Maybe There's a Reason Disney Hates Poor People.

Lord Gonchar:

People dealt the winning hand will end up all over the spectrum. People dealt a losing hand will too.

I don’t disagree with that, however if you were to scatterplot this, those who start with a winning hand would gravitate hard towards winning, and those with the losing hand would gravitate hard towards winning losing. Enough to be statistically valid, the people who jump social standing considerably would be the outliers.

Jeff:

In other words, I'm not all that far from being a millionaire, but it ain't gonna make me rich. Had I started investing in my 20's, I'd be hitting $2m or more well before that time.

This makes me think of the math for the billionaires, something along the lines of making thousands per day since the time Jesus was born or whatever. Anyway, point being that no one needs that level of assets hoarded. We talk about zero sum games, and wealth is one of those. You have x amount of resources, x amount of dollars, you cannot just print more or make more. Economics is all based on a finite system. Releasing some of the capital would allow it to flow to other entities.

Gonch: You aren't wrong about the impact of personal responsibility, but the political climate wants us to believe that there aren't contextual circumstances. Data shows us that there are institutionalized "-isms" and biases ranging from red-lining to good old fashioned misogyny. We know, for example, that for two identical resumes, the one with a "black sounding" name is less likely to get a callback. I imagine that most people want everything to work strictly on merit, but they don't. (Ironically, DEI efforts intend to get closer to a meritocracy, not further.)

As for what people "need," it's not a zero-sum game. We have to get out of this thinking that billionaires mean there has to be poor people. Even communist nations had poor people, in a system that wasn't supposed to allow for that. And yes, conversely, providing for poor people doesn't mean that we can't have billionaires. It's not a finite system. A company with rising stock does not come at the expense of anyone. If you think it does, then you're validating Reagan's insistence that trickle-down economics works, and we know it doesn't.

And I'm curious to know why you'd bring that up relative to my assertion that had I invested earlier, I'd have more wealth today. Are you implying that I should not have saved for my own future?

TheMillenniumRider:

however if you were to scatterplot this...

I think that's generally how we think of it. So I looked to be sure.

Wikipedia has a whole page on economic mobility in the US that has some solid info. That's where I got this:

Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.

So that's worded in a way that isn't necessarily loaded, but not how I'd paint the picture. Stick with me.

I'm gonna use loose numbers for simplicity. 62% and 65% is as good as 2/3rds for the sake of my ability to reason.

2/3rd of people raised in the highest or lowest quintile stay in the top ot bottom two quintiles. That still means an increase or decrease in standing occured for a non-zero number of them. I'm sure none of us would like to drop a whole quintile in income and I'm sure a lot of us would be ecstatic to move up one. It's significant and the above stat sort of glosses over that. So the final number of people who stay at the very top or bottom once born there is certainly less than the 2/3rds number presented here. How much so? I have no idea as I didn't pursue the info beyond the above quote. It could be few. It could be most. I have no idea.

But even still, 1-in-3 people raised in the bottom quintile move up two or more (that's at least a move from poverty to the middle class - or more) and 1-in-3 born in the richest quintile fall to the middle class or worse. And I rounded down. I could've just as easily rounded it to 4-in-10. At that point it's damn near 50%. (kinda. again, for the sake of my level of discussion, we're good) Add in the ones who moved one quintile but got called "non-mobile" and I'm sure we're really close to 50%.

That's a coin flip and certainly much higher than I'd have expected...and I was ok with it already.

I don't have a bigger point other than to share my napkin math with the room. Feel free to shred it.

EDIT - I guess there's no need to. If I had read more thoroughly, my math checks out. Another part of that page reads:

One study (“Do Poor Children Become Poor Adults?") found that of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation.

"About half" passed on to the next generation. That's suspiciously close to my wild-ass guess of 50%.

That's all.

I’d describe someone as rich when they don’t have to think about money anymore. Like if you have a vacation home that you don’t have to rent out when you’re not there. That’s rich to me. I have a neighbor that bought a house the same size as mine and uses it twice a year to host his family from around the country. They installed an invisible fence, poured a new driveway, etc. That’s rich to me. I am having a new patio poured and it’s a stretch.

That said I fully understand the POV that someone cleaning my hotel room sees me as rich. Sliders I guess.

The joke at my house is that when we can afford paper plates, we're rich. At least it used to be the joke. I buy them all the time now.

My buddy worked for a famous mouse for over 25 years in a good "middle management" position. He left and now works as a department manager for a grocery store. I don't think he has ever been more content in his life.

I'm an executive with a salary that far exceeds anything I expected to earn in my life. My days are spent responding to residents who get upset when their garbage can isn't put back exactly where they want it to be. Perhaps we should be talking about "rich" less in the context of $$$ and more in the context of fulfillment.

I doubt many of those "influencers" running around Disney with their selfie sticks are making a lot of money, but they sure appear to enjoy what they are doing. Frankly, riding the Skyliner over to Epcot for a mimosa in France right now doesn't sound too bad.

Let me practice: "Hi Guys...make sure you follow me!"

Re: fulfillment.

I highly recommend this book. It was an important piece to the journey I have been on of completely re-evaluating how my life works.

https://www.literatibooksto...1394185696

But I bet most of those influencers are doing it as a side hustle, not the main source of income.

Yeah, I make ridiculous money in my line of work, but I don't particularly love it. I don't hate it, but it doesn't feed the soul. The only reason I really understand my relationship with work is that Diana works in a place that she loves, in a business that she loves. I have no point of reference. (And when I worked at SeaWorld corporate, honestly it didn't matter that it was a theme park company.)

I know, it's a Ted Talk, but kind've an important one.

If we're temporarily talking about fulfillment...

Re: fulfillment. Yeah...I make decent money managing a small team of engineers for a tech company and it saps my soul daily, whereas my wife makes 30% of my salary teaching pre-k kids and absolutely loves it.

I get fulfillment from my family, friends, and hobbies. I'm thankful we make ok money, but we're nowhere in the vicinity of a $250k household income, let alone most people's definition of "rich".

I'm a senior mechanical engineer at an aerospace company... While the work can be "cool" working on experiments flown on the ISS, having equipment you worked on directly get crashed into an asteroid for science, or working on parts of future spacecraft among other things, the work itself is not all that fulfilling to me. It's cool to think about at times, but it doesn't give my life purpose/fulfillment or anything, it's just a cooler than typical job.

At the end of the day it's a metric ton of requirements, paperwork, back and forth with customers and things taking way too long to get much of anything done. That being said it's super flexible, the work/life balance is great and the pay is competitive for our market. So it's just a solid job at this point.

Ideally in another life, I'd be a commercial airline pilot. That being said, I am honestly tinkering with maybe doing just that, but it also is the whole "don't make your hobby your job", so maybe just a PPL or something.

But... To echo above, my fulfillment are the hobbies, travel, dog, etc... So that is where my happiness comes from. I don't think work would ever be in my 'fulfillment' bucket. I simply do it to get paid so I can do the stuff that makes me happy.

A former coworker of mine left Microsoft and retrained to fly commercially. It was transformational for his life and he loves it. Granted, he was at an inflection point in his life, getting divorced, no children, only a few years into his software career. The timing was ideal for him. When I "retire" what that really means is that if I wanna sell churros or DJ weddings, that's what I'm gonna do.

Also, it's always interesting to hear how bogged down some professions get in process. I'm notoriously, not anti-process, but right-size-process, based on the capabilities of the people involved. Granted, in software engineering, we're not launching rockets or building bridges. Usually if we get something wrong, we can fix it quickly and move on. (Sidebar: I'll never be comfortable calling it "engineering" instead of "development," because of the relative low-risk of what we do and formal training that is not needed.) My point though was that process and administrative stuff makes everything decidedly less fun and more soul sucking.

One of my inner circle is a Buddhist, and she talks often about Right Livelihood as part of the Eightfold Path. This is less about "loving what you do," and more about "having your work be aligned with your values." Now, if you are Buddhist, those values are presumably fixed (the Precepts), but you don't need to adhere to the Precepts to practice Right Livelihood. Whatever your values, you can assess how your "money-earning time" aligns with those values.

I mostly feel good about what I do, but increasingly there are facets of my job that give me pause. That's partly because my values have changed, and partly how my field has evolved in the marketplace.

Soooo, then....rich people go to Disney World for fulfillment?

Yes. And read articles on how Disney hates poor people.

I know that was tongue and cheek, Gonch, but it is something I need ponder. I don't know how many times I've been to Disneyworld now, but it is likely over 100 (not counting visits when I worked there). People often ask me why, and I usually say it is because I enjoy it. I really haven't dug down any further than that, but I'm sure there is more to it.

I grew up near Disneyland and my memories of those visits are highlights of what was a somewhat troubled childhood. (I wasn't abused, by any stretch, but things weren't easy). Disneyland was an escape for me then. Flash forward through the "working there" stage and the "visiting again as a parent" stage and I'm still going. Why? Well, it might come down to the consistency of the experience. Sort of like why people go to McDonald's or Starbucks over and over again. McDonald's doesn't have the best hamburgers, and Starbucks doesn't have the best coffee...but I know what I'm going to get when I go to those places, and that provides comfort.

In many respects, I feel at "home" when I'm at Walt Disney World, and that provides comfort and fulfillment. Now that I write it all down, it sounds a little pathetic. I like other things too. If DC were a 3-hour ride for me, I'd be at the Smithsonian as often as I'm at WDW.

Yeah, I think for me, a lot of it is that it's right there. But when it's stupid busy, I'm so not interested. We turned around in the Epcot lot last weekend because I forgot it was a race weekend. They were parking us away out there at 5.

That's why I think that some of the stuff in the press is kinda silly. If it keeps getting expensive, some folks will stop going. If it's too crowded, people will stop going. There are a lot of levers.

"Nobody goes there anymore... It's too crowded." - Yogi Berra

I haven’t been to a Disney park since 2017, but today we leave for home after a 3 Day LL+ Parkhopper ticket to Disneyland/California Adventure. We had an awesome time and if nothing else I got a real-time sense of how to manage the system. Also of how much things cost with maybe a couple of theories as to why that is and how it came to be. When I get home I’ll collect my thoughts and type up a couple of trip reports, including my day at Knott’s and a serendipitous, surprise chance at a new Broadway show making its debut here in LA before it goes to NYC.

Nice. Would love to hear your trip report. I just booked a trip there for the end of June. Disneyland resort. It’s been about 12 years since my last visit there.