I found you via ycombinator/twitter.
Personally I'd have to disagree, largely because I feel that you take no account of why somebody would be happy with a "fixed" income. For the last three jobs I've been earning progressively less money, solely out of choice I might add, (I can't spend all the money I make even now.) But then I love my job. "truly, madly deeply" There was a time I'd have done it for food and a bed, indeed people joked that I was there so long, I may as well just put a camp bed into the server room, as that way I wouldn't have to walk to work and back. That was my first UNIX job, the one I got paid least for, and it's still the best single job I've ever had. Because of it, I stepped out into a wider world, left my country of origin, met great friends, and got married on a mountain top on the other side of the world, to a woman who continually surprises me, even now.
Because we're trying for kids at present I'm reading a lot of developmental psychology, stuff about parenting, etc. I came across this passage today, from a book my mother read as she was waiting for me:
Quote:
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"I like especially the work being done by Dr Donald W. MacKinnon, director of the Institute of Personality Assessment and Research in San Francisco. Five hundred and thirty really top notch leaders in many different fields were studied - the shining lights among artists, architects, mathematicians, engineers, research scientists and writers, among others; all people who represented original and creative thinking. They found that having a high I.Q. was not a consistent or reliable requirement, although all of the people were in the normal-to-bright category. In addition: 'It is certain that most of our most creative subjects hadn't been grade getters.' Most of them had a C or B average and many would not qualify for entrance to some of our graduate schools today. The most significant qualities to emerge from this study (and many others as well) were: curiosity, scepticism, independence, aesthetic sensitivity, introversion and nonconformity. Many of these people seemed to have 'a sense of destiny', which tended to make them refuse to conform in their thinking."
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Which took place in a wider discourse of the insanity/sadness of parents being in a hurry for their five year old's to achieve, so they could be streamed early for success and graduate school entry.
Amusingly enough there's a program on the BBC later this week about parents in NYC fighting, (and paying stupid amounts of money) to get their kids into the right kindergartens.
I remember listening to an interview long ago with the sage like porn magnate Larry Flynt, where he was talking about his life, and why he was in a wheel chair, and as an answer to a question I cannot remember he said, "happiness is way to travel, not a destination" which chimed, and has stuck with me ever since.
Not everyone who's on a fixed income is a sucker, just as not everyone who makes $100K a month is smart. If money is all you love...