Cameron, it does seem like he could live closer if he chose. However, sometimes people have other reasons for living where they do. It must be heavy traffic, because it’s not that far. Perhaps he commutes on a train or a bus? Maybe when he prices out the time away for what he is paid, it ends up being worth it to him.
Then again, I commute about 1900 miles to work. But it is free, and it’s not every day. I figure that into whether it’s worth going to work to take the trip or not. If it takes half a day to get there, and half a day or more to get back. sometimes it’s not worth spending 2-3 days away for one day of pay. Maybe the maintenance guy has figured out what he could get paid locally and figures it’s worth spending the time commuting to get the extra pay.
Busdriver, it’s heavy traffic because there are a lot him. There are not many jobs available in the Central Valley. And, housing is much cheaper. It’s marketed to commuters and Bay Area transplant families. They are called BATS.
The post is unclear. Especially the first sentence. Makes no sense. “Its heavy traffic because there are a lot him”. ???
And assume you are referring to a post 16 posts back? A whole other conversation has occurred in between. Its hard to follow.
The super-rich who have enough to individually influence politicians tend to have a greater proportion of income from other sources. For example, consider capital gains, which have significantly favored tax rates:
Most income brackets up to the 95th percentile make about 3-5% of their income from capital gains. But the top 1% makes 36% of its income from capital gains.
Note that about half of capital gains are made by the top 0.1%:
Perhaps that is why some of those making “only” $250,000 do not feel that wealthy – they see those who have orders of magnitude higher income and wealth than they do.
There are a lot of commuters going over the Altamont Pass so there is heavy traffic and it takes a long time to go very few miles. If there is a wreck which is not at all unusual it can be several hours.
Where i live traffic sux too. And a wreck would have the same effect. Thats not specific to the SF valley. Even if we have other routes to take (sometimes but not always) it will be a commuting nitemare that has a mass effect.
Most of the wealthy tend to be working at high stress/high responsibility jobs as well, it’s just that they also have accumulated wealth that they can put to work for them so the pressure to keep that job is less. They can be making a lot as earned income and still make 36% off of capital gains because the denominator is simply larger. This would include people like business owners, venture capitalists, CEOs, management consultants and investment bankers. No one ever said these jobs were low stress but while someone earning everything as salary needs to be careful to put aside enough money to maintain their lifestyle after retirement someone with large investments can look to ROI to sustain them, at least in large part.
Of course there is a tiny group of lazy rich who simply lounge by the pool on granddaddy’s money, but this is really more of a stereotype than a common reality. No one ever accused Warren Buffett or Oprah Winfrey of being a slacker.
Plus family money gets exhausted when it’s split among multiple members of the next generation. 10 million dollars will go far in the hands of one person, but not nearly as far in the hands of their 10 grandchildren.