1. God's Honest Truth: No Matter How Much Money You Make, If You Want to Feel Poor, Come to America!
This is a short but quite personal thread. And of course, you can exempt Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the like from what I said above. I am addressing 99.999% of people.
This is a short but quite personal thread. And of course, you can exempt Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and the like from what I said above. I am addressing 99.999% of people.
2. You see, I lived in Europe for quite some time before I immigrated to America many decades ago. The last place I lived in Europe before coming to America was a very famous town in England. It has a deep connection with the Pilgrim Fathers.
3. The point is it was not London but it was no backwater either. It was a bustling fashionable town with all kinds of modern amenities and reasonable access to 'high culture', only a few hours drive from London (guess that's true of most of England).
4. I was your average middle-to-low-income bloke, with non-zero but minimal savings. I was single with no financial worries to keep me up at night. I dined at the best restaurants in town, played at the best squash courts & billiards parlors in town, shopped in Marks & Spencer's.
5. The thing is I could and did go out to shop or eat without ever worrying about affordability. When I sat down with friends in a restaurant, I don't remember ever worrying about price being out of our range, if you know what I mean.
6. Then I came to America (there was no place else I thought of settling down except America, God willing, ever since I was a child with a dream -- story for another time as to why), and landed in New York in the middle of February.
7. I had read about the architecture of notable skyscrapers in Manhattan before coming to the U.S. and wanted to see them all, before starting in my new job, which I thankfully landed pretty quickly as it was a booming economy at the time, and my skills were much in demand.
8. Allow me to digress a bit here as I reminisce a bit about this (painful though it is, even now now as I write). From the middle of February to the end of February, every single day, I took the subway (E Train) to visit The World Trade Center. I wanted to take a picture.
9. For 14 days in a row, I could not see the top of the World Trade Center from the ground. It was always in the clouds. I will revert to the main theme as I wipe a tear off my cheek.
10. So what I was saying is that even living in England and on a middle-income salary, I never had to worry about 'affordability' when I visited a local establishment.
Now I was in New York in a job that paid me two and half times as much as I was making in the U.K.
Now I was in New York in a job that paid me two and half times as much as I was making in the U.K.
11. But never once would I dare to visit any upscale establishment in Manhattan, of course not even a restaurant, without worrying whether I could afford to buy something there. It was an interesting psychological adjustment.
12. When a friend back in the U.K. asked me how I was doing in New York, I said, "I am making much more money, but if you ever want to feel poor, come to America." No matter how much you make, someone makes more, and somethings are out of your reach.
13. I say this without an iota of regret, envy, or disappointment. Even if I won a blockbuster lottery, I would never ever buy those things which have always been out of my reach. And I don't envy one bit the people who do buy those things. To each his/her own.
The End
The End
P.S. My remark about 'feeling poor' was/is just a spunky wisecrack, nothing more.
