From time to time my parents forward me articles from the New York Times that they either find interesting and/or presume I will find interesting. This week I received an opinion editorial by Dalton Conley, “Rich Man’s Burden.” He highlighted the fact that high income earners are now working more hours than lower earning workers do as well as the growing income disparity between not the lower and upper classes but rather the middle and upper classes. Conley writes:

The result of this high and rising inequality is what I call an “economic red shift.” Like the shift in the light spectrum caused by the galaxies rushing away, those Americans who are in the top half of the income distribution experience a sensation that, while they may be pulling away from the bottom half, they are also being left further and further behind by those just above them.

And since inequality rises exponentially the higher you climb the economic ladder, the better off you are in absolute terms, the more relatively deprived you may feel. In fact, a poll of New Yorkers found that those who earned more than $200,000 a year were the most likely of any income group to agree that “seeing other people with money” makes them feel poor.

In my social psychology class we studied that many adults put a great deal of stock in their jobs and paychecks. The term “Keeping up with the Jones” has been replaced by “Keeping up with the Gates.” We are no longer satisfied with material possessions that are on par with our neighbors, but rather the extravagance that wealth affords such families such as Bill and Melinda Gates. It’s this mentality that has manifested itself into the personal financial crisis we now see in America. It’s even more apparent in the ever superficial Los Angeles. LA is where people willingly live in small studios so they can afford their BMW M3s for the commute to work. It’s all a false perception of wealth that people like to exude here.

The wealth disparity and inequality is something that I am more aware of as I progress in life. Unfortunately, I also feel the pressures that accompany it. The career I choose, the car I drive, the accommodations I live in are all things I can be judged by my peers and that I compare to them. Despite my education and knowledge of how unhealthy this is, I continue to judge myself to my peers. The question is, will I acquiesce to the pressures of superficial possessions or will I continue to be financially responsible and live within my means?

What can be done to break this vicious cycle of needless comparison? It’s a tall order to do so since we live in a consumer society that seeks instant gratification. We are short term thinkers and will react to the long term when it arrives. We need to better educate the youth about financial prudence. Short term financial thinking is for those who have little money and no choice but to live paycheck to paycheck. It’s not responsible to live paycheck to paycheck because of compounding debt when you have the means not to. In turn, a better understanding of financial planning will decrease the desire to have the same material possessions your neighbors have. There is a lot to be said about the gratification one earns by living within their means and planning for a future that does not require car payments and credit card bills.

By educating the next generation about their finances at a young age, we can hopefully re-instill a bit of Marx’s Protestant ethic in their lives. Children will grow up understanding money better and learn not from their parent’s examples, but rather the mistakes they made. We need to alleviate this social burden before to consumes all of us to the point we are a nation crippled with debt and cannot enjoy our lives. We need to work to live, not live to work.