to stay healthy and sane. To be working in your current job, looking for a new one and activly interviewing for new jobs, even taking new jobs periodically, will cost you energy you could have spend elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that it might acutally hurt your career if you changed jobs too often.
This is all true. I've made more than I do now, and was super stressed due to organizational chaos. Current job pays a little less, is a lot less stressful, but I'm not challenged quite enough.
ReplyDeleteHow about: All wealth acquisition beyond your needs is built on the backs of people who are living below subsistence, whether you personally contribute to their oppression or not.
ReplyDeleteOr, as a parent: My duty is to model the type of values I want my children to develop, and I want wealth acquisition to be low on their priority lists.
And: My duty to the world is to make it a slightly better place, which means caring for my family, yes, but not only my family.
It also sounds a bit like a mafia motto.
Jule Ann Wakeman I don't know that the first is true; work is not necessarily a zero-sum game.
ReplyDeleteSo, for ex: My current employment is with a federal contractor. We are building a new system to replace a legacy system that doesn't serve the needs of the users very well. The company will make money, I'll make money, the federal government will save money. The users will be better served.
Folks who have lost sight of the client will lose out, and I don't think that's a bad thing.
The rest: Yes. That I can be on board with.
William Nichols I know it's not that simple. And I'm not an economist, so I probably can't defend my position in a convincing way. But I do believe that, on a fundamental level, the pursuit of wealth "for me and mine" directly contributes to poverty and oppression of "others".
ReplyDeleteI realize that the "pie" is probably bigger than most of us think, and that it is probably possible for everyone to live comfortably, and then some. And there is no harm in everyone actively pursuing their slice, and even a bit more. But the pie isn't infinite, and an unrestrained "more for me" mindset will eventually result in less for someone.
Yes.
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