You Do Know You Could Just _NOT_, Greg
A friendly reminder that the world is a cornucopia of options for some people
I spend a lot of time thinking about retirement, specifically how to make it happen sooner than later. Some of this is simply how I’m wired, though I’ve recently realized it took on a higher priority as a sort of coping mechanism to get me through the rigors of a very stressful job. (If you’ve guessed I knew exactly how much closer to retirement each paycheck got me, come collect your prize.) I’m probably too preoccupied with the goal, honestly; I have been fortunate to get myself into a position where - if I can keep things heading in the same direction they’ve been - I should be able to retire and live the life I want. I won’t be a 1%-er or be traveling the world every week or anything like that, but I will likely be able to leave money to my loved ones when I die and my big, dumb remains get shot onto the face of the moon by a SpaceX Moon Cannon.
Knowing that I have this sort of flexibility allows me to make choices that many others cannot; I can have a side hustle because it brings me joy rather than because I need the money, or I can turn down a job offer for reasons other than pay. I have the privilege of being able to not compromise my personal beliefs as I search for a less stressful job; Facebook is hiring a lot of network engineers, but I will not be applying to any of those positions. If alternate-universe me had kids and an ever-increasing rent payment he might have to jump onto the Meta gravy train, where current-universe me can turn my nose up at helping a society-destroying machine grind up more lost souls. Flexibility is nice to have; it took me a long time to get here, and I’m doing my best to appreciate the spot I’m in now, because it may not always be like this.
There is an economic concept called marginal utility, which - I’m paraphrasing - is the idea that as you have more of something, each additional unit of that thing is worth less than the one before it. If you have zero sandwiches, having one is of great marginal utility; if you have ten sandwiches, the eleventh isn’t worth as much as the first, and so on. For most people, money is the same way; a person who makes 20k/year really appreciates a 5k/year bump, but a person making 100k/year isn’t quite as impacted by a 5k/year bump. There have been a number of studies on this basic idea, Princeton released a study in 2010 that put the number around $75k/year - around $100k/year in today’s dollars - for when Americans increasingly start feeling happiness based on other things than just money. Net worth runs along a similar track of marginal utility, with going from $1m to $2m being a bigger deal to a person’s financial flexibility than from $13m to $14m.
Don’t take my word for it; here’s Dave Chappelle talking to David Letterman about walking away from his Comedy Central contract:
Okay, look, Dave. It’s very hard to go through something like this because no one’s really done it before. So there’s not too many people that *don’t* think I’m crazy, right? So I look at it like this. I’m at a restaurant with my wife. It’s a nice restaurant, we’re eating dinner. I look across the room and say, “See this guy over here across the room? He has $100 million, and we’re eating the same entree.” Okay, fine, I don’t have $50 million or whatever it was. But say I have $10 million in the bank. The difference in lifestyle is minuscule. The only difference between having $10 million and $50 million is an astounding $40 million. Of course…of course, I would have liked to have that money.
A person with $14m of net worth has a lot of options, they could do just about anything they want to do. They could live the life they want, they don’t really have to make any morally ambiguous decisions or act in a way that’s detrimental to society. Hell, look at The Game! He turned down a $7m tour to play NBA2K and I promise you his explanation is one of the most grounded points of view you will ever hear.
If you have an 8-figure net worth, you aren’t really limited in ways to enjoy your time. You can spend your days working whatever low-stakes job you want, volunteering for an animal shelter or a nonprofit, or not work at all. The world is open for you in ways most of us will never experience, and unless you dumped your entire net worth in Dogecoin you’re probably going to be able to do what you want until the day you die.
Which brings me to Greg Abbott.
Greg Abbott is worth anywhere between $14m and $23m, depending on which website you believe. He is 64 years old, and if he quit his job today he’d have a sizable pension supplementing a net worth that is self-sustaining unless he starts buying yachts like Bleeding Gums Murphy bought Faberge eggs. Greg Abbott is going to make his daughter a multi-millionaire when he passes. How certain am I of this? Even if he never earned another dollar, took all of his existing net worth & put it into a retirement account that earned 1% per year - a Citi savings account gets about 1.01% right now - he could spend $140,000/year on travel & living expenses and when he turns 90 he will have…about $14m dollars. With the pension - and this seems like a great time to mention that Rick Perry “retired” while still in office to take advantage of his nearly $90k/year pension, so Greg Abbott’s going to be earning well over $0/year in this scenario - he could crack $200k/year living his best life for the next quarter-century and his daughter would have an eight-figure net worth waiting for her. He has more choices of how he wants to live his life and what he wants his impact to be on this world than the vast majority of us.
I have watched Greg Abbott - who one former acquaintance swore to me upon his election would never be a ‘red meat politician’ and is uninterested in the culture wars Rick Perry dabbled in - veer further and further to the right over the last several years. We went from the days of the equal amounts amusing and embarrassing dildo ban support & Jade Helm idiocy to the current state of costing our state billions in revenue for a political border stunt that turned up nothing and directing a foster system he won’t properly fund to investigate parents of trans youth for child abuse, when he’s not busy appointing people who helped Trump’s patently-false claims of election fraud to oversee our own future elections. He’s also talking about going after the ability for same-sex couples to marry now that the Supreme Court numbers are in his favor, because it’s not like we have an energy grid to fix or water mains breaking that put hundreds of thousands of Texans out of clean water or more dead kids from school shootings to deal with or anything.
The cynical view over the past couple of years - while watching Abbott step on every possible rake within a quarter-mile of the Governor’s mansion, only to follow each rake smack patronizing us by waving a Texas flag and engaging in acts with an AR-15 he thinks should be illegal between two consenting adults - is that he doesn’t believe in these issues on the merits, rather that he’s taking every one of these actions because he has to if he wants to be re-elected. Viewing his actions solely through a political lens is understandable - I’m not exempting myself, I’ve said the same about him in the past - because it’s pretty accurate. One only has to watch how Abbott spent about three days in March of 2020 listening to the scientists before the fringe conservatives started lighting torches; our Weathervane-in-Chief spent the next year-and-change pandering to his base but mostly not doing anything at all, which succeeded in making everybody unhappy while not even remotely keeping a pandemic in check. It is at least fair to say he only views things in a political lens, that he has no core values beyond what will win him another term in office. Greg Abbott would give a handjob to a Grand Wizard live on Infowars if it guaranteed his 2024 presidential election bid would finish better than the 5th place for which he seems predestined. His inability to convince anyone outside of the wholly inattentive that he is actually good at his job is why he has Peter Principled himself to the Texas Governor gig despite lusting for the White House, and its the sheer size of that inattentive crowd which will likely keep him in office until he decides to leave or die.
But does any of this sound enjoyable? To raise money at the prodigious rate he does - and make no mistake, Abbott is positively elite at building a war chest - he has to spend countless hours alternating between kissing asses of detestable people and threatening the asses of other detestable people. And for what, so he can get booed so badly at a Texas Trump rally by ostensibly ‘his’ people that he has to keep repeating Trump’s full name like a malfunctioning AI so the crowd will actually cheer?
To get screamed at by grieving parents & protestors after yet another school shooting?
To have a sub-Reddit called ‘r/FuckGregAbbott’ that has nearly 10,000 people in it?
Greg, as the kids say: bruh. It doesn’t have to be like this. You can do something else, something that doesn’t involve all of this bullshit. You’re wealthy by nearly any non-Musk definition, retire and enjoy life! There’s a 274-day cruise that hits 65 countries, flies you into town in business class, and costs less than half your yearly allowance. It’s even ADA-compliant - gotta love those federal guidelines now, huh Greg - so you can roll your racist ass around the entirety of the ship with ease, refusing to make eye contact with the plebians who are only on the ship for 4-7 days at a time and repeatedly handing your towels to every Hispanic-adjacent person on the pool deck despite none of them wearing a uniform. The cruise line won’t even ask for your vaccination card - even though we all know you got a double dose and a booster, because of course you did - thanks to your fascist rival/BFF DeSantis blocking private businesses from requiring proof before entering cruise ships in Florida like the small-government conservative he is. You can sit on the deck and stare out at the ocean, never once thinking about how to ram through another piece of legislation that makes AR-15 Day a monthly holiday. Imagine getting to go entire months without talking to the only person less popular in Texas than you, Ted Cruz. It’s a win all around, and you don’t have to gargle a single Federalist Society testicle while you’re on the ship; though since you won’t be in Texas any more; you can do whatever you want with another consenting adult. You can just be an anonymous rich asshole, like millions of other old white dudes on cruise ships.
Doesn’t that sound nice? You have the option whenever you want. Turn in your notice tomorrow, roll down that ramp one last time and let Dan Patrick extoll your virtues to whichever camera is closest to him - he’ll know which one it is - as he grits his teeth, understanding he never got to plant the knife in your back like he wanted. You’ll ride off into the sunset with the pension plan you denied so many others, one last middle finger to the population of the state you claim to represent. You’ll have won in all of the ways that matter to you.
Just go be rich somewhere else. Please.
Well, I had to come looking for this one because I received no email.
Wasn't I supposed to receive an email?
Doesn't matter now because I read it.
And it is a highly entertaining take on Ole Hot Wheels, as he is known to the Board of Control, so thank you.
When do we get hoops again?